Being gay, female and sad

If you believe everything you read, then you already know quite a bit about lesbians. Mostly, they have short hair and wear men's clothes. They like to strap their breasts to flatten them. They are aggressive. They hate men. They are predatory.

Then there are the lipstick lesbians - those who have long hair and look just like 'normal' women, only better-looking. Some of these women go out with the women in trousers. The butch woman behaves like the man; the good-looking one likes the girl. But the pretty ones can also have sex with each other - as you often see in films. The first lot are weird. The second lot just need to meet the right man.

Misrepresentation by the media is just one of the difficulties local lesbian and bisexual women face. But their greatest problem is that they are invisible, isolated, and their needs ignored.

Hong Kong's lesbian movement is nowhere near as advanced or as well organised as the male gay movement. But this is not saying much. Compared to other cities, Hong Kong's gay movement is in its infancy.

As yet, Hong Kong has only one organisation which operates exclusively for women: Queer Sisters. It caters for women who prefer to call themselves queer to reflect the fact that the members are not all lesbians but also bisexual, transvestite, omnisexual, asexual or single by choice.

Queer Sisters was set up last year by four women activists. One of their first steps was to try to address the fact that so little was known about queer women. They commissioned a survey, consulted more than 100 queer women and, earlier this year, published some disturbing results.