I suddenly remembered M, a high school classmate in Kidapawan City. Particularly, I remembered how – when we were still in our first year – he used to “tease” me a lot. He’d pretend kiss me, or asked others to hold my hands so he could tickle me, or (yes, yes… you can cry harassment) basically baited me with his genitalia. I came from an all-girls’ school that offered co-ed elementary schooling, before moving to an all-boys’ school for high school, so… I remembered just crying.
The “teasing” (or bullying, to be more apt) continued for a while. Then it just stopped. But not because M suddenly grew a heart; instead, it was supposedly because he was “told” to behave. Allegedly by an alleged lover.
The alleged lover was older gay man in his 20s or 30s (let’s call him R). He was a newbie in Kidapawan then, but was – at that time – considered among the “biggest” hairstylists in the municipality (before Kidapawan became a city). As a bigwig in the place’s salon industry, he supposedly could have any man (or boy, for that matter) he wanted. And he chose M.
We were 14 then. The sexual age of consent at that time (before Republic Act No. 11648 was signed into law in 2022) was 12 (now 16). But it still felt improper.
If I am remembering things clearly (and annoyed I may have been with M’s actions towards me), even then I noted that too many of the people I know seemed to have just “accepted” it. M’s mom was besties with the gay guy (or so it seemed, at least); we used to see them together when they attended events. Our classmates, particularly M’s tropa, seemed to applaud him: “May nag-aalaga!”, “Sagot na needs mo”, and so on. And other older gay guys I knew then (working in beauty parlors in the public market) seemed to envy R for getting himself someone so young, and that hopefully they’d be as “lucky”.
It was the latter that surfaced in my head when I started seeing Facebook GCs that allow minors to market, to “sell” themselves to men who have sex with men or MSM (including gay and bisexual men). The approaches vary, with the young luring older MSM through kaldag videos; to selling vidjakol contents in FB, Twitter/X, Telegram or Viber; to pimping themselves and/or their friends (of the same age as them) for physical sexual contact (not just online sex work).
Yung response is what gets me: Too many gay and bisexual men actually openly “buy” them. And this is even if they know these are minors. We’re not talking of intergenerational relationships involving those of legal age; instead, we’re talking about “baby boys”. Too many MSM lust after “bhebhe boys”. And too little call out those who do.
This may be hard to swallow, but yung pagka-salot, nakikita rin sa LGTQIA+ community. Aminin na natin. And let’s start being pro-active in dealing with this.
I do not know where M is now. I haven’t heard anything about R, too. But I know many like them. And so do many in the LGBTQIA+ community. We have heard of “DOTA boys”, or boys/young men who engage in sexual acts with older MSM so they can earn money that they then use to play games (thus, DOTA). We’ve heard of “tsupit (tsupa, libre gupit) boys”, or boys/young men who engage in sexual acts with older MSM (usually working in beauty parlors) so they can get free haircut… plus extra money.
If you have a friend, or even if you just came across someone na ganito, pagsabihan mo. Kung kaya mo, ireklamo mo; may VAWC sa select barangay and police stations. Because abuse should be stopped, period. Including those committed by LGBTQIA+ people.
