My Other Name

-Gilford Doquila

I was five when I learned I had another name, besides what my parents gave me. The
name was first born out of my younger sister’s anger who never understood my
difference—which for her and other kids were unusual and difficult to comprehend. For
them, the world operated in black and white. Dolls are for girls; cars and toy guns are
for boys. I wouldn’t blame them, we were taught to see the world in such banality and
convenience.

But growing up was tough if you happen to be in the gray area.

As I ran my soft little hands and patted it against the black silky hair of my sister’s
limited edition Barbie doll—donned in gold Filipiñana, beaded in intricate red
gumamela patterns, and crowned with pearls towering on her head like those queens
in Sagala, I was caught in a trance, mesmerized in an unknown cadence of beauty
that I can’t help but adore. I continued patting her, held her brown legs, making sure
not to spoil the crisp sparkling saya shaping her hourglass figure. I lifted her slim
brown arms, waving them like queens do. She was beaming with her white teeth
framed in her cherry red lips. I giggled in adoration until I heard my sister’s voice.

“Maaaa. Si Kuya o! He’s playing with my Barbie!” she shrieked as she bolted into the
room, terrorized with what she saw. I believe it was the idea of me playing it first
before she could that fumed her anger. The doll was her birthday gift when she turned
four after all; her rage was justified.

Her voice broke the trance I was in, and the cadence faded away, overruled by her
threat.

“Hala ka! I will tell this to Mama!” Her brows met in anger.

“What is happening here?” Mama came as the jury, investigating my sister’s

complaint.
My sister pleaded her case, but Mama already gave her verdict. She grabbed Barbie
from my sweating palms, and handed them over to my sister.

“You can’t play with this.” Mama said sternly. My father was surely absent during these
times, so Mama was the only parent-figure I had. Dad was busy making ends meet as
a seafarer, cruising the vastness of the sea anchored with the promise of a better life
for us—the family he had left.

In my young and innocent mind, I mustered all the courage I had to respond despite
being tongue tied after getting caught from a horrifying crime I was oblivious for.

“Ngano diay, Ma?” I asked. But before my tongue could even utter the words, my
eyes had already drowned in tears. I felt defeated. I felt caught.

“Basta,” the only word Mama said, hinting a tone with finality, as if consoling me when
all it had done for the next years was to leave me in a state of confusion.

“Bayot!” my sister blurted out the name, baptizing me with hate in which she
concluded her tantrum.

My mother’s eyes widened in surprise and hissed her.

“Do not say that!” she quickly patted her mouth, wiping her clean from the filthy word
she said.

The name my sister called me stung like a sharp whiplash of some plastic hanger
Mama used to beat us every time my sister and I would run around the house howling
and breaking her newly bought blinders from playing Power Rangers. We were
pretending that those plastic blinders were our space crafts in our make-believe world.
Of course, my sister had to be Pink Ranger. I settled being the Blue Ranger, but little
did she know, I was channeling femme fatal with her by mimicking the Yellow
Ranger’s stances instead.
I never knew words could sting more than Mama’s beating. Since then, I laid off
touching my sister’s Barbie doll, afraid of being chastised with that name again.

I thought hate was the only word associated with such a name. I didn’t know it had
other names too—synonyms my English teacher would often say, reminding us of the
sanctity of enriching our vocabulary in better expressing ourselves through words. I
thought the journey to learning new words was always exciting. I thought I would have
the same delightful epiphany like how my teacher delighted herself saying the word
flamboyant describing Barbie in class. But all I could remember was my sister’s doll,
and how it reminded me of the word shame.

“Bayot ka noh? You’re always hanging out with girls!” my rambunctious stocky
classmate Roy would often ask. His plump cheeks jiggled when he spoke. His face
was glistening in beads of sweat under the scorching afternoon heat. He was panting
from playing basketball. His eyebrows met in confusion looking at me—a complex boy
who did not play basketball nor played computer games with him and the other boys
in class. But I did not see confusion in his gaze while he was waiting for my
confirmation to his question. I saw disgust— another synonym I learned for the name.

And so the words went on multiplying in the seemingly endless roster of synonyms for
the name as I grew older. Often, it would find itself in the tolerance from teachers and
friends who believe that as long as “hindi ka halata, okay lang,” as if it were an
unwanted birthmark on my brown skin. Sin and immoral were words I usually heard
from my Christian Humanism teachers every time they saw high school boys like me
who were “napaghahalatan”, referring to me like a Gentile in a Jewish community who
needs salvation through Christ. Ironic how they could preach “loving thy neighbor” yet
reek in hating boys like me at the same time. With titas who would notice my
femininity with a keen eye, remarks like “sayang ka, pogi ka pa naman,” would always
find itself in conversations masked in sweet tones of concern as if to console me, yet
only revealed the way they truly saw me—a baby machine. Isn’t overpopulation a
concerning issue for these people yet?

I thought the roster would fill all vile words associated with the name until college
came. I met the name once again, but this time I found it in the collection of stories
which narrated histories of courage, liberty, and power—all seemingly strange to
acquaint with the name which I had known to be irked at with disdain and disgust.

I was grateful enough that my literature professors taught us to look past beyond the
stories propagated by white friars in huge coral-stone domes of worship, and see
through the eyes of the indigenous Filipino communities in their vast perception of the
world and gain wisdom from the rainforests of their civilization where the finite
delineation of black and white did not exist. Where identity is as fluid as the
rummaging surge of their sacred rivers. Where a person is not tied to what’s between
his or her legs.

