International Women's Day 2021: Interview with Nhuun

What are some issues faced by lesbian, bisexual and queer women (in Asia) that became more prevalent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?

One of the issues this day given the fact that we still have the COVID-19 going on, the COVID pandemics has put a lot of different conditions to many people, we need to live in the conditions, situations that different than before. For example,  we cannot travel anymore, we cannot commute to the other places and what is the most important for us is our health, our mental health, our access to food, access to the basic stuff, right? 

For example, the hygiene, the sanitizer, this kind of thing, you put different conditions on our life actually, including woman and LBT woman as well. You know, when when and for example, we really need to confide right when we are when we are forced to be confined in some way. And we need to connect to people other people online, we cannot do the face-to-face activities anymore. And given to the fact that some of—for some of us, it's not only about this type of brightly colored restriction or it's not about all the "cannot meet people anymore", but it's actually about the, you know, what they need to think for every day is about the where they can take the food way, where they can get the food to eat, where they can get the water to drink, you know, in such a way right.

So it's really like, and this COVID pandemic, really unmasked the issues? What is actually, what it actually means in terms of LGBTI rights as well, we need to rethink about it a little bit. And we need to if, if [we can] unmask the way that the right motivation affects us, also. So, yeah, for, for example, right. Before we need—we think before,—right—we think. Before we think about those type of like, as advocates, we think about those who have like, right to work, right to non-discrimination, we think about those type of thing, right, we focus on equal pay, and we focus on equal opportunity for everyone, right. But COVID had to make—may make us rethink about this type of argument, this type of advocacy, right? Because what, what it actually mean, when we don't have employment anymore, many people don't have jobs, many people lose their jobs actually, during this time.

So it's not about the right to work anymore. Because even with our work, we need to have the opportunity to access to the best, right. And we, and if that is kind of like, we don't have women, men, LGBT people don't have that type of access in the same way. And we, in terms of like, socio securities, or social welfare, we cannot access in the same way, right? When we go to the hospital, we cannot receive the same healthcare, we've got treated badly by the hospital, for example, in terms of like trans people, and we also, we ask, and in terms of like some of the woman, some of the LGBT people need to—what is this called—get discriminated, to access some of the social support during the pandemic, right? When they want to access to the food, bank—food, bank, or food shelter in some of the country, they got discriminated [against] as well, just only because they are women, or they are trans. And also, some of us need to be back to live in our family.

And as you many, many of you are, as many people noticed already, right that the white domestic violence cases, rising during this pandemic, and when it comes to LBT woman, the situations, may be more severe, may be more, may be more may be different from the other people, right? Because we—some of us need to come back to leave with the family who don't truly accept us and treat us badly. Right? And what does this mean for our health in terms of mental health as well? And what does that mean? That, when we need the support, when we need the counseling support or you know, group support from our trans or lesbians colleagues, or LBT women colleagues, how will travel restriction put us [in] harm in terms of access to those counseling, right. So, these type of issues right, happened in the, during this time. And if, of course, play the key role in terms of like, the to play the key role to the difficulty to the life of LGBTI people—LBT woman, right. So yeah, it's this something we need to be mindful. We cannot be in terms of like, we cannot name or ___ the right violations to LBT women in the same way anymore. We need to think about more diverse forms of ___ that we need to tackle. Right? And, um, yeah, that's my response. Yeah, yeah. 

So building on that point that that is a good segue into the second question. How can a woman especially LBT, women continue to support each other and uplift one another?

Yeah, as we know, right already, as I said already, that there are different form of violation against LBT people, woman. And in our B and T, right, woman, we have the uniqueness of the issue as well, right. It's very diverse. It's not only about LGBT women, but it's also about the, you know, the average woman living in poverty, LBT women living as a migrant worker, LBT women who, who has this, what is called the ___ possibilities, right? Or the LBT women who, who are alone, who [are] living alone, who isolate themselves from the society, LBT women in the different ___.

