Later, I learned that many people problematically mistranslate bakla to “gay” in English.

But on returning to Australia, I told all my friends about Norman and they scoffed – the early seed of masculinity training at play – and when I asked my parents what the word meant, my mum replied, “it just means … bakla”. He wasn’t an outsider he was part of the family – my family – and being an eight-year-old who liked to sing karaoke and play dress-up, I didn’t give it a second thought. His father affectionately called him malambut (Tagalog for “soft”) his siblings called him bading, but he told me he was bakla. He had shoulder-length hair, wore lipstick and eyeliner, and would walk around in heels. When I was eight years old, on my first and only trip to the Philippines, I met my older cousin Norman. Even today, many bakla in the Philippines retain high status as entertainers and media personalities. Many early reports from Spanish colonising parties referenced the mystical entities that were “more man than man, and more woman than woman”.

The bakla were renowned as community leaders, seen as the traditional rulers who transcended the duality between man and woman. Vonne Patiag: ‘Tagalog does not categorise people with limited gendered pronouns, and English can be constricting.’ Photograph: Christina Mishell/All About Women