Email: yesdumagan@yahoo.com

(This column will provide readers an exciting journey into the minds of our young people today. Her real name is PRECIOUS JOT T. DUMAGAN, daughter of former Batuan Mayor and now incumbent town councilor Necitas "Bebie" Dumagan, Jr. and Librada Tirol-Dumagan. She's taking BA in Speech Communication at the University of the Philippines, Diliman Campus, Quezon City.)

We know that the gay language can be an instrument to eradicate discrimination from the society, but the use of this can in fact highlight their distinctiveness

One misty morning, I had bumped with a long lost friend, whom, by all means, I’ve known to be a straight guy. Before I could speak, he uttered a few words as a way of greeting me: “Hoy, bakla! Kumusta na ang chenes natin?” I was terribly shocked; my eyes couldn’t be hidden away from him from seeing me in surprise. I was stunned not because he had changed on the way he looked and he dressed up because he had not, but, rather I was amazed that he greeted me that way. I mean gay lingo? For straights?

I had not observed my environment with regard to the popular use of this language, not until some friends really close to me have practically been addictive to this craze. Everyone is using it – the high school teens, the adolescents, even the pros. Straight men and women have been into this as well – only manifesting that the gay culture has somehow been adopted by the society, a form of the people’s acceptance of their culture despite the usually negative treatment by and for them.

I am considering this matter because not all of us have been aware of this rising phenomenon. Yes, it has been used and practiced by people from different sorts but one thing we fail to see is its implication on the use and practice of this language once true for the gay community only, now, already a trend.

Let us consider this situation. One day, in a beauty parlor owned and managed by gays, came a regular costumer, an old lady, who never failed to criticize basically everyone and everything in the shop – she questioned the parlor’s facilities, the gays’ style of dressing up, the gays doing stuff inside the parlor, and even the small things like why the magazines weren’t updated. A time came that all the gays were screwed up because of this costumer. What they did, they used their gay language even in front of their costumer. They exchanged views about this lady who didn’t even know what the real score was that’s happening around her. The shift of language was the gays’ comfort zone for them to do their job to attend to their costumer and at the same time was able to express their angst against a certain costumer without actually hurting her because of her lack of knowledge on how the conversation of the gays went.

A: “Ang chami talaga ng heyrora boulevard nitis, aminin mo, bakla, tegis na ang mga itis.”
B: “Truli, mader at ang filing ni watashi, jenifer monyument, mashosholbodudel na ang chumenelin. At aminin mo, ang krepas ng tander kats lalong chumachaka, slightly, inaagnas.”
C: “At ate, saytsung mis naman daw ang shusana, veykla, chamines.”
A: “Truly mader lili, misis, parang pumapayat kayo, nagdadayet na naman ho kayo ano?”
C: “I’m sure nagsusuro.”

This kind of conversation just went on smoothly until they were done with their costumer. And during the duration of the conversation, there were in fact no signs from the customer that she knew that she was the subject of the whole conversation. Yet, the gays were even successful in delivering their views out.

With this example, can we really say that the gay language itself can already stand on its own – free on how they’re constructed and used? We know that the gay language represents the identity of the gays in our community. Through this, the gays were empowered in the society that once neglect and marginalized them. But this could also be used against them. We know that the gay language can be an instrument to eradicate discrimination from the society, but the use of this can in fact highlight their distinctiveness, which can mess them up as a culture because the society might continue to look at them as the people belonging to a culture that is “not normal” thus be given a different treatment from the norm.

Nevertheless, mabuhay ang mga bakla! At mabuhay tayo na ginagamit ang salitang bakla sapagkat churva pa rin ang chumenes at chumuchuchu sa chika! Echos!