Ferdinand M. Lopez

Ferdinand M. Lopez (she, her, siya) is a PhD candidate at the Women and Gender Studies Institute with a collaborative specialization in Sexual Diversity Studies. Her dissertation “Lamyerda as Tropical Flirtation: Navigating Tondo and Its Queer Archipelago,” offers a nuanced understanding of how sexually marginalized communities in the Philippine Global South negotiate and resist oppressive heteronormative cultures. In the 70s, the bakla (Filipinx queer) recuperated lamyerda (fuck, shit, hell) from its colonial mooring and deployed it to denote cruising and the multiple ways in which queer walking, meandering, and having fun defies normative institutions of power. Rather than being considered apolitical, lamyerda, with its multiple significations, serves as a repository for acts of refusal, subversion, and resistance in Manila’s biggest urban slum, Tondo, during the dictatorial regime of Blood, Beauty, and Brutality.