(This series is done in partnership with The Queer Pinoy (TQP) blog and is written by Aimary Rubio of Elizha Consulting and Michael Pastor of TQP.)
Though Pride month has come and gone, educating ourselves on how to make safer spaces for our LGBT workmates should be a constant, unending process.
Everybody deserves to work in an environment that allows them to be their true selves, not only for each person’s benefit and self-development, but also for the whole team’s progression.
With that, we present to you Pride in the Workplace: Making Spaces Safer for Our LGBT Workers, a short series of #TeamTalkTuesday posts that tackles how to communicate better with our LGBT workmates.
To start off this series, it’s important to familiarize ourselves with the lived experiences of the LGBT community. And a good starting point to do this is to know the definitions and nuances of common and current terminologies that aim to explain these lived experiences.
BACKGROUND
In a study jointly made by the United Nations Development Programme and the International Labor Office back in 2018,
30% of a participant pool of 1,722 individuals in the Philippines said they experienced workplace discrimination on the basis of their SOGIE.
This was even higher than the reported rates in the two other participating countries, China and Thailand. Negative experiences included coworkers expressing homophobic slurs and making critical statements about how they dress, behave or speak, and even companies creating job advertisements that explicitly excluded certain SOGIEs.
“Employers should recognize that being LGBTI-inclusive is not only a good practice, but also makes great business sense, and can establish a competitive advantage over other companies that are not inclusive. [...] LGBTI inclusion in the workplace means respecting the rights of LGBTI people to work, and to work with dignity and with their human rights valued.”
- Kofi Amekudzi, senior technical specialist at International Labor Office
IMPORTANT TERMS
This acronym is prominent in academic circles and recent discussions on gender in popular culture, especially by advocates of gender equality. This term has been used in forwarding the anti-discrimination bill here in the Philippines, though there remains a confusion among people on how to use these terms and how it relates to our culture and practice as professionals. Let’s unpack it here!
LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and is the acronym most commonly used for the non-normative community. The L, G and B are kinds of sexual orientations, while the T is a type of gender identity in which a person doesn’t identify with their biological sex. In recent years, this acronym has been lengthened to include other identifying terms, such as Queer (i.e., an umbrella term for having an unconventional identity), Intersex (i.e., someone born as both male and female), and Asexual (i.e., an individual who does not feel sexual attraction).
Adding a plus to the end of the acronym generally makes it more inclusive, and acknowledges that there is a wide spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations (e.g., LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA+).
One of the more prominent Tagalog terms that relate to the concepts of SOGIE and LGBTQIA+ is the word bakla. Bakla is a loaded term, meaning, it has several uses and definitions in our culture.
Bakla can be
Used to mean weak (“Nababakla ako.”)
As an identity (“Bakla ako.”)
As a slur (“Bakla ka kasi.”)
As a term of endearment or expression (“Baklang ‘to”)
Used to refer to gay men or trans women, i.e., women who were born male
It is important to recognize that despite these nuanced ideas on gender and sexuality, we still have to deal with our cultural setting.
The reality is, no matter how problematic, the use of bakla remains popular. While most of those who subscribe to Western concepts agree that transgender and gay are two totally different terms, in the local consciousness and understanding, it remains to be the same or similar. Despite these pronounced differences on gender and the notion that it is a spectrum, not all or even the majority of Filipinos understand and adhere to it right away. This is why words like bakla can be used to ground or translate these concepts into our culture.
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