UP elects nation's first transgender head of student government

"It's a great win for human rights to have a transgender win the premier seat in the (UP) Student Council," said Clara Rita Padilla, the Executive Director of EnGendeRights, a non-governmental organization advocating gender equality. "Kung titignan ang kanyang stand, she fights against gender discrimination, corruption and hazing. This is something to be proud of because this means there's hope in Philippine society." Another transgender candidate, Pat Bringas, won a student council seat, with the second highest number of votes among all the council candidates. Bringas is an undergraduate student of Film and Audio Visual Communication.  Gays and lesbians the world over have protested discrimination and gender barriers to advancement. The two students' victory could signify that, in the Philippines at least, these barriers may be falling.   

Diño, who ran under the Alyansa party, had 3290 votes, 500 votes more than her closest opponent, independent candidate Martin Loon from the College of Law, who had 2,743 votes. In last year's student elections, Diño won a seat as a councilor with the highest number of votes.  "This was the real change we were looking for," said Benz Benedicto, former chairperson of the Ang Ladlad political party, which represents Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender (LGBT) interests. "Ibig sabihin nito tinatanggap na kami not on the basis of sexual orientation or identity but based on capability and skills." As defined on the website of UP Babaylan, a LGBT student organization, "transgender" is "an umbrella term for people whose gender identity, expression or behavior is different from those typically associated with their assigned sex at birth, including but not limited to transsexuals, cross-dressers, androgynous people, genderqueers, and gender non-conforming people." Transgender persons can choose to be referred to as either a he or a she. Diño prefers she. 

 

A BS Mathematics major who graduated magna cum laude from UP Diliman in 2011, Heart Diño is now a Master of Science student in Applied Mathematics in Finance. Diño is also an incumbent USC councilor, heading the USC Gender Committee.