PRIDE
BITTERSWEET OF SEXUAL MINORITIESDespite the gray sky and light rain, rainbows and joy took over the Hong Kong island on Nov. 17, the 10th Hong Kong Pride Parade. This is the sixth year since the parade committee decided to use rainbow colour as a theme, and this year comes to the end of the rainbow spectrum, purple. Participants wearing purple and other colorful outfits were holding rainbow flags, singing and cheering all the way to the end point in Central.
About 12,000 people joined in this year’s parade, an official from the parade committee said at the ending point. This is exactly to the expectation of the organizer before the parade, which sets a new record in the event’s history. The number of participants had increased from 1,000 in the first year to more than 10000 last year, as stated in a report from the parade committee.
According to a survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong last year, the support rate of legal protection for LGBTs had reached a new climax.
About 12,000 people joined in this year’s parade, an official from the parade committee said at the ending point. This is exactly to the expectation of the organizer before the parade, which sets a new record in the event’s history. The number of participants had increased from 1,000 in the first year to more than 10000 last year, as stated in a report from the parade committee.
According to a survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong last year, the support rate of legal protection for LGBTs had reached a new climax.
The theme for this year was “Call for the Law, Equality for All.” This is to demand the legal protection for LGBT equal rights, parade organizer Francis Tang said.
Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong student activist who serves as secretary-general of the pro-democracy party Demosisto, also joined the march in a purple jacket, and a logo “love wins” on his T-shirt. “It is just the time for us to show how we ask for the process of legislation and urge the government to speak out to be aware of the discrimination problem.” Wong said.
However, Hong Kong currently does not have any law against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Under Hong Kong’s Marriage Reform Ordinance, marriage is the voluntary reunion for life of “one man with one woman”.
Meet Alice Ho, a 31-year-old transgender woman.
Alice Ho has been longing to become a girl since she was only 4. She said that she had been always restraining my feminine performance since she was young. She didn’t want to encounter discriminations and misunderstanding in the society so she used to act as what a male supposed to be. However, being a male is only her external appearance, Ho wants to be a 100 percent female from the bottom of her heart.
Soon after she came out of the closet in 2015 and started to dress up as a female openly, she was expelled by the church she used to go to. But, she is still lucky enough to have parents allowing her to do things that she really likes, even though they are still opposed to her transexual surgery coming up in December. Also, she gets her job remained in the same company, but she is asked to use either the men’s room or the disabled one instead of ladies’ room.
Want to know more about Alice and transgender people? Just click and enjoy the video!
Many of transgender people in Hong Kong don’t have right to use a toilet that fits their own gender identity, which makes them still feel great discrimination, a transgender woman said on Saturday. Hong Kong Pride Parade held on Saturday is the 10th since 2008, and one of the main topics this year is to call for building gender-friendly facilities such as all gender toilets and changing rooms.
There are currently 787 public toilets in Hong Kong operated by government, 353 out of which are accessible and gender-neutral toilets, according to Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. Although there is still no official data that shows the exact number of transgender people in Hong Kong, statistics from Hong Kong Food and Health Bureau show that 495 people had been treated as gender identity disorder in local hospitals from 2010 to 2015.
“There are far more transgender people than the official number because many of us, like me, don’t go to see a doctor,” said Helen Lau, a transgender woman who has not come out yet. Lau said she usually goes to the men’s room despite dressing up as a female, but once a man came into the toilet and checked the sign again after seeing her inside, which made her feel embarrassed. “I really want Hong Kong to build more gender-neutral toilets because I don’t want to go to neither men’s rooms nor disabled ones,” she added.
Gender friendly facilities can not only serve the transgender group, but also benefit fathers with daughter and mothers taking care of sons, said Ching Tsang from a LGBT group.
The Covenant of Rainbow organized the rainbow inclusive worship for the first time before the start of Hong Kong Pride Parade at 3 p.m. 17 December. Members of Covenant Rainbow song the hymns together with smiles on their faces at the main stage to celebrate their identities as sexual minorities and also Christians.
This is a huge day for them and this day did not come easily.
Bella Chan
Bella Chan, the fourth from the right on the stage, a Latin dance teacher and a pansexual woman, studied in a mission school in Hong Kong that teachers kept telling her “be homosexual is a wrong thing” and “you have to change.” Bella was bullied by her schoolmates and was ignored by some of her teachers who refused to have any communication with her unless it’s necessary, because of her sexual identities. She was depressed and struggled about it, but she finally found a place that “everyone is celebrating their identities.”
Pastor Joe Pang
BMCC, founded 26 years ago in Hong Kong, is an LGBTQ-friendly Church. There are more than 1,459 Christian Church in Hong Kong, according to the open data of religious from the Hong Kong Government. However, no more than 10 churches Pastor Joe, the chief pastor of BMCC can name who welcome sexual minorities publicly. For a decade, Pastor Joe is an eloquent activist fighting for LGBT rights all over the South East Asian Countries, as he believes “God asks Christians to fight for the inequality in any formats on earth.”
Pink Dot
"Supporting the freedom to love"The LGBTQ community and more people celebrated the fifth year of Pink Dot on the 24th of October this year at the West Kowloon Art Park. Although the title of the event suggests pink was the major colour, the entity of it was colourful.
It was a carnival that took place throughout the day as people kept coming with their family, friends, pets or by themselves to celebrate love and equality for all regardless of their sexual orientation. The Sunday was like a picnic where people brought their mats and hats to take part in the fifth anniversary of the pink dot.
Moreover, to represent that everyone was equal, regardless of their gender, the toilets at the events did not have any gender labels to it. Anyone could use any of it.
According to a banner in the event, each colour of the rainbow flag has a meaning to it. Violet represents life, blue represents serenity, green represents nature, yellow represents sunlight, orange represents healing and red represents life. Likewise, the event was not only filled with these colours but these qualities too.
The scorching heat of the sun did not bother anyone.The event was given a musical quality to it by the ‘Busking for love’, ‘Pink stage’ with drag performances, the chorus and the DJ.
Pink Dot is an LGBTQ event that originated first in Singapore at the year 2009. The purpose of the event is to emphasise on the line, “Respect diversities, support equal opportunities.”
According to the official website of Singapore’s pink dot, the colour pink is a representation of the mix of the two colours of their national flag. They describe the movement as “supporting the freedom to love.”
During the event in Hong Kong this year one of the ambassadors of the event from Singapore showed his gratitude through his short speech where he said, “Thank you so much for believing in the colour pink.”