Hong Kong's Pink Season a time for the LGBT community to reach out
The Pink Season helps the LGBT community engage directly with all of Hong Kong, writes Charley Lanyon
This year's Pink Season, the more than two-month-long celebration of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Hong Kong, takes place at a time when the community's public role is rapidly changing around the world.
Even though Hong Kong lags behind major cities in the West, the place of sexual minorities in our society and in the public eye is beginning to improve. Many in the community feel this Pink Season should be more than just a long party; it should start an ongoing dialogue, helping Hong Kong to evolve into a more equal and accepting place.
The celebration begins on Saturday, and will end when the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival concludes in December.
In May, Community Business, a non-profit organisation "dedicated to advancing corporate social responsibility in Asia", released Hong Kong's first in-depth survey of the community - and the LGBT Climate Study contained some surprising findings.
Among them was the disheartening statistic that 80 per cent of straight respondents said they did not think they knew a single LGBT person. Equally surprising was the finding that 18 per cent of professional LGBT respondents earned more than HK$50,000 a month, compared to only 4 per cent of Hong Kong's population overall.
Taken together, these statistics paint a contradictory picture. "The numbers show the LGBT community is already well established and influential in Hong Kong," says Pink Alliance volunteer Tay Her Lim, co-coordinator of this year's Pink Season. Yet the numbers also show most Hongkongers barely know it exists.