Blog 3

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Part A

When I work on my archive, the material I used is online resource. For examples, articles, literatures, musics and films about the real events and behaviors that the LGBT community had in the real world. However, some of my films and literatures’ contents are fiction, nevertheless they are made up based on the real attitudes and environment that the LGBT community had in the real society. For some items, I post current moments in the society, but most of my items are about the past around 18th century or earlier. The literatures I pick may not be a new and fresh one to the readers, but they are the critical ones and became the turning point in the society.

At this point, I don’t have any archive that captures one perspective on an event. But I would add one in my next item.

Part B

Most of the resources I used are having citations and clearly label the time and names that the articles were published. I tried to use sources that published in recent 6 years, however, some resources do not provide the data, so I do not know the exact time they published. The resources gave, mostly, in a third-person perspective to the events. But I could not say it does not have any bias, because my items are about countries, and in each country, the resources I found were written by the local writers. So I may overlook the other perspectives from outside the country.  I choose a period of time, and post three resources that talk about the time period in each item. I tired to choose three resources that gave different approaches, such as one from the film, one from the historical event analysis, and the other from the society’s behaviors.

In most of my items, I started with the percentage of supporting LGBT community in each country. However, the data is came from 2013, which is a little bit old. So I’m afraid the resource of this statistics may no longer to be an effective resource over time.

Part C

I would add the primary resources with the first-person’ perspective, because in the early time, the technologies were not as developed as today, so it was hard to keep one’s literature and art works until today. If there is one in today’s online resources, I think the value of it is very high and reliable since it is a primary resource, which did not have any other people’s edit. So if I could discover a record of it, I would pay money for it to use in my archive.

Spain

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In Spain, 88% of the populations agree with the acceptances of homosexuals in the society (Pew Research Center, 2013). Nowadays, people say Spain as most LGBT friendly country, and in, fact, it is friendly. In previous posts, the time period was quiet new (Taiwan), so in this post, the time period would be as close as 1980s.

 

Even though the post is going to be around 1980s, Spain has a long history oh LGBT since 1931. This article shows detailed explanations with each timeline, it is called “LGBT in Spain”. Unfortunately, the date of this website and the author is not shown. From the timeline, in 1980, there was an event that made Chueca to be a LGBT friendly city.

This item is important because it is impossible to talk about all the histories of Spain about LGBT, however, this timeline saved the time of reading other events that happened in Spain at different time periods. In addition, the timeline could also show how busy the society was at each time. frame.

 

 

“A quién le importa” by Alaska y Dinarama (1986)

Alaska y Dinarama is a Spanish band, after released the song, it became one of the representative songs of the LGBT community from Spain. Since the song is asking questions of who cares to be different from others, and the lyric has a strong voice of being who they are, so it was recognized as an anthem of LGBT community.

It is important in the archive project because among many Latin LGBT musicians, they were the only Spanish musicians and made a significant hit song in the LGBT community. In the lyrics, it was encouraging the lives of LGBT people in Spain, and telling the audiences to lived strong as much as possible. Moreover, most of my previous posts are related to movie or drama, so this could be a good contrast of pop cultures between South Korea, Taiwan and Spain.

 

This is an another history article written by Theresa Pyrce, called “Homosexuality’s History and Cultural Impact in Spain” in 2016. It has a detail history of LGBT community in Spain, and it talked about time period around 1975~1979, and 2005, which is quiet close to the time range of what this post wants to have.

It is important in the archive project is because in this time range, it can compare the different movements happened with the history of Taiwan and Japan. Also it has more details of history in Spain, so it can provide more deeper knowledge of the history to the audiences. Spain is a LGBT friendly country, but it was not necessary friendly from the past time, and this article successfully explained how Spain became a LGBT friendly country.

Taiwan

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First of all, Taiwan took the largest step of LGBT. On May 17, 2019, Taiwanese won the right of same-sex marriage, and it was legally effected on May 24, 2019 (Hollingsworth,2019). This is the first step and victory for all the LGBT community in Asia and also give Taiwan to have an honor of the first place, all over in Asia, legalized the same-sex marriage🌈

Taiwan was actually established in early 17th century, but the Republic of China (Taiwan) government was relocated in 1949 with around 1.2 million people from China to Taiwan around late 1940s and early 1950s (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan), 2018). So the history of LGBT community in Taiwan might be quiet new compare to other places. So in this post, it would be a brief history archive of Taiwan. You’ll see the similar and different movements happened in Taiwan from Japan and other countries.

 

 

This is a novel written by Pai Hesien-yung, called “Crystal Boys” (1983). The story is about the main character’s life after being discovered as a gay. It was a critical literature in Taiwan since this was the first book talked about gay, and directly mentioned the social status of LGBT in the society and its history. This book became one of the classic LGBT literatures today, and made into drama, movie, and stage. The following link is the first episode of the drama.

This item is important in my archive is because it gives a point of perspectives of the society in early 1980s. Even though the time period is different from South Korea and Japan, this book provided a great influence of the concept “LGBT” from both countries. Moreover, the book could give you an idea of “family” as blood-related and as a community of LGBT at that time.

 

 

This is a website of an organization which created for all the LGBT people in Taiwan on Jun 28th, 1998. The website has 4 missions; “LGBT Peer Mentoring, LGBT Support Network, LGBT Community Center and LGBT Rights Education” (June, 1998) It is aiming to support LGBT community in the technology, social roles, and to be inclusive, reduce the rate of suicides.

This is an important website in this archive is because it recorded more events that happened in Taiwan, and also the organization took the lead of revealing the sex orientations that people had and less hesitated to come to the hospital. So from the website, you can get more small details of LGBT at that time.

