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Art Sta. Ana created quite a buzz when his first person narrative, “I’m dating a transgender,” was published in Manila Bulletin‘s Jun 7 issue.
In his essay, Sta. Ana talks about how he fell in love with Trixie Maristela, a transgender woman who also happens to be the most recent winner of Eat Bulaga’s “Super Sireyna” and this year’s Miss Gay Manila pageant.
Sta. Ana related that he met Maristela six years ago and he had known that she was transgender right from the start. He wrote: “She never hid the fact that she was a transwoman. Why would she? She was smart, strong, independent, beautiful. I still couldn’t believe she was a transgender. I hadn’t been really exposed to women like her, and whatever I knew about transwomen, I got from sensationalized television segments that highlighted the fact that they were born male. The more we talked on the phone and texted and sent emoticons on Yahoo Messenger, the more I saw that she was nothing but a woman, and I found myself falling for her.”
Not that Sta. Ana didn’t experience any conflict about his feelings. He recalled, “But I was straight, right? I couldn’t be with her. What would my family and friends say, I thought to myself. I didn’t want to end up like those guys that we teased back in school for being different and feminine. I didn’t want to end up being called gay. After a while though, it ceased to matter. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to see her often and spend time with her, hold her hand and kiss her. I fell in love with a transwoman, and what the world would say didn’t matter. As luck would have it, she fell in love with me, too. So what if they started calling me gay? I knew I was straight and that she was all woman to me. What’s important is what we believe in.”
Sta. Ana related that he and Maristela knew what they were in for. “But should it have mattered? Shouldn’t it have been about two people in love and not about gender biases? It did matter, because we grew up in a society where gender discrimination is more powerful than love. More than anything though, I wasn’t ready to hear hurtful, bigoted, ignorant insults hurled at her. People were going to say that she was still a man even though she never really was. She knew at a very young age that she was a woman, and she grew up to be one, but I felt people were not going to see that. And as easy as it was for Trixie to just walk away, she loved me that much to stay and not be the proud transwoman that she was. We wanted to prove first that we could establish ourselves financially before letting people know. Would there ever be a right time, though?,” he related.
As it turns out, Sta. Ana and Maristela chose not to disclose that the latter was transgender to everyone just yet.
He went on to disclose, “Only when Trixie came out on television for Super Sireyna did my family and friends find out. They had questions, they had comments. Most of them were positive, but not all. It came to a point where she asked if I just wanted to leave her, and I told her the same thing I did a few years back: ‘I love you. You mean the world to me and I am dedicating my life to you and our future family. I want to get married to you and adopt and raise children with you. I want to hold your hand before I breathe my last breath. It’s you and me against the world, and that will never change.'”
Sta. Ana has done a brave thing by writing about his significant other. But they both know that there are many people who still have a long way to go when it comes to accepting those who don’t fall into the usual boxes.
Photo: Art Sta. Ana (via Manila Bulletin)
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