“We’re All Human, Right?”: Social Representations of LGBT+ in Senate Hearings on the Sogie Equality Bill in the Philippines

Date of Award

8-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Social Psychology

First Advisor

Mira Alexis P. Ofreneo, PhD

Abstract

Discussions regarding the proposal of an anti-LGBT+ discrimination legislation in the Philippines, referred to as the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) Equality Bill, was met with controversy during senate hearings in 2019. These discussions are the latest in a twenty-year-long debate on this proposed bill in a country both referred to as a “gay-friendly nation” and “the last bastion of conservative Catholicism in Asia”. Prior studies have meticulously documented how various iterations of the bill have been constructed in these legislative hearings and in news media coverage. These studies, however, have not been able to highlight how LGBT+ is simultaneously constructed in these discussions. In order to highlight this, the current study uses Social Representations Theory (SRT) to answer the question: How is LGBT+ socially represented in the 2019 Senate Hearings of the SOGIE Equality Bill? The results of this study show how Pro-SOGIE Equality Bill speakers focused on representing LGBT+ as Human, validating LGBT+ identities and including them within broader categories of being “human”. Meanwhile, Anti-SOGIE Equality Bill speakers represented LGBT+ as Wrong, questioning the basis of LGBT+ identities and re-presenting these to fit their Conservative Christian-leaning social worlds. The practices embedded in these social representations and the ramifications of these – particularly in terms of the humanization or dehumanization of LGBT+ individuals in Philippine Society – are discussed further in the paper.

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