Jonathan Corpus Ong School of Massachusetts Amherst

July 11, 2017

“Before Haiyan, all we’d on Grindr was mehhhh – 4 or 5 someone. After Haiyan, boom – light boys!”

Jericho*, 28, finds it hard to remember a lot of a social field in Tacloban before Typhoon Haiyan. a senior administrator at various Filipino city’s most valuable condos, he recounts a schedule that contains going to the gymnasium every morning and taking walks home along empty roadway in the evening in an urban area where “everyone realizes people.”

Out over his or her neighbors but closeted of working, however avoid to Cebu or Manila to celebration at gay organizations, in which his babyface qualities with gym-buff arms had gotten him attention. Jericho can’t promote the pageant-fever or Imelda-nostalgia of some other gay Taclobanons, several of whom proudly recite the factoid that original basic dame Imelda Marcos would be winner inside town pageant not long ago. Jericho’s main disappointment got that their hook-up app preference – Grindr – placed identifying the exact same five familiar torsos, which couldn’t actually rely with his thoughts as proper gay market.

Typhoon Haiyan, which struck Tacloban frustrating in December 2013, ended up being clearly a problem, nonetheless it has also been an excellent gust of change, definitely not smallest in Jericho’s personal lifetime. (more…)