Pride Month 2022: how do you talk about LGBTQ issues? Better education would go a long way, says Hong Kong rights advocate
- Benita Chick Ben-yue raises awareness of LGBTQ issues in Hong Kong through workshops for companies and schools and tours of the city’s streets
- As a Catholic who attended a convent school, she understands parents may not know how to react if children struggle with their sexual identity and urges empathy
Benita Chick Ben-yue doesn’t hesitate when asked where she wants to be interviewed ahead of Pride Month, when LGBTQ communities around the world come together in celebration of their freedom to be themselves.
Chick is all about positive change, and she’s achieving it through community outreach programmes and various roles with charities from Aids Concern Hong Kong to the Pink Alliance.
Advocates for LGBTQ rights in the city fear any criticism of government policies could be stifled by a new wave of conservatism ushered in by the national security law passed in 2020.
The biggest and most shocking issue, she says, is that Hong Kong has no laws protecting people against discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
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“This has been discussed since the 1990s,” she says. “If you’re fired from your job or discriminated against because of your sexual orientation, you have no protection.”
Chick literally takes her message to the streets, leading walking tours that explore the city’s LGBTQ culture and history. LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and/or questioning (those unsure of their sexual orientation or gender identity).
“I’ve hosted about 40 tours and there’s always a mix of guests, from academics and straight people to gay couples visiting from overseas,” says Chick of the night tours she plans to revive now that Covid-19 restrictions have eased.
“We visit the Court of Final Appeal, where landmark cases have influenced LGBTQ+ laws, and learn about the important contributions the LGBTQ+ community has made in politics, arts and sports.”
“We also visit the site of the old Propaganda,” she says, referring to the legendary gay nightclub on Hollywood Road, Central, that closed in 2016 after 25 years. “And we stop for drinks at some of the city’s gay bars.”
Chick is making her biggest impact with Encompass HK, a social enterprise she founded in 2018 that supports companies and organisations to be more diverse and inclusive. She takes the workshops not just into boardrooms but into the classroom.
“Last year, I started talks with the ESF [English Schools Foundation] and I’m also sharing them with parents,” she says. And with good reason. “An increasing number of today’s new generation identify as LGBTQ+ somewhere on the spectrum,” she says.
A 2021 Gallup poll of 12,416 US adults, released in February, showed about 21 per cent of Gen Z Americans identify as LGBT, up from 10.5 per cent in 2017.
“Kids are finding more support online and via social media but many parents, especially those with children in the local school system, often don’t know how to deal with LGBTQ+ issues, or how to respond if their children are exploring their sexual orientation or questioning their gender identities,” Chick says.
She opens a PDF file titled “Encompass HK – LGBTQ+ parenting”, a guide she uses in her workshops for those wanting to better understand LGBTQ issues.
Chick shares details about her personal journey, busts myths and provides guidelines for how to navigate the sometimes confusing language around the LGBTQ community.
The document includes some harrowing statistics: 39 per cent of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year; and 71 per cent of LGBTQ youth reported feeling sad or hopeless for at least two weeks in the past year.
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Better education would go a long way towards improving the picture. “In the local curriculum, sex education guidelines are outdated and must go beyond discussions about contraception and HIV prevention,” Chick says. “There’s little discussion on sexual orientation and gender identities.”
The best advice she can give parents is to have an empathetic ear. “Listen to your child without judgment,” she says, adding that a lack of parental support can lead to mental health issues in adolescents.
Now 40, Chick says her early school years at Hong Kong’s all-girls Maryknoll Convent School were progressive despite little in terms of LGBTQ sex education being in the curriculum.
For Chick, who attended Cornell and Boston Universities in the United States, being gay and Catholic in Hong Kong has been a balancing act. “I grew up in a virtuous and very religious family,” she says.
One of the biggest challenges to her faith, she says, came in December 2017 when a Hong Kong priest cancelled a midnight mass for a Catholic LGBTQ group, Compassion, after the local diocese told him that homosexuality was “sinful”.
“I was excited about my first midnight mass for Compassion,” she says. “The priest did not know how to single out specific individuals to deny [them] Holy Communion and resorted to cancelling [the] mass after the local diocese had told him that some gay Catholics should not be delivered Communion, due to their mortal sins.
“I was really torn – it was a difficult time.”