It was in UP Mindanao’s Mentefuwaley where I reacquainted the name bayot

associated with me. And it was a shame how I never saw myself joining the
organization; for at that time, I did not see myself with them—full of pride filled with
courage, words I have yet to experience on my own journey in reclaiming the bayot in
me which I used to conceal like a shameful scar.

Mentefuwaley is a Teduray term for “one-who-became-a-woman”. The Teduray

indigenous community resides in the provinces of Cotabato and Maguindanao. In the
written account of American anthropologist, Stuart Schlegel, he narrated his
experience with how the Teduray community viewed Uka, a Teduray as a real woman,
even if Uka was born male. Schlegel, a white man, found this notion perplexing. So he
tried confirming by asking again if Uka “is a man” yet he was still told that Uka was a
woman, thus the name mentefuwaley libun-“one-who-became-a-woman”. I couldn’t
help but wonder did Schlegel also have the same confusion like my classmate Roy?
Or did this thought angered him like how my sister felt when she saw me playing with
her doll?

The members of UP Mentefuwaley, the sole gender-based organization in the

university personified acceptance. They embraced their queerness with pride and
embodied the organization’s name as part of their Mindanawon identity. And they
shared this vibrant space of love and acceptance openly as they marched and
sashayed their way every Pride March along University Avenue where the shining
rainbow flag was cloaked on the Oblation. In 2016, UP Mentefuwaley marked a
historic Pride March when they invited different gay and lesbian organizations in
Davao City to create a more inviting spirit of oneness and community.

As I continued my journey finishing my degree in the university, I met names that

helped reconstruct what bayot truly was, far from the slurs I grew up with. In our
regional literature class, I came to learn of Tamblot’s courage and how the babaylan
fought against the Spanish invaders in Bohol. Later then, I would learn that the
societal role of being a babaylan did not only conform to female members of the
society but also to those males who couldn’t give a child. And the so called “misfits”, if
our current society would call them, weren’t mocked, hissed, nor disgusted, but held
spiritual roles in the society and were revered among folks.

Had I been born during that time, would Roy and my sister have accepted me? Would
Mama not bat a glaring look every time I acted “soft”? Would people around me be
kinder then?

Of course, I couldn’t turn back time, but I could capture it into writing. And so I did. I
wrote stories of how the name bayot thrived in me. How it was mocked and crucified
my childhood years into painful memories. But now that I had met the name again and
its other names, I found redemption and liberation in it which were seeds to the
acceptance I needed. A journey that was yet to unfold as I stepped outside from the
comforts of the university where people do not think the same way as I do.

One day at work, an officemate came to me seemingly troubled with a thought.

“I have a question to ask,” she lowered her voice as if telling a secret. “I hope you
wouldn’t take offense with it.”

I nodded in affirmation. But I already had an inkling on what she would ask. It was
always what people wanted to know every time they saw me, the name. It probably
bothers them at night as to how they could relate to me if they hadn’t got confirmation
of who I was. So of course, she needed to know more than attending to her own
business.
“Are you…” tucking her hair behind her ear, gesturing the name as if we’re in a
guessing game.

“What?” I smiled.

Say it. Say the name.

“Uhm… Maya, Beshy mae, beki?” hinting a tone of irritation expecting me to have
known the answer already.

The name came out from me this time with a thrill that my voice didn’t shake nor did it
shy away from saying it. My tongue welcomed it like a delectable treat, a dessert I
could not decline. So I opened my mouth and said,

“Ah, bayot?”

The name and I became one.

She nodded in reply and in expectation too, hoping that her impression—just like how
my titas had—would prove her speculation right.

In Binisaya, bayot is used to insult boys who appear to be weak and cowardly. Sissy. I
was not spared by being called this too when my cousins and I used to play
hide-and-seek, and I couldn’t get past in an abandoned house we dubbed haunted
looking for them hiding. “Ayaw pagbinayot!,” my cousin teased me while searching for
them in the dilapidated house, only to find out they weren’t there. And ever since, I
believed them.

But at that moment, seeing my workmate’s anticipation for my response, I have never
felt courage in reclaiming who I was. Despite the name being tainted with weakness, I
had found strength—my own strength in finally knowing who I was.

“Oo, bayot ko. What’s the matter?” I felt chills running to my spine saying it. I never
felt any bigger while sitting at that time in my life. I looked straight into her eyes but
she dodged away. It was a familiar look. That was how shame looked like from the
other end.

“I also experienced that one, too. But when I became a Christian, it faded away.
Basta, pray ka lang,” she replied, trying to salvage the conversation.

What she did not know was that I did pray when I was young. I prayed that classmates
like Roy would stop hurting me by insinuating that I was a disgusting person. I prayed
that people would stop sneering at me for who I was, or pity me for being sayang like
my titas would imply. I prayed hard but got no answer.

“We could be best friends, you know,” she faked her laugh.

We never became one after that, though.

I concealed what could have been a disastrous event in a smile like how diplomats do
in a brink of waging war. I took a deep breath and beamed with pride because for
once in my life, it was exciting to finally know me.

I was five when I was first called bayot and would deny it for the next ten years, trying
to convince myself I wasn’t the horrible person associated with the name. And it would
take me almost another ten years to realize the lies they tainted it with. The systemic
erasure brought by colonialism that led to the marginalization and oppression of the
bayot under a macho society has also brought a generational trauma, and reeducating
people through our history and literature is a step towards that healing.

Growing up, I have been called names and have lived under the impression that other
people knew more than I did, so I believed them. But now that I have learned more, I
realized I am not who they think I was. I am more than what they say because
nowhere was I weak in finally accepting who I am.