And as audre lorde says – “I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.” Praise the [audre] LORDE. My filipinoness and my womanness – are inseperable. To add another layer to my queer identity and my gender, let’s add in equal parts, my racialized and visible identity. It’s a perfect recipe for oppression and subjugation. Once, someone assumed that because I am an immigrant and Filipino, i must have come here as a “nanny.” Then there are those that eroticize and fetishize me as being a mail order bride – or because i am a nurse, i must wear sexy outfits and play the sexy night nurse to my imaginary cis-male boyfriend. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with sexual role plays – but if you reduce me as just a sex toy, reduce me to the generalizations of Filipinos, that i can only exceed in the highly gendered caregiving industry, or that i cannot have status because we Filipinos can only be migrant and temporary workers – then that is highly racist. I have learned that doing anti-racism work has been an emotionally heavy undertaking for me. It requires of me to reflect and explore my own Filipino identity and my stories of immigration, racialization and my otherness as outcomes of my migration. I feel that i’ve avoided this because there is a deep well of pain i have not yet explored or faced . In the 10 years i have been in Canada, my parents who are now in their 50’s have struggled with so much racism in their lives and in their work. To watch my parents lose their fire and be eaten alive by their racist workplaces, their abusive white bosses, being overlooked for promotion year after year, having very limited work opportunities as older non-english fluent immigrants, every time i had to watch someone yell at them because they could not understand their English amidst their accent – i am enraged and deeply hurt. And this rage, this rage is what they do not understand. White privilege and white systems do not understand our rage as racialized people. Because they never had to experience it. Racism happens for me very differently than my parents. It is usually intertwined with my gender – i find that it is tied a lot into how i’m sexualized and racialized – and they happen simultaneously, and concurrently.
