Small victory for China’s online lesbian community as censored forum is restored, but another remains blocked
- Social media ban on same-sex discussion forum reversed after weekend of protest
- Straight allies join LGBT fight for freedom to talk about experiences
China’s online LGBT community has won a small victory as a popular lesbian forum was restored to the cultural discussion site Douban after being censored for a few days.
But a similar discussion page – the “les” supertopic on Weibo, viewed 480 million times – has been blocked since Friday, despite a highly visible social media campaign protesting the platform’s silencing of lesbian and bisexual women.
LGBT activists, lesbians and allies have been posting a flood of rainbow images and messages of solidarity under the hashtag “IAmLes”. Many also posted selfies with their mouths taped shut, and some users even found they were blocked from using the rainbow flag emoji in their WeChat display names.
By Tuesday evening, “IAmLes” and the newly created hashtag “les” had accumulated 350 million and 540 million views each. Users also created a new “LESBIAN” supertopic which had racked up 27 million views.
Many users promoted LGBT and lesbian visibility in their posts and urged people to come forward and take a stand.