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L.G.B.T.Q. life in Asia
For Pride month, we asked our L.G.B.T.Q. readers to share their experiences. Thank you to those who told us about your joys and worries. I’ve lightly edited some responses.
A reversal in China
Jack, 38, moved to Beijing in 2008. At the time, “it felt like things were on the up for queer people.” The nightlife was thriving and activism was moving. “Everyone expected things would continue to get better,” he said. That all changed once Xi Jinping came to power, Jack said. Venues closed. Activists disappeared. Representation dwindled. “People withdrew into apps and the underground,” he wrote.
Uncertainty in South Korea
A 16-year-old in Seoul, who didn’t want to share his name, said that there was little representation in the media or arts, and he knows only one other L.G.B.T.Q. person. “I’m a gay student,” he wrote. “I have come out to just a few friends whom I trust; it would be social suicide to come out publicly to everyone.”
Muted relief in Singapore
Since Singapore repealed a ban on gay sex, some readers said life felt easier. Tan Jun Lin, 25, said that being gay felt less scary now, both because of the change in the law and because of growing visibility on social media. But he has still had to cut off homophobic friends and hide his sexuality from colleagues.
“Pride doesn’t simply mean acceptance,” he wrote. At work, he told some colleagues about his sexuality, but they responded with a “stunned silence that clearly conveyed a concealed homophobia.”
Frustration in Japan
Gaku Hiroshima, 33, lives in Kyoto. He is still aware of prejudice, he said, but in just a few years, he has seen attitudes change.
“I feel the arrival of the zeitgeist of ‘making fun of sexuality is not cool,’” Gaku wrote. Kyoto’s City Hall is decorated for Pride, which he said “was clearly impossible a few years ago.”
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