He is risen
Do you think Jesus died and rose again for you to spew bullshit on the internet?
Passiontide is over and Easter has begun, which heralds the resumption of work that virtually grinded to a halt from Maundy Thursday to Black Saturday. But as they say: The devil works hard, but muscled masculine metropolitan gay men (hereon referred to as masc gays) work harder and their army of pick-me gays work hardest.
Sure enough, masc gays did just that over the Holy Week break, pumping out more coliform into Twitter as if the social networking site has not yet turned into the cesspool it already is. The “discourse” (derogatory) over Twitter revolved around whether trans people can compete in sports and other competitive events like pageants, with masc gays and their pick-mes saying trans people could not.
The arguments generally lacked substance except for maybe poppers and whey protein. Here’s something that has more substance: A 2021 study suggests that gender-affirming hormone therapy reduces athletic performance for transwomen, although they are still 12% faster at push-ups, sit-ups and running than ciswomen. Unlike masc gays, the study does not advocate for the complete exclusion of transwomen from sporting events, but only pushes for a longer time for testosterone suppression therapy to achieve a level playing field.
Unsurprisingly, when they were corrected, masc gays and their pick-mes were offended. What was once thinly veiled transphobia became uninhibited and unhinged transphobia. One pick-me gay suggested that transwomen should not be allowed to use female restrooms because they still had male appendages which may offend ciswomen, apparently unaware that all people — except for exhibitionists — do not flash their genitals to strangers in public. A brilliant takedown of this was by a transwoman (I unfortunately could not recall who exactly), who pointed out that some gay men who reside over Altertwitter™ are the actual perverts as they popularized “boso” videos, or the non-consensual recording of intimate online interactions.
The whole ordeal just goes to show how transmisogyny is not only alive, but is very much thriving even within the queer sector, some members of whom (read: masc gays and their pick-mes) do not recognize that the rights and freedoms they enjoy today were hard-earned for them by their trans elders. At such a crucial moment for the sector when the SOGIE Equality Bill is being delayed by religious conservatives in Congress, we would be better off uniting towards this common goal instead of tearing our flag apart by advocating for the exclusion of our queer siblings.
Let transphobia be crucified and not meet a resurrection ever again.
This is my first dispatch from what I hope would be a weekly newsletter featuring musings on life, society and current events from the lens of a queer journalist in Manila living through one of the worst possible times in contemporary history. Keeping in the theme of the Resurrection, I timed the release of this on Easter Sunday so I can triumphantly proclaim that this newsletter is risen.
This is kind of like a column, but also like a blog, but also like a newsletter. I previously had a blog of the same name on Wordpress, but I did (probably still do) not have the discipline to write regularly. It is my hope that through this format I would be able commit to the discipline of sending weekly dispatches.
That’s all for now. I leave you with this secular Semana Santa-core playlist for all you lapsed Catholics out there.