The gender-fluid history of the Philippines

I was an eight-year old kid
in the mid-1990s.

I grew up in the southern Philippines.

At that age, you are
young enough to be oblivious

about what society expects
from each of us,

but old enough to be aware
of what's going on around you.

We lived in a one-bedroom house,

all five of us.

Our house was amongst clusters of houses

made mostly of wood
and corrugated metal sheets.

These houses were built
very close to each other,

along unpaved roads.

There was little to no
expectation of privacy.

Whenever an argument broke out next door,

you heard it all.

Or, if there was a little
something something going on

(Laughter)

you would probably hear that too.

Like any other kid, I learned
what a family looked like.

It was a man, a woman,
plus a child or children.

But I also learned
it wasn't always that way.

There were other combinations
that worked just as well.

There was this family of three
who lived down the street.

The lady of the house was called Lenny.

Lenny had long black hair,
often in a ponytail,

and manicured nails.

She always went out
with a little makeup on

and her signature red lipstick.

Lenny's other half,
I don't remember much about him

except that he had a thing
for wide sleeveless shirts

and gold chains around his neck.

Their daughter was
a couple years younger than me.

Now, everybody in the village knew Lenny.

She owned and ran what was
the most popular beauty salon

in our side of town.

Every time their family
would walk down the roads,

they would always be greeted with smiles

and occasionally stopped
for a little chit-chat.

Now, the interesting thing about Lenny

is that she also happened to be
a transgender woman.

She exemplified

one of the Philippines' longstanding
stories about gender diversity.

Lenny was proof that oftentimes
we think of something as strange

only because we're not familiar with it,

or we haven't taken enough time
to try and understand.

In most cultures around the world,

gender is this man-woman dichotomy.

It's this immovable, nonnegotiable,
distinct classes of individuals.

We assign characteristics and expectations
the moment a person's biological sex

is determined.

But not all cultures are like that.

Not all cultures are as rigid.

Many cultures don't look
at genitalia primarily

as basis for gender construction,

and some communities in North America,
Africa, the Indian Subcontinent,

and the Pacific islands,
including the Philippines,

have a long history
of cultural permissiveness

and accommodation of gender variances.

As you may know,

the people of the Philippines were under
Spanish rule for over 300 years.

That's from 1565 to 1898.

This explains why everyday
Filipino conversations

are peppered with Spanish words,

and why so many of our last names,
including mine, sound very Spanish.

This also explains the firmly entrenched
influence of Catholicism.

But precolonial Philippine societies,
they were mostly animists.

They believed all things
had a distinct spiritual essence:

plants, animals, rocks, rivers, places.

Power resided in the spirit.

Whoever was able to harness
that spiritual power was highly revered.

Now, scholars who have studied
the Spanish colonial archives

also tell us that these early societies
were largely egalitarian.

Men did not necessarily
have an advantage over women.

Wives were treated
as companions, not slaves.

And family contracts were not done
without their presence and approval.

In some ways, women had the upper hand.

A woman could divorce her husband
and own property under her own name,

which she kept even after marriage.

She had the prerogative
to have a baby or not,

and then decide the baby's name.

But the real key to the power
of the precolonial Filipino woman

was in her role as a babaylan,