Kapwa as Queer Inclusion

Abstract

Kapwa is a core Filipino value and refers to a sense of shared identity, being-with-others, an inner self shared with others. It is a value that Filipinos are proud to embody as it signifies unity and supports collectivist ways of being. In this article, I problematise kapwa in relation to the queer other in the Filipino family and in community life. I consider how social strategies of silence, erasure and invisibility are used as ways of relating to the Filipinx queer other, which may instead serve to undermine the lived practice of kapwa. In doing so, this article will also explore the influence of Spanish Catholic colonisation on Filipinos’ core values, such as in Filipino beliefs about queerness, leading to a syncretisation of precolonial kapwa with Catholic sociocultural doxa. I will then engage with precolonial Filipino understandings of queerness, Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Indigenous Filipino psychology), as I attempt to deconstruct erasure-as-kapwa as a primary way of dealing with the Filipinx queer other. Through an autoethnographic approach, which will include creative written vignettes interspersed with scholarly discussion, this article seeks to be a hopeful reinscription of kapwa to include queer Filipinx people in the shared self of a Filipino family and community.