Bakla Ako, May Reklamo?

YouTube celebrities are now a dime a dozen. And each sector of our society has its own representations: political, music, teens, singers, bands, actors, etc. One of them is the Filipina Happy Slip. We here at Bakla Ako, May Reklamo believe that HappySlip is a good example and may probably be representative of the idiosyncrasies of Filipino (and Filipino-American) culture.

And talking about representation, many of us also know that the gay community is well-represented in YouTube (except of course for some issues on censorship). Many of us are familiar with William Sled, the fashionista gay guy (famous for his Ask A Gay Man series), who eventually landed a contract with network NBC. Of course some of us have also seen Chris Crocker, who’s now quite viral, thanks to his “Leave Britney Alone” video. And then, Read the rest of this entry »

Guess which rapper is so scared and hates TV shows with themes of homosexuality?

“And if it is, then we need to go step to Paramount, and f–king MGM, and all of these other motherf–kers that’s making all of these movies and we need to go step to MTV and Viacom, and lets talk about all these f–king shows that they have on MTV that is promoting homosexuality, that my kids can’t watch this sh-t,” he continued. “Dating shows that’s showing two guys or two girls in mid-afternoon. Let’s talk about s–t like that! If that’s not f–king up America, I don’t know what is.”

If you haven’t guessed it yet, or if you don’t have an effin clue, it’s this JaRule guy who’s now so full of himself.

Image Sources 1 2

Geez man, if he does not want his kids to turn fag on him, then the responsibility lies in his hands. He should play his responsibility as a father, to educate his children about the things they’re watching on television. And if his kids are gay, I doubt if he’s ever gonna be able to do something or anything about it.

These kids may have a pseudo-celebrity, flash-in-the-pan rapper for a father, but that doesn’t mean life will be a breeze for them. Imagine being raised by someone as disturbed as this guy…

Read more about it here: SOHH.COM

Video-sharing site YouTube is yet again in the center of a controversy.  Many people from the gay community were outraged at the censorship of a video of two boys kissing, while thousands of videos containing homophobic content are out there.

The video in question was a short clip of two boys lip-locking to show to the world the proof of their love and affection for each other.  We haven’t seen the actual video yet, but reports say that the boys, Luke and Noah,  submitted the video to remind the world that a kiss is still just a kiss.

What caused the outrage was that YouTube, the “bastion of democracy,”  allows and does not censor videos of teenagers calling gay bloggers and gay men names, to the tune of obvious irrational homophobia.

Gay activists are now fighting, not only for YouTube to have better, more rational and equal content management and editing, but also for its “mother” company, Google, to act on this issue:

“As a parent, Google should tell its swelled-head kid to play fair and just,” Francis adds about YouTube. “They should tell YouTube to be empathic and sympathetic toward others. While we applaud YouTube for publishing millions of videos 24/7, we were also distressed to note the absence of common courtesy and the lack of respect for gay teenagers and the LGBT community in YouTube’s part.

YouTube goes on to defend themselves and say that they are trying their best to be fair to everyone. And we here at Bakla Ako, May Reklamo? believe that they do try to be fair.  However, like what other members of the LGBT community worldwide, we also would like to suggest that YouTube makes a positive thing out of this incident.  We believe in YouTube’s power to influence and educate people.  Instead of censoring harmless videos like these, why don’t they start a campaign for fighting homophobia.  OR something like that.  They’re pretty much smart people, so we’re sure that they can come up with great campaigns in our quest for equality and… world peace!

News Source: Edge Boston

What went wrong? What’s up with Britney Spears and her supposed comeback?

Britney recently performed at the MTV Video Music Awards, in the hopes of getting her groove bac. Sadly though, she didn’t get anything back. She merely embarrassed herself with this half-baked number.

Uhm, enjoy?

Got her groove back did she? Here’s what we think…

Bakla would like to thank everyone who greeted him today and yesterday (his birthday is today, the 10th). We’d also like to take this opportunity to all of you who have dropped by this blog, made comments, linked up, shared stories and insights, and all other chenelyn boom-booms! This blog is turning 6 months in a few days! Whoopteedoodee!

So this is what a 25-year old feels like…

Oh and a Happy Happy Birthday (tomorrow, Sept. 11th) to Migs, the Manila Gay Guy!

