Baylan, Asog, Transvestism, and Sodomy: Gender, Sexuality and the Sacred in Early Colonial Philippines

The importance of women to the spiritual wellbeing of the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago was a recurrent theme in the reports emanating from the quills of missionaries, explorers and administrators alike from the first European contact with Magellan in 1521 and subsequently during the decades following Legaspi’s arrival in 1565. However the reports contained references to some men who were also practitioners in the spiritual realm. Viewed through the sixteenth and seventeenth century Hispano/Catholic gaze various representations of these men emerge in relation to their religious roles, linked as they were to cross-dressing, a more permanent effeminate lifestyle and/or ambiguous sexuality. I begin this paper with a discussion of the importance of gender analysis in understanding the role and status of these male/feminine shamans. I evaluate the sources we have about these men in the light of recent theorising about non-conformist sex/gender roles, and in relation to links between spiritual potency and a possible ‘”third” sex/gender’ as proposed by Leonard Andaya in his thought-provoking paper, ‘The Bissu: Study of a Third Gender in Indonesia’; Ian Wilson, in ‘Reog Ponorogo: Spirituality, Sexuality, and Power in a Javanese Performance Tradition,’ Josko Petkovic’s, ‘Waiting for Karila: Bending Time, Theory and Gender in Java and Bali,’ and Ramón Gutiérrez in his exciting text, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away.I explore the potential of this ‘Indonesian’ and Pueblo Indian model, that links sex/gender ambiguity or androgyny with spiritual prowess, in relation to examples of male transvestite shamans in the Philippine situation during the first century of Animist/Catholic confrontation. An important aspect of my argument is that I situate the male shamans in relation to their female counterparts and come to the conclusion that the model that creates a link between sex/gender ambiguity or androgyny and spiritual prowess does not fit the Filipino case.