This presentation is part of an on-going study. It preliminarily interrogates the ironic disregard among transgender scholars, Austronesian linguists, and Asianists over the striking linguistic and cultural affinities between the Philippine binabae and her parallels, such as Samoan fa‘afafine, in the Pacific. I argue that the Philippine archival materials on binabae can potentially bridge transgender embodiments in Austronesian-speaking communities, not only within Southeast Asia, but more so with the rest of Asia. That is, despite their cultural incongruities, the binabae intimates a yet under-examined connection between the oft-separated Asian and Pacific trans-ness; thus, emphasizing their potentially “shared history.” Divided into three parts, the first two sections focus on the Philippine archive and Austronesian linguistic data; particularly interesting is the yet-unexamined archival finding, containing a seemly accidental Catholic imprimatur defining binabae as “turned into woman by Jesus.” Ultimately, the presentation addresses how Asian transgenders and queers both parallel with and differ from – but in either way enrich – the binabae and the fa‘afafine et al. of the Pacific
