Kolboy: Denial, Disgust, and the Production of Value in Male Sex Work in the Philippines

Male sex workers (kolboy) in the Philippines owe their desirability to their being lalaki, an identity in which maleness, masculinity, and heterosexuality are inalienable from each other.

Although the kolboy have sex with bakla-the identity almost always mistranslated as "the homosexual" the kolboy remain lalaki; they stay "masculine" and

"heterosexual." The kolboy has his value in his ability to overcome his "natural" revulsion at "homosexual" sex.

This book explores the traditional terms of the commerce in sex in this locality as modern notions of sex, gender, and sexuality brought on by intensified globalization impact them. Based on fieldwork among kolboy, Kolboy sketches intimate portraits of individuals engaged in the trade, their interactions with each other and their clientele. Simultaneously, it reflects back on the anthropological enterprise of capturing otherness by manifesting the evolutionary trope that underlies it and other instruments of modernity.

Updating a manuscript completed at the beginning of the millennium, this book has elongated its perspective to see enduring features of local culture through the dramatic changes in global attitudes and practices toward homosexuality of the past two decades.

Published in 2021 by University of the Philippines Press

208 pages / Paperback