Where feminine power and trans-inclusiveness go hand-in-hand
TERFness isn’t a cultural universal. Learn from the pre-colonial Philippines.
People in the pre-colonial Philippines enjoyed much greater gender equality compared to people in contemporaneous Western European societies. Women in the Philippines held chieftainships, owned property and had a right to divorce.[1] (Divorce was legalized in Spain for the first time only in 1932.[2]) Women engaged in trade and food production.[3] They dominated the babaylan class of spiritual workers, serving as healers and religious leaders.[4]
Women founded towns and co-ruled with their husbands in pre-colonial Pampanga society.[5] They also valued their transfemme offspring. In Gender in the Precolonial Philippines, historian Kirby Araullo says, "The binabayi[i] were treasured apprentices to their mothers in the matriarchal Kapampangan society. So back then, it was considered lucky to have a child who was binabayi."
Is it a coincidence that a society where women's leadership is normalized also values transfemmes? Phil of The Freaky Filipino YouTube channel does not think so. In Why women and the transwomen have power in the Philippines | “ The Babaylan”, Phil links both the prominence of women leaders in the modern Philippines AND the visibility of queer and trans people in everyday life[ii] to the same precolonial tradition of religious power being concentrated in the hands of those who embody femininity ("There is no spirituality without femininity").
Babaylan didn't necessarily have to be ciswomen. They included AMAB transfeminine individuals.[6] Some of these transfemme religious leaders played key roles in revolts against Spanish rule.
Although the social status of women and gender-nonconforming people came under attack during the Spanish colonial era, Filipino women, both cis and trans, have been reclaiming their power. The Philippines had 2 ciswomen presidents so far - which is more than what some supposedly 'feminist' Western countries have seen - and one trans congresswoman Geraldine Roman elected in 2016 and still serving.
Sources
[1] Aguja, Hilton J. “The Filipino Woman: A Gendered History.” The Mindanao Forum Volume XXVI, no. 1 (June 2013): 49. https://ejournals.ph/article.php?id=7122.
[2] 25 February 1932: Divorce becomes legal for the first time in Spain | Sur in English
[3] The Role of Women in Philippine Society: Past and Present
[4] Villariba, Marianita. “Babaylan Women as Guide to a Life of Justice and Peace.” One on One No.2 (2006), 55. https://www.isiswomen.org/downloads/wia/wia-2006-2/02wia06_06GirlieA.pdf
[5] Why Women Rule Pampanga — Positively Filipino | Online Magazine for Filipinos in the Diaspora
[6] Quintos, Jay. “A Glimpse Into the Asog Experience: A Historical Study on the Homosexual Experience in the Philippines.” Plaridel Vol. 9, No. 2 (August 2012), 158-159.
https://www.plarideljournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2012-02-Quintos_english.pdf
Notes
[i] Binabayi were assigned-male-at-birth people who took on female attire, mannerisms and occupations. (Quintos, Jay. “A Glimpse Into the Asog Experience: A Historical Study on the Homosexual Experience in the Philippines.” Plaridel Vol. 9, No. 2 (August 2012).
https://www.plarideljournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2012-02-Quintos_english.pdf)
[ii] In France Villarta’s TED Talk, The gender-fluid history of the Philippines, he describes his childhood in a working-class community in the Southern Philippines, where families headed by trans folks were accepted as a normal part of the social landscape.