Gay-friendly dance clubs?? upmarket bars?? and party circuits?such commercial venues evoke the image of a gay globe?? but what happens when they are bound to a landscape of disorder?? mass poverty?? and urban decay? Vividly describing this world of contradictions through the prism of twenty-first-century Manila?? Under Bright Lights challenges popular interpretations of the ??third world queer?? as a necessarily radical figure.

Drawing on ethnographic research?? Bobby Benedicto paints a remarkably counterintuitive portrait of gay spaces in postcolonial cities. He argues