Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on identities as corporeal, with bodies being fixed in space and time through race, gender and class even whilst whiteness, intimate connections with whiteness, and being mixed race, can allow for movement across these highly socially regulated boundaries. It draws on Sara Ahmed’s elaboration of the phenomenology of whiteness. The book explores how the extension or limiting of ‘reach’ afforded by whiteness as a form of cultural capital shaped the experiences of a racially diverse sample of 50 transmasculine people who had been pregnant. It focuses on the case of Metropolitan (Metro) Manila, the Philippine capital that has served as a key site for the country’s long colonial history of racial tensions between Filipinos and Westerners.