After losing her 26-year-old daughter, entertainer Chu Hui-chen (朱慧珍) held a press conference on May 24, where — filled with love and sorrow — she announced her daughter, who had committed suicide, was a lesbian. On behalf of millions of Taiwanese homosexuals, I want to tell Chu: “We love you!”
Studies have shown that the suicide rate among both adolescent and adult homosexuals is high compared with equivalent heterosexual groups. However, if we interpret this as evidence that homosexuals have a higher tendency to commit suicide, we would be ignoring the oppression of and discrimination against homosexuals that is a result of modern social structures.
According to research undertaken by sexologist Alfred Kinsey in the mid-20th century, about 10 percent of men and 4 percent of women are homosexual. In addition, the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health conducted in the late 20th century showed that 7.3 percent of male adolescents and 5 percent of female adolescents were attracted to members of their own sex. An anonymous survey conducted by Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School in 2000 showed that of 3,492 valid responses, 4.1 percent identified themselves as homosexual, 7.2 percent as bisexual and 1.2 percent said they were uncertain about their sexuality.
If we assume the homosexual population accounts for 10 percent of the total, then about 2.3 million of Taiwan’s 23 million people may be gay. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has boasted that Taiwan is one of Asia’s most advanced countries in terms of gender equity. However, during his time in power, no concrete measures to promote the equal rights of homosexuals have been implemented and we lack a same-sex partnership or marriage law and an anti-discrimination law.
The term “homosexuals” refers not only to gays, but also to a diversity of lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals. Due to long-term stigmatization and ignorance, many homosexuals hide their sexuality because they worry about letting down their parents and facing discrimination.
In our daily lives, we are taught about (heterosexual) love by the media, schools, literature and our families.
Take television for example. Almost all prime-time programming and soap operas focus on the love between men and women. Homosexuals mainly appear in sensational social news or in stereotypical roles.
Traditional pressure often continue even after a homosexual dies. When a transsexual person passes away, their parents often insist their child be dressed and addressed according to their birth sex. For example, dressing a transsexual woman in a man’s suit at her funeral and addressing her as “mister,” despite the fact she made every effort during her lifetime to be treated as a woman.
Despite her grief, Chu chose to make public her daughter’s sexual orientation. She also blamed herself, saying that since she had not learned the “lesson of love” well, she failed to teach her daughter. However, it was not Chu’s fault: Society as a whole, the media and our schools have never provided adequate support and resources for homosexuals and their families. Even the Ministry of Education — which originally planned to promote homosexual equity education in primary schools according to the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法) last year — had to back down following protests from conservative groups.
The best way to reduce this kind of suicide is for the educational authorities, in addition to pushing for gender equality education, to include a homosexual perspective on human rights, life and family education. No parent of a homosexual child should ever have to weep again.
Cheng Chi-wei is director of social and volunteer work at the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association.
Translated by Eddy Chang
The White House’s decision to take a 9.9 percent stake in Intel Corp is looking like very shrewd business indeed. Since the government bought in at US$20.47 a share last August, the US chipmaker’s surging stock price has delivered the US a US$43 billion return. One of the reasons the investment has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Howard personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients imaginable. They include Nvidia Corp, the company at the heart of the AI
A single photograph can cut through a lot of noise, but it can also be used to misrepresent the truth. At the very least, it can concentrate the mind on something that requires further investigation. On Monday last week, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) and former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a news conference in which they showed a photograph of former foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑), now Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman. In the image Hsiao is seated next to Xiamen Taiwan Businessmen Association chairman Han Ying-huan (韓螢煥). The two men were holding
I first met Professor Ray Jiing (井迎瑞) as a film and documentary student at Shih Hsin University’s (SHU) Department of Radio Television and Film in 1988. The following year, he went on to become the director of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive — forerunner of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). Over his eight-year tenure, Jiing rescued and restored over 200 classic Taiwanese films. In 1997, he established the Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary and Film Archiving at Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), and I joined the program in his third cohort of students. Beyond a
President William Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) May 20 second-anniversary address was not just a routine policy review; it was damage control. US President Donald Trump’s remarks — that he did not want to see anyone move toward independence and that the delivery of a major Taiwan arms package could depend on the progress of US-China relations — unsettled Taiwan’s public and created an opening for opposition parties to question whether Taiwan was being treated as a bargaining chip in Washington’s dealings with Beijing. Lai’s speech was designed to close that opening. The address covered the expected ground: sovereignty, cross-strait relations, defense spending,
RSS