Exploring Identities: Navigating Gender, Sexuality, and Cultural Norms in a Conservative Environment

Written: July 12, 2023

My environment at home and neighborhood when growing up was not ideally one would want to live in. I have uncles who are gay and relatives who are okay with it, they say. However, as I was getting older, I noticed that they were still homophobic. It has been a ‘Filipino’ humor to joke about gender identity and sexual orientation. I always believed that I am cisgender, or normally others would prefer to say ‘straight’. I believe that I identify myself as a cisgender woman because I have been taught so. I remember that I used to throw casual questions on my parents, asking them, “what if I am lesbian? How would you react?” to see their reactions. Furthermore, they did not fail to frustrate me, and they said that they would disown me. So, I grew in fear that if ever in time, I realized I am not a cisgender at all, maybe they would not accept me for who I am.

I am still trying to read more articles about sexual orientation and gender identity to know myself better and be educated by these. I have stumbled upon an article before talking about demisexuality. The more I dive deeper into the subject, the more I associate myself with this term. I also watched few videos on the Internet about demisexuality, and I can completely relate to these people. Demisexuality is about feeling sexually attracted only to someone with whom you have an emotional bond. This applies to any gender such as gay, straight, pansexual, bisexual, queer, and more.

Moreover, I believe that sexual intercourse is necessarily regular for humans to have sexual urges and be curious. It is part of human exploration that needs to be experienced if one wants to. Before, I believed in misleading information that if both cisgenders had sex, the woman would get pregnant. Nevertheless, through self-research on the Internet, I have realized that it was false information. Moreover, during that time, many people in my age group were getting pregnant in my school and community, believing that they must have tried it out of curiosity or utter desire for lust, though unfortunately, they were also uneducated about safe sex. Also, maybe because they have no one to ask for advice about sex and any means of access to condoms – given the humiliation that a teenager would get if he/she will buy a condom from a convenience store nearby. When the Sex Education original Netflix series was released, many Gen Z and Millennials appreciated how this series talked about real-life experiences and struggles for coming out-of-age youths regarding their gender identity, sexual orientation, and practicing safe sex.

Additionally, there was a time when my friends and I were curious about sex and how it works, not because we want to do it, but we wanted to know why people do that. That was when we went into a pornographic site, checking whatever videos and clicking on it. Others may laugh at it because they can relate to it at some point, but that is odd about reality. Our country is very peculiarly conservative when it comes to this kind of topic. Others would even consider pre-marital sex as a sin because most people in the Philippines are Catholics. It is no wonder that most teenagers who have sexual intercourse are hidden in secrecy due to fear of being mortified and judged because they gave in to their sexual desires and curiosity. This also explains why sex scandals are more rampant in the Philippines. Pornographic photos and videos are often exploited online because of cybersex trafficking, revenge porn or non-consensual pornography, which happens to many youths today, sexting, child pornography and more.

The world is changing forward, so are we, and so must we, too. We need to be more open-minded on topics like this and unlearn our prejudices and offensive behaviors when talking about these subjects.