What does this mean? Right? It's kind of like people who live in Southeast Asia, who live in Thailand and live in Malaysia or live in Philippines. We may face different issues, right in some LGBT rights, and people. And it's, of course, it's going to be different from people in South Asia, it's going to different people living in the East Asia or Central Asia, right. So, the network that we can imagine.

The network that we can—the way—that women support each other as a network, we need to rethink about this type of thing, right, we need to include every woman, every type of woman in like I said, you know, whether a woman in the different class, women in the different types of identities, trans woman, lesbian woman, right? We need to include, we need to initially build those types of networks, we need to build type—the type of the group support that includes everyone. So, and recognize every single issue, and it is where we can share the different resources, we can share the different wisdom—some of us might have privilege than the others.

So we can discuss that on this network and figure out who can help who, who gets support, who needs the support. And I can, can see, I can re-imagine the role of the organization or the role of the people who have the resources like, you know, the regional organization, or the national organization to accommodate this type of  network, continue the discussion, transform this into action. And to ensure that the people who need help the most, good people who see we have suffered the most get the support. And yes, *laughts*

So what is your hope and the collective goals of women you feel this year and in the near future? 

The little, collective goals, right. Okay, I'm going to put it in this way. So you know, the COVID pandemic, right. I also observe the response from the authorities, or the response from the governments in these regions as well, that they focus too much. They focus a lot on control and command, you know, they use this type of thinking of the patriarchy System, right, a patriarchy way of thinking that, okay, if they confine every people, put every people in the place, right? The COVID pandemic is going to go away, you know, and it's going to solve every problems right? If I, I can send this type of like, patriarchal way of thinking, the authoritarianism and maybe ___ in the response of the government's right in terms of the pandemic to, to the, to this situation to the issue of the pandemic. And the policy goals would be, we need to ask women activists, LGBT activists, we need to name it.

We need to name them, we need to name this type of like, military restrict and patriarchal response to the situation. And we need to expose how is—the difficulty to the light of women and girls? And LBT woman's right, and we need to tackle the patriarchal way of thinking and system actually, and try to make our own strategy, what does this really mean in terms of right respond to the crisis in terms of like, to be more inclusive, or to be more, to be more beneficial for the women and girls and LGBT women this day. Right? We are this, we, we we, we might need to focus more, because during the pandemic, we need to focus. If we get rid of the practical way of thinking, the government will focus more on those types of, like, you know, social welfare healthcare, more domestic ___, which is really severe these days, but the government never recognized. Right.

So. So we, if we don't think in the patriarchal way, this agenda, this  legislative or the policy agendas [are] going to come up, right. And I also really think that—I also really being that we need to, at least, we need to be mindful as a person that the government should—the government or us should think about this type of issue more. It's not only about being in the rooms, confine ourselves and, and control everything and, and every issue is gonna go away. No. Yeah. So I think we need to—at the individual level—at the individual level, we need to think about how we, how we, how we—what type of their policy or the legislative that we're going to support, right.

But at the same time, I also think off the importance of the representation of the woman and LBT in the political arena, right, in who the we need more of the type of leaders as well, to ensure that our, the, the way they think about their policy or the respond to the crisis is not patriarchal, is focused on the life of woman is focused on the life of LGBT, LGBT woman, right. So that it can help a lot to, to ensure that women and LBT people get protected and get this enough support during this time of crisis as well. And in the future, for example, in the future, in the way of, the way of the world's work might need to be changed as well, right, because we focus on the a lot on the military force, right, and how we can achieve that type of thinking of the, you know, global policy agenda as well.

We might need to focus, we focus—and we also focus a lot with what is called economic growth. We focus a lot on the neoliberal reasons type of the policy right. We need to shift the way of thinking of this as well to change the way that the worlds work, not being military or realistic or not to be the patriarchal, not using the patriarchal way of thinking to shape out the global policy agenda anymore. And instead, we focus more on the things that really matter to women and women and LBT lives. And with, yeah, and I think without the patriarchal way of thinking, we would have that a lot.