| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 衛生福利研究所 === 95 === Since 1990, the LGBT movement in Taiwan has been aimed to strengthening the LGBT’s self-identification, promoting visibility of LGBT in the society, and advocating equal rights through various means, such as community organizing, policy advocating, social action, and public education. Yet most of these approaches focus on the level of individual and community, which is adopted and inspired by the LBGT equal rights movement based on Western individualism, but fail to address the significance of the familial relationships in Taiwanese society. Although most LGBT may live out their identity in daily lives, they have difficulty facing their original family, especially in coming out to their parents. They may spend from several months to decades exploring themselves and overcoming the pressure, discrimination, and struggles of becoming a LGBT, but when they come out to their parents, they expect to be accepted immediately and completely. Yet accepting their children as LGBT is not an easy process for most parents; parents need time to adjust themselves just as much as their children. The past studies often indicate that “parents cannot accept their children to be LGBT” without further inquiry into the complexity involving in becoming a parents of LGBT. My thesis attempts to depict how “parents of LGBT” become “LGBT parents” and their diverse aspects and situations.
The thesis adopts action research as research design. When I begin to work on the issue of “LGBT and family” in the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association( TTHA), I constantly encounter the paradox that I work to improve the relationship between parents of other LGBT while I cannot come out to my own parents. Therefore, my relationship with my parents as a son and my relationship with other LGBT parents as a social worker constitute two major domains of my narrative. The findings start with my narrative as a gay man with reflections on how my survival stance and strategy are shaped, due to my awareness as a gay man since my childhood. It also depicts how my parents and I are alienated due to the necessary segregation of work and life as a family of working class. By providing services to the LGPT parents, I have a chance to interact with these parents and to realize their diversity and the complexity of the issue. I also have an opportunity to experience the differences between social practice and family life; through one after another engagement and self-exploration, I am able to lessen the alienation and distance between my parents and me.
During the past four years, TTHA provides services to more than two-hundred parents and engages almost ten of them with the work within TTHA. The parents even form their own group, “LGBT Parents Association”, to advocate for LGBT rights, disproving the stereotype that “parents cannot accept their children to be LGBT.” The LGBT movement is no longer limited to LGBT but expands to include parents, which nevertheless brings the diversity indispensable to LGBT movement. Within the movement, I as a social worker also see my parents and myself with our respective limits: both are willing to change, while both oscillate between fear and attachment, which constitutes the focus of my thesis.
|
|---|