It’s great to be young. And what better place to be in touch with our inner youth than the country’s premiere institution for secondary education – Philippine Science High School, known to many as Pisay.

The first run of the Bloggers Kapihan was held at Pisay and Bakla, who’s about to say goodbye to the 18 to 24 demographic, cartwheeled himself to Agham Road to attend this event. Organized by the Bloggers Kapihan Crew, this series of events aims to reach out to the general public to educate, influence and share insights on blogging. At the said run, Pisay students were treated not just with coffee, but learnings about the blogging world and the world in general.

We must say that these students for three of the country’s most influential (and must we say famous) bloggers – Bikoy, Manuel Quezon III, and Abe Olandres. We must applaud the organizers of the event for inviting such a powerhouse set of speakers. A healthy variaton of personal, political, and professional blogging was not only educating, it was entertaining as well. And as we have earlier expected, the session was not limited to just those topics. What stuck to our head after the whole shindig was MLQ3’s interesting opening statement about everything being political and how it all begins with sex. That doesn’t mean though that the only thing we are interested in is sex. It’s not like Bakla has a built-in alarm that sounds off whenever he hears the word sex or anything related to it, but that was one of the highlights of the event for him. Of course he learned a lot. And if you wanna learn those things too, then we suggest that you attend the next Bloggers Kapihan session.

Kudos to the BK Crew for a successful kick-off!

Bakla (and other members of the local blogging community also) graced the affair not only to learn from the best in the industry, meet other bloggers, and channel his inner youth. Charouth!

Read the rest of this entry »

Oh we love discounts! Wherever we go and whatever we buy, we try as much as we can to get something off – the price that is, and not our clothes. Be it in the supermarket, the palengke, the ukay-ukay store or even the neighborhood fishball vendor, we ask for discounts!

And in this age of plastics (we mean the cards and not people), many stores and establishments have issued their own versions of discount cards and membership cards. And we have tons of them too! Supermarkets, department stores and appliance stores have the SM Advantage Card, Rustan’s Card, Abenson/WalterMart Plus Card; coffee shops have the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Swirl Card and Figaro Coffee Club Card; Health shops like HBC have their own versions too; restaurants have the (soon-to-be-if-not-yet discontinued) The Bistro Group Gold Card and the Chateau 1771 Group’s Gourmand Card; Karaokes like RedBox have them; even Globe’s GenTxt is a discount card! We’re not sure if such a thing as a gay discount card exists here in the Philippines, but don’t you think that would be such a great idea?

Well, for now, we can only dream. But if you really wanna be a proud owner and user of a gay discount card, why not go to where the flavor is? No, not Marlboro country. One country has recently issued discount cards specifically targeted at gay tourists. So come, let’s show “just a little touch of star quality” in the land of hot men (next to Brazil, perhaps), the land of Evita! There, we’ll sing lines from one of our favorite songs from Evita:

Hello, Buenos Aires
Get this, just look at me dressed up, somewhere to go
We’ll put on a show

And a show we will put on indeed, thanks to Discount Cards issued to gay tourists by the city of Buenos Aires:

Read the rest of this entry »

The US federal government is proposing regulations which may eventually lead to the closing down of several adult social networking sites. They are doing this in their “efforts” to fight child pornography.  Enacted in 1998, Section 2257 or The Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988 is a federal law designed to fight child pornography.  We are one with the whole world in the fight against child pornography and this seems like a good law to protect our youngsters. This is a good cause right? Right.

The 2257 Regulations were originally designed to require producers of sexually explicit material to acquire proof of age of all their “actors” and likewise keep these on record.  (If you have adult videos like Corbin Fisher and Sean Cody, you would see these notices at the beginning of the clips.) [sample below]

However, in 2006, it was amended and was expanded to regulate the Internet and the term “secondary producers” was introduced.  Secondary producers are those who publish, reproduce or reissue explicit material, ergo adult social networking site owners and administrators:

A “secondary producer” is defined as any person who produces, assembles, manufactures, publishes, duplicates, reproduces, or reissues a book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, or other matter intended for commercial distribution that contains a visual depiction of actual sexually explicit conduct.

So how does it affect users and members of adult social networking sites (straight and gay, mind you)? The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force breaks them down into the following: Read the rest of this entry »