LGBT : A Shy and Hidden Korean Culture
LGBT is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexuals and transgenders community.I got exposed to the thoughts and presumptions Koreans have about queers when I attended my first company dinner. I am from India where queer marriage has still not been accepted so there were quite a few experiences I had, which were too common in my own country. I know if I was probably born in a Western country like America or so the Korean thoughts might have sounded too backward and shocking to me. But for me the queer culture in Korea was easy to digest. Though my home country India , has started emerging out of the shyness of admitting themselves queer, It’s still considered a sinical thing to do in some parts and people are still not very accepting. In Korea two prominent figures were heavily responsible for bringing LGBT issues to the forefront of the Korean psyche.One a transgender actress/model/singer called Harisu and second the talented actor/comedian Hong Suk Chun. However the culture could not be adopted till date. I have many queer friends, back in India, and in a discussion over dinner table talking about it, I saw all eyes staring at me as if they found what I was saying too cynical. But even still there was something too shocking for me to understand about the Korean way of thinking towards people who have a different sexual preference.
These are the few things which confuse me.
1. Public baths : Wow so for getting in bed nude with the same sex is a sin, however bathing nude together in public is not.
2. Paid Masseurs in shower rooms: A Korean would pay to call a masseur and ask him to clean his body and give him a good shower, strange.
3. Big Queer festival: Even though queer culture is still a hidden culture. A queer festival which happens every year near June is a big event which has a huge media coverage .
4. Nightlife: Being gay in Korea isn’t all doom and gloom. The capital is home to many areas with a vibrant mix of queer culture and nightlife. Hongdae plays home to numerous ‘girl’ bars where the lovely lesbians come out to play in the bustling area. Perhaps the most famous, though, is Homo Hill in Itaewon; a veritable hotchpotch of bars set on a killer incline.
5. Westernization: I have seen no country which wants to crazily copy the complete Western culture from their dressing styles to having English names to copying American accents and so on. Yet an open mind to a different sexuality is still a far off concept.
6. Cosmetics: A very common stereotype mostly for gay men is that they would love doing makeup similar to girls. I bet not one Korean boy or man would not have a cosmetic kit in their purse which will beautify them from head to toe .
I believe that when you love a person, you love a person not his/her genitals .There is always more to a person than his/her genitals. The love, the sharing, the caring, the warmth that cannot be categorized or separated on the basis of sexuality and gender. There are so many qualities that make up a human being. By the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.”I realize how depraved it was to instill false guilt in an innocent child’s conscience, causing a distorted image of life, God, & self, leaving little if any feeling of personal worth….So Before you echo ‘Amen’ in your home or place of worship, think and remember…a child is listening”, Prayers for Bobby tries to convince the audience in the most simplest way, that God created us all, differences and variations was his choice and he did not separated them into good and bad. Love yourself and everyone around you is the God’s only message.