Transgender Pinay seeks grant to document ‘The Badings of Haiyan
It has been more than a year since Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) , the storm that took at least 6,300 lives and has affected many thousands more.
While women and children were given safe spaces and resources for their needs, little interest has apparently been given to the needs of transgender persons in the affected areas.
Meredith Talusan, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, freelance writer, and author, aims to check on the safety of transgender persons in a project currently in the running for the Matter International Reporting Fellowship, a program allowing unpublished writers to pursue a story that will “start or end conversations, that have meaning and impact, that change minds.”
If the project, named "The Badings of Haiyan", receives the most votes, Talusan will receive a $15,000 grant to write a story on the status of "badings" in areas affected by the typhoon and allow "people in the US to continue to be aware of what's happening there."
The project is an offshoot of Talusan's curiosity towards the different attitudes of Filipinos and Americans regarding their transgender brethren.
"Badings are between men and women and we're more comfortable with that I think. In the United States, there's a lot more pressure to be either a man or a woman and so there's more pressure to belong to one of those categories," she said in an email interview with GMA News Online on Saturday.
Talusan, who immigrated to the US at 15, said that the uniquely Filipino gender identity of "bading" made her feel more welcome in the Philippines as a child, moreso than she would feel if she was raised in the US.
"I feel like there's definitely more discrimination in the US... I just know that had I grown up in the US as a kid I would have been made fun of a lot more for being effeminate," she said.
"In the Philippines, people are more conservative in certain ways but are more accepting of badings, though that's just my hypothesis. That's why I want to do this story, so I can have a better sense and also communicate that to the rest of the world," she explained.
Her immediate family's support of her decision to transition also helped her become comfortable with herself, and this support extended to the Philippines, where her lola "is the first person to correct people from my childhood who call me by my old name".
Yet Talusan admits that her long stay in the US meant she knew little of the realities of being a "bading".
"I don't really have close bading friends so just being exposed to that part of Philippine culture as an adult would be really important to me," she said.
Talusan is not a journalist by trade, but her time in Harvard taught her how to write and take breathtaking photographs. It also allowed her to become more liberal and shift her interests from the sciences to art and literature. — JDS, GMA News
While women and children were given safe spaces and resources for their needs, little interest has apparently been given to the needs of transgender persons in the affected areas.
Meredith Talusan, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, freelance writer, and author, aims to check on the safety of transgender persons in a project currently in the running for the Matter International Reporting Fellowship, a program allowing unpublished writers to pursue a story that will “start or end conversations, that have meaning and impact, that change minds.”
If the project, named "The Badings of Haiyan", receives the most votes, Talusan will receive a $15,000 grant to write a story on the status of "badings" in areas affected by the typhoon and allow "people in the US to continue to be aware of what's happening there."
The project is an offshoot of Talusan's curiosity towards the different attitudes of Filipinos and Americans regarding their transgender brethren.
"Badings are between men and women and we're more comfortable with that I think. In the United States, there's a lot more pressure to be either a man or a woman and so there's more pressure to belong to one of those categories," she said in an email interview with GMA News Online on Saturday.
Talusan, who immigrated to the US at 15, said that the uniquely Filipino gender identity of "bading" made her feel more welcome in the Philippines as a child, moreso than she would feel if she was raised in the US.
"I feel like there's definitely more discrimination in the US... I just know that had I grown up in the US as a kid I would have been made fun of a lot more for being effeminate," she said.
"In the Philippines, people are more conservative in certain ways but are more accepting of badings, though that's just my hypothesis. That's why I want to do this story, so I can have a better sense and also communicate that to the rest of the world," she explained.
Her immediate family's support of her decision to transition also helped her become comfortable with herself, and this support extended to the Philippines, where her lola "is the first person to correct people from my childhood who call me by my old name".
Yet Talusan admits that her long stay in the US meant she knew little of the realities of being a "bading".
"I don't really have close bading friends so just being exposed to that part of Philippine culture as an adult would be really important to me," she said.
Talusan is not a journalist by trade, but her time in Harvard taught her how to write and take breathtaking photographs. It also allowed her to become more liberal and shift her interests from the sciences to art and literature. — JDS, GMA News
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