An Open Letter to Trans Women, From Mela Habijan

This Women’s Month, and as we approach the International Transgender Day of Visibility, Mela inspires everyone once again with a message.

Women of the 21st Century Transcend to Break Free

 March is Women’s Month, and today’s women transcend to break free from the past. Leading this clarion call …

Embracing All Women

In the 1980s, women in the Philippines had a pivotal turn in society. Countless women joined in the movement to make the Philippines a more inclusive country among the many rallies against the administration at the time.

Celebrating and Recognizing Trans-Pinay Rights

Women’s month is a celebration of women’s success and contribution to our society. Inclusion has been a long standing issue in the movement towards equality, and for LGBTQIA+ women it is a bigger struggle to remain visible. During dictatorship in the 1980’s, the lesbian community struggled to be visible to the public due to subsumption of their rights between women’s rights that were previously heterosexual in nature and gay movement that previously regarded them as female version of homosexual men. It is already 2019 and the same struggles can be seen happening in the trans community.

Volunteer Spotlight: A New Queen on the Rise

Nicole bagged First Runner-Up at the end of the night — a feat Nicole herself considers a satisfying end to the journey of a 26-year old BPO employee who, only months ago, had one previous office pageant and a noontime show transgender queen search on her kontesera (pageant veteran) résumé.

A Trans Woman’s Risk

The HIV and AIDS epidemic has long been attached to the LGBTQI+ community since the early 1980’s. As of December 2017, the HIV/AIDS and ART Registry of the Philippines has reported that 87% of sexually transmitted cases of HIV are men having sex with men (MSM).
Globally, there is limited data on the prevalence of HIV infection among transgender people as most epidemiological surveillance systems only ask for a person’s sex at birth, making transgender women fall under the MSM category. A meta-analysis by Baral and colleagues in 2013 [4] revealed that the average HIV prevalence among trans women in several North American, Latin American, European, and Asian countries was 19.1%, significantly higher than the general population. Other studies, found that transgender persons have higher risk of HIV infection than MSM.