Truth to tell, when I found myself starting 6200Pride three weeks ago with only about seven people eager to help, and with no budget whatsoever, I made an effort not to think about the gargantuan demands of pulling off a Pride Month, which suddenly had ten major events to manage. How many more stories like these are out there? I bet thousands.įor J Marie, her emotional moment came right after our panel when a boy came up to her and revealed how he had to flee from his hometown all the way to Dumaguete to get away from all the bullying.Īnd that was when I realized this was why we were doing all the things we’ve been doing for Pride Month in Dumaguete: to make visible all these issues no one wants to talk about, to create a safe space for discourse, to allow people to reveal of themselves without fear. A former student also told me that once she was in a fast food restaurant with a very close relative who, upon seeing a couple of lesbians exchanging affection in the line at the counter, promptly told her that if she behaved “like that,” she would also get the boot. I remembered a friend from five years ago, for example, who was told by his father that if he didn’t “turn straight” in six months, he would be forced to leave home. It must been such a driving thing for her, to be compelled to ask. It was a very emotional moment, an unexpected one, simply because it struck me as being so brave, that decision to speak up, in public no less. The details of the girl’s story and how she delivered it shook me - and I must admit I cried in front of everyone. This is the thing many people don’t get about queer lives: often there is the heartbreaking ostracism from the very people who are supposed to care for us, no matter what. Soon a girl came up, and in a shaky voice that ran the gamut of being scared and being tired revealed to the crowd how she was recently forced to “come out” to her family and how she was now flailing in her relationships with them, essentially asking us the panelists in that Pride Month forum how to be brave in the face of all that. There was a huge crowd gathered around the American Studies Resource Center of the Silliman Library, and we were fielding questions. Golda Benjamin, instructor at the College of Law, talked about current legal groundings of the LGBTQ J Marie Maxino, instructor at the Department of English and Literature, talked about the nuances of gay living and I talked about gay representation in culture, focusing mostly on movies. Michele Joan Valbuena, former chair of the Psychology Department at Silliman University, talked about the spectrum of gay identity Atty. We had just finished doing our presentations on four specific aspects of gay lives - Prof. The emotional peak for that day for me came early. It had been a long Monday, the 25th of June.
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