Michael A. Rosegrant (any pronouns said with respect) is a storyteller whose work centers identity, family, and history as a way to combat oppression. They wrote this piece upon reconciling their gender with a buried history revealed to them by J. Neil C. Garcia’s article, “Male Homosexuality in the Philippines: a short story.”
growing up,
when people said:
“michael, you are too pretty to be a boy”
i laughed and replied, “okay”
(i didn’t know what that meant)
i thought “why did they say that?”
instead of “wow...they noticed something”
before spain colonized the philippines, one of our words made for third-gender people was the name
bayoguin
derived from a species of bamboo called
bayog
which grows like this
)
(bent)
bayog
bamboo
blooms
beautifully
bent but
unbroken
from the
underbrush,
it breaks
boundaries
with its birth
for no reason
besides the fact it was
born to do
just that.
bayog is just as strong as all other bamboo
but bayog goes by a different name
because bayog was born different,
born bent,
born curved,
born special,
born beautiful in their own way.
they transcend gender “bamboo”.
growing up,
when people say:
“michael, you are too pretty to be a boy.”
i smile and reply, “i know.”
Photo by Pablo Azurduy on Unsplash