Equality Philippines

I am 24 years old.(Just celebrated my birthday a day ago) I know it’s not really a big deal since I’m relatively “young” but like what my friend said, it’s “the year” before I reach my quarter life (crisis?). This is of course in accordance to the assumption that I’ll live for 100 years. *fingers crossed* The cliché goes that age is but a number. Therefore, we shouldn’t really be bothered whether we are 16 or 60. While cleaning my closet this morning, I saw my super dusty math book (Hi Mr. Leithold!). If there is ONE thing that math taught me it would be the fact that numbers do matter. The ancient Greek philosopher, Pythagoras was right all along. Numbers are everything. Let me give a little exercise just to prove my point that numbers matter in this shithole of a world we live in. Let's begin with my so-called life. I've been living for more or less 8760 days or 210, 240 hours or 12, 614, 440 minutes or 756,864, 000 seconds! I have 1 sister and had a total of 34 pet do...

Book Review on Literature and Literary Theory Professor Emilio Bejel's book "Gay Cuban Nation". This post was written by RBP team member line of flight from Sampaloc Toc . Emilio Bejel is a Professor of Spanish American literature and literary theory at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He wrote Gay Cuban Nation . Before I get into the substance of this book, I was totally offended that the University of Chicago Press would print a book with so many fucking typographical errors! Shame! Shame! Shame! The first few chapters were very fascinating. I know almost nothing about Cuban literature or gay Cuban literary history so that was interesting in itself. However, what was more fascinating was Bejel's ability to weave Cuban national history into the framework of the "rupture" at the end of the nineteenth century / beginning of the twentieth century regarding sexuality. Nakpil Zialcita's comment about Philippine academic disregard for everything Spanis...

Book Review on American English Professor Lee Edelman's book "No Future". This post was written by RBP team member line of flight from Sampaloc Toc . Be forewarned, I really didn't like American Professor of English Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (of Tufts University). He reduces the symbol of the "child" to "the linchpin of our universal politics of 'reproductive futurism.'" I found Lauren Berlant's classic Queen of America Goes to Washington City to be spot on in many instances and if you're interested in how popular American culture utilizes the symbol of the child for neocon propaganda, read her book. She predicted through her analysis of Forest Gump, George Bush II's election. If neocons could they would elect a fetus as president and Dick Cheney as vice president. And they got close with George Bush II. I am not into fetishizing children in an intellectual way or otherwise. Children are ch...

Book Review on American English Professor Judith Halberstam's book "In a Queer Time and Place". This post was written by RBP team member line of flight from Sampaloc Toc . Judith Halberstam is an American Professor of English and also has written Female Masculinity and The Drag King Book . In A Queer Time and Place discusses a number of topics involving sexuality and queer subjects. One of the topics of her book that I found interesting related to her discussion of metronormativity. Halberstam takes Michael Warner's heteronormativity ( Fear of A Queer Planet ) and reshapes it to describe the "normalizing" of urban sexual identities while abnormalizing rural sexual practices and identities. She takes the stories of several tragic FTM transgenders, like Brandon Teena to show how urban LGBT identities have allied with urbanism to create the belief that rural = homophobic. Halberstam shows how the movie Boys Don't Cry ended up changing Brandon Teena's...

Book Review on Canadian English Professor Michael Cobb's book "God Hates Fags". This post was written by RBP team member line of flight from Sampaloc Toc . Happy Labor Day! Alexandra Chasin is an American professor of literature and LGBT studies. Chasin's book is a fascinating and damning account of how market forces have fundamentally altered (and destroyed in some ways) the revolutionary potential of LGBT movements. From the beginning (if there ever was one), LGBT movements have called for a fundamental rethinking of gender, family, and eros. In the U.S., until the 1990s, these movements were local and fragmented in nature, goals were similar but local LGBT groups dealt with local communities to tackle problems of discrimination, etc.,. Local bars funded local LGBT publications. As noted in Fetner's How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism , the direction of these movements in the U.S. became unified and nationalized in the 1980s. Fetner describe...