Translational Mythologies: Christianity and Gender (and Queerness) in the Philippines

Abstract

As regulatory discourses that Filipinos have needed to assimilate across the post/colonial centuries, Christianity and heteronormativity are mythologies that lend themselves to reinterpretation and “translation.” This article presents the argument that contemporary Filipino creatives who are fond of doing mythopoeias—retellings or adaptations of mythological narratives—and are seeking interesting material to work with may look to how the beliefs and practices of Catholicism and heteronormativity have been resignified and transformed in the devotional and gendered lives of contemporary Filipinos. in the ritual enactments of their everyday lives, the Filipino folk Catholic and the bakla, tibo, and other Filipino “queers” may be seen to be “repurposing” and/or translating the stories of Christianity and gender into their own mythopoetic performances, which Filipino creatives may not need to imaginatively tinker with or retell but may indeed simply choose to document or describe.