關注“拉拉” 國內首條女同性戀熱線開通 [ 2007-01-23 13:15 ]
自去年10月國內首條女同性戀者咨詢800免費熱線在上海開通后,“拉拉”群體開始引起社會的關注。這條熱線全部由女同性戀志愿者接聽,熱線義工多數具有專業背景,所有義工都接受過專業培訓。如今,中國同性戀正處于一種慢慢“浮出水面”的狀態,如各大城市都有同性戀酒吧,網上則有很多同性戀網站和論壇。但是,為數不少的女同性戀者卻仍然“躲在柜中”,成為社會關注的盲點。相對于男同性戀者而言,女同性戀者承受著更大的家庭和精神壓力,更屬于社會“邊緣群體”中的“弱勢群體”。
|
|
|
A Chinese movie on
lesbians,directed by Liyu |
Between 2 pm and 4 pm every Saturday, the volunteer is busy at her
office desk in Xinjiang Road in Shanghai. She has to attend to all the calls
from women from across the country, and advise them how to solve their personal
and inter-personal problems.
She is one of two volunteers on the shift manning a hotline that was opened
on October 25 last year, and has to answer five to six calls in two hours. But
her job is different from others because all the callers are lesbians.
And she too, like her colleagues, is one of them. The only difference is that
the volunteers have undergone thorough psychological, medical and legal
training.
"We have a dozen volunteers and are recruiting more," officer-in-charge Shen
Yimu said yesterday. Shen is from Hong Kong's Chi Heng Foundation, a
non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to improving the lives of
homosexuals and AIDS orphans. The
NGO was started by To Chung in 1998 to provide education and care to children
whose parents had died of AIDS.
The callers on the hotline can be teenagers to women in their forties. They
seek counsel for their relationships, gynecological
diseases and legal matters, Shen said.
But most of the callers are desperate middle-aged women married and even with
biological children being
blackmailed for disclosing their
lesbian identity.
"Lesbians are a very weak group. They are almost neglected by society," Shen
said.
While male homosexuals are more daring, and demand their rights, lesbians
tend to keep everything under wraps.
Shen said the greatest pressure on lesbians comes from the family. To many,
homosexuals are a social malaise, and lesbians are nothing but a family
stigma.
When a lesbian college student told her father about herself, he broke down
and had to be admitted to hospital to be treated for shock and depression. He
recovered only when his daughter swore to lead a "normal" social life.
Zhang Beichuan of the Qingdao University, said that while gays have attracted
much attention and get more understanding and help, lesbians are lonely and
helpless.
So far no official organization has come forward to help this group, not even
the Women's Federation, Zhang said. They can only try to solve their problems by
discussing them at group gatherings, nightclubs and online chatting.
A hotline can do little to change such a situation. "It's more like a garbage
can in which lesbians can throw their pains," Shen said. "But it also offers an
outlet where they can vent their feelings."
(China Daily)
Vocabulary:
lesbian:女同性戀
homosexual:同性戀
gynecological
diseases:婦科疾病
biological children:
親生子
blackmail:詐騙、勒索
stigma:
恥辱、污點
(英語點津陳蓓編輯) |