Bahaghari Center for SOGIE Research, Education and Advocacy, Inc. (Bahaghari Center) headed to Davao City to hear the perspectives of Deaf LGBTQIA+ people on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) outside of Metro Manila.
“For far too long, when representations of minority sectors are sought, the minorities within minority communities – like LGBTQIA+ Filipinos who happen to be also Deaf, and who happen to be also from outside the country’s capital – continue to be excluded,” said Mx Disney Aguila, co-executive director of Bahaghari Center.
All approaches, therefore, need to be “more inclusive”, Aguila added. “And for us, this means reaching out to these minoritized people to make sure we also capture what they have to say.”
This effort is part of the #SavingHands initiative of Bahaghari Center, which eyes to:
- Surface the SRHR issues of Deaf LGBTQIA+ Filipinos; and
- Make them an integral part in solution identification.
“Issues of mainstream populations also affect those in minority sectors,” said Aaron Moises C. Bonete, o-executive director of Bahaghari Center. The impacts on these sectors are, in fact, worse “because they are at the fringes of the fringes. As such, inclusion in mainstream responses should be pushed. We see them, we hear them; and we should make others see and hear them, too.”
The discussions with Deaf LGBTQIA+ Filipinos were facilitated by Michael David dela Cruz Tan, MDC, founder of Bahaghari Center and editor in chief of Outrage Magazine, the only publication exclusively for the LGBTQIA+ community in the Philippines.
#SavingHands is supported by Mujer-LGBT Organization.
