“LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people”
Since I was young, I had never heard of the LGBT community, but I had been enlightened about LGBT 2 years ago. I’ve made so many friends who are a part of this community and I want to spread the knowledge about LGBT to the younger generations, including people who don’t know what LGBT is. Currently, it’s pride month and everyone is doing their best to support and show their true selves in front of other people without being afraid of judgment. But this is a whole different situation in China. They’ve gone to the point of censoring LGBT content on social media platforms, mistreating people who wear rainbow badges or waving rainbow flags, even imprisoning novelists who have written novels about LGBT. They don’t allow their citizens to be their true selves nor learn about the world around them because of the fear and criticism that they’ve created to pressure everyone to fit what they call ”the norm ” of their society.
First of all, I would like to discuss the topic of censorship of LGBT content. During April, Weibo had been censoring posts related to anything LGBT. For example, usernames with the rainbow emoji were banned and any clothes or merchandise that had included a rainbow had suddenly disappeared from the web. These are just the first signs of their opposition against LGBT. Imagine what it would be like in a few years because censorship this year would be stricter and even same-sex marriages are illegal. An LGBT activist said, ’ If they can’t talk about these topics because it’s a sensitive issue, the public doesn’t have a chance to understand the LGBT community and would simply frown upon it which creates more discrimination and injustice for the community.’ If this continues, things will only get worse, and soon enough, everyone won’t be allowed their right of free speech. This way of living also keeps people in their own little world, causing them to have a negative view of people with different interests, while the rest of the world is slowly warming up towards LGBT. I think everyone has the right to know about the things around them instead of letting the government nitpick what they should or shouldn’t know about and keep them inside a bubble. Everyone should have the right to speak their minds without being censored or silenced.
Secondly, there’s an issue about people getting beat up because they wore rainbow badges or waved rainbow flags. An example of this would be during May in Beijing, China. There were two women who wanted to enjoy their weekend in the art zone and decided to take part of ’ International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. ’ Both women received rainbow badges from the organizer and put them on. The problem didn’t happen until the women weren’t allowed to enter the art zone by security guards, They got into a heated argument, and then one security guard suddenly punched the woman’s face repeatedly until she fell to the ground while the other woman got surrounded and kicked repeatedly by five other uniformed guards within the area. After getting some medical treatment one of the women stated that she had to get stitches in her mouth due to this incident. The security guards surprisingly weren’t charged or accused of anything because their management team said that they ”had the right to stop illegal activity and by wearing a rainbow badge it was illegal to them. In addition, homosexuals had a distorted sexual orientation so it was the only action the guards could do”. These incidents happened not because of the state or government this time, but because of an individual’s negative reaction to the rainbow flags. This clearly shows the extreme, ill-informed social attitudes about sexuality in Chinese society. I feel shocked that people would stoop down that low to shame other people just because of their sexuality or even if had the right mind to hurt others. Don’t people have any some sense of moral value?
Finally, I would like to discuss about boy’s love novelist, Tianyi, who got a longer sentence than most sexual assault cases. Boy’s love is a popular genre of novels that are mostly based on relationships between men and how they discover their sexuality. Due to writing her book, she was charged 10 years of prison for profiting from selling an ”obscene” boy’s love novel. Many people wondered and couldn’t understand how she had a heavier sentence than a case dated from 2010, in which a man imprisoned children and only got 18 months of prison. Although this has only happened to one author who wrote about boy’s love, it could soon evolve and happen to other authors of different genres in the future, so no one is safe if the government finds what you’ve written has sensitive content. I personally believe that everyone should write what they’re passionate about or else they’ll lose interest in writing entirely, or start to feel unmotivated to write. I also think it’s unfair that she got a longer sentence than a kidnapper since, once he gets out, he could do more harm to others, while she only writes books to entertain herself and people with the same interests.
In conclusion, by censoring LGBT online, people can’t learn about the events that are around them and this makes them remain ignorant. this also could affect their future relationships because they might offend many people when they talk negatively about LGBT. Their negative opinion about LGBT could also turn into hatred, and if they don’t have any moral values, they could possibly harm others like in the example I stated earlier. Finally, I discussed how China had imprisoned a novelist for writing a book about boy’s love and how it’s unfair that a child kidnapper got a shorter sentence than her. In addition, I also mentioned that it restricts writers from writing what they’re passionate about, and if it isn’t stopped, then it could possibly spread out and effect writers of other genres. My personal opinion on this subject is that China wants to keep their citizens from knowing about the LGBT community and deem this community as a danger to their current government system, so they try hard to shut down any LGBT groups in China, creating strict laws like “no same-sex marriages” or to ban anything LGBT related on TV and social media. I hope that in the future China would start to lessen these rules and behavior so that their citizens could express themselves more freely.
If you don’t agree with the blog or have different opinions please be free to comment them down below since I would love to hear your view on this topic.
Author’s note
I would like to credit some articles and blogs that I’ve used when I was making this blog.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/it-can-be-dangerous-to-wave-a-rainbow-lgbt-flag-in-china
LGBT Activism in Mainland China
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/20/chinese-writer-tianyi-sentenced-to-decade-in-prison-for-gay-erotic-novel
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/19/china/chinese-erotic-fiction-writer-prison-intl/index.html?no-st=1560951616
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lgbt-un/china-urged-to-take-action-on-lgbt-rights-after-backing-u-n-changes-idUSKCN1QO1MU
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_China
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/17/tech/weibo-china-censorship-lgbt-intl/index.html