Vernacular self-representation in Filipino gender identities: the Bontoc minamagkit

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is an exploration of lived experience of the minamagkit, a vernacular term coined in the 1980s for people of same sex attractions and identities in the Bontoc Mountain Province region of the Philippine Cordilleras. The ethnography traces the emergence of the identity and the label against the backdrop of the Chico River dam conflict and the militarization in the province from the 1970s until the 1990s. I investigate the factors and processes that created the context for the emergence of this self-designating label and the sexual relations between the minamagkit and soldiers stationed in the area. By doing so, I hope to contribute to a more localized, nuanced understanding of gender identities outside of the hegemonic European and even metropolitan-centric discourses on sexual identities.