Missionary position: The grammar of Philippine colonial sexualities as a locus of translation

Abstract

In this paper, I shall examine how Spanish missionaries during the colonial period described the sexual mores of early Filipinos in missionary grammars and vocabularies, and how such description should also be regarded as a locus of translation. Since these missionaries wrote the first systematic analyses of the languages of the archipelago to aid their work of evangelizing early Filipinos, it is in their writings that sexualities were first interrogated through the lens of a colonial religion and polity. By looking into the lexicographical approaches for defining sex-related terms in a Tagalog missionary dictionary, and the authorial choices in incorporating sexualities in two bilingual confession guides, I shall argue that proselytization served as an important translational constraint that created a space where Filipino sexualities were exoticized, and where a particular vision of colonial polity was articulated from a privileged position of colonial rule.