A Collision of Masculinities: Men,Modernity and Urban Transportation in American-Colonial Manila

Abstract:

Early twentieth-century Manila saw the motorisation of its urban transport system. This was a significant transformation not only because of the technological changes it brought about but more importantly because of its role in shaping the highly gendered discourse of colonial modernity. Motorised vehicles, like the streetcar and the automobile, were trumpeted as masculine and modern machines by America’s civilising mission. This colonial discourse was continuously shaped and subverted by a collision of masculinities coming from different directions. This essay will focus on four different male groups in an effort to understand how transport motorisation influenced their sense of masculinity. White American colonisers imagined themselves as modern men destined to bring civilisation to the colony through technology. The native elites used the coloniser as their model by appropriating the symbols of masculine modernity. While the male workers of the modern transport sector gained knowledge of and access to the domains of those in power, those in the traditional sector became targets of vilification by the native and colonial elites. Instead of a duel between two sets of masculinity (coloniser vs. colonised) what emerged was a complex set of relationships influenced by the socioeconomic differences that separated these four groups.