VIOLENCE is the common reaction from society when gay members of society express their sexual orientation, said two members of the lesbians, gays bisexuals, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) community during a public event on Wednesday evening.
The duo shared their experiences of how the community, including their family, reacted when they came out of the closet regarding their gender identity and sexual orientation. Speaking during the Nothing Less Than Equal film festival at the Damordar City Centre in Suva, they called on stakeholders and members of the public to work together to make Fiji a safe place for the LGBTIQ community.
Jasmine Kaur, who is the co-ordinator for Oceania Pride, a support group working towards achieving equal rights for all members of the LGBTIQ community said the violence was real and this was sharpened by racial beliefs.
“I think racial because I have experienced being a young lesbian woman of Indian ethnicity.”
She said the usual discriminatory response from people she spoke to was that it was uncommon.
“If I introduce myself the first thing I hear is ‘Oh my gosh! You’re the first Indo-Fijian lesbian woman I’ve met’.
“In the Indian ethnicity it’s impractical for them to come out. I must say that growing up in an Indian community,the culture is oppressed. When I was 23, I found out I was rainbow sheep of the family.
“But at home we must conform to the gender role knowing how to cook curry and round roti.”
She said there was an unspoken ugly violence that complemented coming out as a lesbian individual.
“There is violence unfortunately I have seen the ugly side of it and I have also been disowned by my family. I have been a victim of harassment, in the community, from the police and have also been evicted from my community.”
Another speaker, Shirley Tagi, the co-ordinator for DIVA, a diverse peer support group for the LGBTIQ community, said the community chose to see individuals as bad and evil and never as the other roles they played.
“For me as a Pacific woman, as a Fijian, and as a lesbian, what society sees is usually the lesbian part only and society sees you only as bad and evil.”
She said there were a lot of troubling issues that individuals from the LGBTIQ community went through.
“They only see one part of you and not that you are also a sister, a niece, a daughter. These are some of the troubling issues, as a person, we undergo in society and includes the violence the LGBT community go through every day, derogatory slurs, until I was eventually kicked out later in my life.”