JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

There’s a fascinating piece in The Atlantic that involves Filipino OFWs in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom in the Closet by Nadya Labi (a Filipino-Moroccan writer based in New York) is about being gay in Saudi Arabia, where sodomy is punishable by death but gay life flourishes anyway. Several Filipinos are quoted in the story. Unfortunately the article is available online to subscribers only. Some excepts:
“Marcos, a 41-year-old from the Philippines, was arrested in 1996 for attending a party featuring a drag show. He spent nine months in prison, where he got 200 lashes, before being deported. Still, he opted to return; he loves his work in fashion, which pays decently, and the social opportunities are an added bonus. “Guys romp around and parade in front of you,” he told me. “They will seduce you. It’s up to you how many you want, every day.””
“When I asked Jamie, the Filipino who says he gets followed down the street by
Saudi men, whether he was gay, he answered, with a high giggle, “Obviously!” But he has paid a price for his flamboyant manner. He used to wear his thick black hair down to his shoulders, concealing it with a baseball cap in public, until recently, when he ran into a man in a shortened thawb at a coffee shop. The mutawwa asked for his work permit. Even though he produced one, Jamie was shoved into an SUV and driven to a police station.
““Are you gay?” a police officer asked after pulling off Jamie’s cap and seeing his long hair. “Of course not,” Jamie said. He challenged the cop to find a violation, and the officer confirmed the mutawwa’s report that Jamie was wearing makeup, dressing like a woman, and flirting. After spending a night in jail, Jamie was taken to mutawwa’in headquarters in Jeddah, and a mutawwa interrogated him again. When he tried to defend himself, the mutawwa asked him to walk, and Jamie strode across the room in what he considered a manly fashion. He was eventually allowed to call his boss, who secured his release. Jamie cut his hair— not out of fear, he says, but because he didn’t want to bother his boss a second time.”