Burdened by a lack of security in the real world, many queer individuals seek solace online. Here, they find Alter Twitter—an online community of anonymous users utilizing their accounts to sexually and socially interact with others.

EXPLICIT SEXUAL expression, considered taboo and dirty, is not openly showcased in Philippine society. Discussing sex and desire is hardly ever acceptable, so these topics are all talked about in whispers and secret, hard-to-reach places instead.

People often explore their erotic pleasures online, indulging their fantasies and fueling others’ by adopting a new persona on Twitter through an “alter” account. Although based on a simple premise, millions of these accounts then serve to free their users from their repressive realities. The alter community remains open for heteronormative individuals to embody their sexual needs, too, but this space is often the most liberating for LGBTQ+ members.

Reality through bruised eyes

Discovering Alter Twitter is often a result of simple curiosity. “[P]eople don’t get into the community instantly. You find out about it through your main account and then you get exposed [to the community],” Divina*, a bisexual transwoman, explains.

The interest and appeal of the alter community often stem from repressed sexual urges felt in real life. Divina describes the upsetting reality of sexual expression in the Philippines, “[As] a Christian society, male sexuality is celebrated. Their body count is bragged about, but women are defined by their hymen.”

However, Divina adds that erotic repression is worse for queer people. “[Queer sexual expression is] more condemned because they are performing. They are showing it to the world,” Divina continues. In this sense, there is no privacy for queer people. Since their erotic identities are externally influenced, it oftentimes becomes the case that religious institutions enforce their own conservative overtones to these discussions on sexuality and decree any hint of LGBTQ+ eroticism monstrous. At the end, queerness is only tolerated as long as it is perceptually asexual.

Nevertheless, reality is not wholly bad for Divina. She describes herself as feminine, flamboyant, visible, and liberated. She is not blind to the Philippines’ increasing acceptance of her community, with more people moving away from conservative tradition and discussing queer culture. With drag culture’s entry into mainstream media—through shows like Drag Race Philippines, the upcoming Drag Den Philippines, and live performances—there is an expanding interest and enjoyment of queer culture like never before.

However, she still feels the palpable public distaste for queer sexuality beyond the glitz and glamour of these performances. “At its core, the Philippines is still… very misogynistic and bigoted,” she explains.

Even if sex- and gender-motivated violence against the LGBTQ+ community is not front-page, it remains an ever-present danger. Openly displaying queer sexuality in a conservative nation like the Philippines places these marginalized people at risk of real harm simply by parading their identities in the real world. The physical spaces are where they are most prone to becoming victims of bigoted brutality. Worse, there are still no laws in place to protect the safety of the community since the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression Equality Bill failed to pass through Congress in 2019.

A space to be

Faced with everyday discrimination, the LGBTQ+ community has resorted to creating their own safe space by utilizing cyberspace and making what is now known as Alter Twitter. The personas that the community members establish here are often bolder than their real-life selves. In their newfound spaces, they meet new people, upload adult content, and consume it.

However, Alter Twitter is not purely about sex. “[It] is not really just a pornographic community, it’s [also] a queer community,” Divina shares.

Literature on Alter twitter explains that communicating with another person as alters is a painstaking process because of the distrust inherent to anonymity. To resolve this issue, the first step to creating relationships in the alter world is by slowly building up trust and mutual understanding between communicating users. Once rapport is established, they then exchange personal information such as phone numbers or Facebook Messenger names. Thus, while these relationship dynamic is based on cybersex or friendship, the connection sometimes moves into the real world for people to become real friends or engage in casual sex.

Nonetheless, these connections are still restricted since some users create alter accounts to communicate their sexual expression, desires, and interests in a safe, separate space instead of doing it in real life. Divina says it is an unspoken rule to maintain this duality because it is uncomfortable to embody queer sexuality in the real world. Ultimarely, separation is vital to ensuring personal and community safety—being linked to queer eroticism can lead to harm.

Additionally, allowing anyone to consume and create sexual content is freeing but open to exploitation. Divina herself first entered the community at the age of 17. Thankfully, she was cautious and suspicious as she navigated the new alter universe. “I was not interacting with anyone because people had tendencies to be manipulative… I just consumed the content,” she explains.

Divina further elaborates, “The liberated community… can be a nest for grooming, child pornography, just in general pedophilia crimes.”

She also laments that some users are financially struggling students funding their studies by selling self-made sexual content. Thus, a difficult question for the alter community emerges: How do you regulate that which is meant to be unregulated?

Nowhere to go but here

Alter Twitter may be flawed, but it is still LGBTQ+ members’ platform for sexual expression. Queer individuals cling to Alter Twitter as there are few other avenues where they can express themselves sexually without being scrutinized or scorned. Although it is equally stigmatizing, it is more accepting and open than reality, where they are constantly afraid of being hurt, insulted, or killed.

The duality of being an alter and normal person emerges out of necessity—a product of repression. Whether poverty or gender discrimination, the members of the alter community are victims of suffocating inequalities and bigotry in the real world. No space, whether it is in the online or offline world, allows them to be a whole being. Thus, they settle for dividing themselves into varying personas in equally stigmatizing spaces.

*Editor’s Note: The interviewee’s name has been changed at her request to protect her identity and privacy.