"Girl, bi, bakla, tomboy": the intersectionality of sexuality, gender, and class in urban poor contexts

Intersectionality as a theoretical framework argues for the need to account for people’s multiple and intersecting social identities in understanding experiences of discrimination. We looked at the intersection of sexuality, gender, and class in shaping the particularity of Filipino urban poor lesbian women’s and gay men’s experiences of discrimination. Using four case narratives, we examined the experiences of a bisexual (masculine gay man), bakla (feminine gay man), tomboy (masculine lesbian woman), and girl (feminine lesbian woman) in urban poor contexts. Unique themes include: how gender, sexuality, and class identities intersect and fuse in the bakla and tomboy identities to create a distinct form of social inequality that constructs these identities as forms of moral degradation; how non-normative gender expressions trigger overt discrimination; how lesbian and gay identities and relationships are invisibilized; and how providing for the family can facilitate acceptance given the strong adherence to heteronormative gender roles embedded in the context of urban poverty.