 

This item is a little different from other items, it is a future parade, and this is the promotion of “Gay Pride Taipei, 2019”. It is going to happen in October. An interesting fact is this gay pride parade is the largest scale of people in this Asia. So the website provides you the route of parade, hotel booking promotions, and a video of the parade to encourage people to come.

This is another important item in this archive, because from the video in this website, you could see the differences of the parade happened in Japan. Even though the event is not happened yet, it will give you some sorts of ideas of gay parade. In addition, it will be happened after the same-sex marriage, so it would .be a remarkable historical event in Taiwan.

Update #2

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This week, I changed the icon of my website into a rainbow with world map to give readers some idea of what my website is. Also one of my teammate gave me a helpful advise for my first item about the size and position of the pictures, so I did a small change of the position and size of the pictures. In Addition, I post an item and a blog as well.

Last week, I was concerned about the focus of my project. My main focus is to compare the differences between western countries and east Asia countries. For the solution I came up with is to mention other countries’ differences in the posts. However, I’m not sure if this will be the best solution. So I’m still looking for it.

My upcoming plans are to post Blog 3, item 3 and Update 3. I’m thinking to post LGBT in Taiwan for my next item. Also I might look for some images to post in my homepage.

South Korea

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According to a statistic data in 2013, homosexuality is legal in South Korea, and 39% of the population think the society should accept homosexuality (Pew Research Center, 2013). However, back in the history, Korea was also having lots of homosexuals people in historical figures. This post of Korea is going to be mainly focus on Joseon Dynasty (1392 – 1910). The time range of the dynasty was close to the time when samurais were ruling the society in Japan. So you may find some differences while reading the archive!

“Sejong, the 4th Choson ruler, convened a meeting of his Cabinet on October 24, 1436, to discuss the rumors that his daughter-in-law had been sleeping with her maidservant. ” (Utopia)

This is an archive that gives 4 historical figures who were homosexuals. The website shows back in the past, most ruling people were tended to be homosexuals by giving the names and eras of the history. The author and the date of this article is not shown. However, it is a credible website by looking at “About Utopia”. It says the website is recognized by TIME Magazine, Lonely Planet, Yahoo!, Gay Times, Advocate and BBC World Service. (Homosexuality in the Korea Historical Record)

It is a significant item in this archive because it gives you the real examples of historical figures in Korea at different time periods. In this website, you may find the similarity between Korea and Japan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a movie called “King and the Clown” directed by Lee Joon-ik in 2005. It is a 2 hours long movie, and it gave a great influence to the society at that time. The movie took place in Joseon Dynasty, and the story is about the homosexuality relationships in the court. It’s said that the movie is about homosexuality, because it actually had some scenes that you would connect to the sexuality.

This is an important item in the archive. It is a movie, which can provide some visible pictures of how people were thinking about  LGBT during Joseon Dynasty. Not only that, this movie is also an representative pop culture of LGBT in 2005.

If you click the link from the name of the movie, it will directs you to the website of the full video. If you are also interesting to look at the film analysis, the link is “The King And The Clown|Analysis” written by a student who was in Film Studies class in UK.

 

“They were generally young widowers who took young good-looking teenage boys as lovers. ” (Neff, 2013)

This is an article, “Homosexuality in Joseon Kingdom era” written by Robert Neff in April 5, 2013. The article is talking about what kind of relationships Korean had in Joseon Dynasty. The article often mentions Western people who went to Korea at that time and talking what they saw, and how the society noticed the homosexuality.

This is also an important item, because it has a perspective of Western countries. Also in the article, it gives one of the evidences that made the society realize homosexuals, and this evidence became to a problem of homosexuals that is still existing in Korea. This might be the key of changing in the society’s attitude towards the LGBT community.

Blog 2

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In lesson2, we learned the basic definitions, identity and diversity of LGBT. The intersection of LGBT is not just its sexuality and queer, but also the race, class and anything that can categorized people. In my archived project, I think the main identities in my project will be gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, while QQIAAP+ are less central to my project.

One of my posts points out the intersectional concern of the LGBT community, that are gender and class. As I’m doing more research, I find out that “class”, “homosexuals”, “heterosexual” and “bisexual” will be the key intersectional concerns in my archive project. It likes the table “Relative Privilege and Oppression” that showed in “Finding Out An Introduction to LGBT. Studies”. Most of the LGBT people are tended to be working class and sometime middle classes and ruling classes.

The concepts of QQIAAP+ were too broad and ambiguous at that time. So most people could not categorize themselves into those identities. Instead of that, they could/wanted to categorize themselves by something like “sexuality”, “class”, “race” and more. This may be the reason why my intersectional concerns will be more “homosexuals”, “heterosexual”, and “bisexual”.

As I’m doing more research for Western countries, there might be some discoveries of QQIAAP+. However, in East Asia, most people tended to put themselves into a category instead of being ambiguous.

Update #1

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Updates:

After posting the blog, I added an item of my project, which is the first real start of my website. I’m planning to post two other countries from East Asia, and three countries from western in total, but I might add more countries. Also, I’m going to create another page for this updates.

Challenges:

After reviewing one of my teammate’s comment, I realized my title and maybe some of my contents are not clear about the regions I’m going to post in this project. From my title and contents, it may understand as East Asia and West Asia.  However, the regions I choose to compares are East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, and more) and Western (Europe and America). So it is one of my challenges to clarifying the regions to the readers.

The other challenge is, as I’m doing this project, I find out my item posts will just be some information about LGBT community in several  countries. But then, it will be different from my goal of this archive project. So I do want to make comparisons between two different regions, and I have prepared some potential questions that I’m planning to answer in my archives, which  are

  1. What are the similarities and differences between the regions?
  2. Which region, or country would be more friendly to the community?

But the only thing, which is the most important thing, is I do not know how and where should I put the comparison in my archive.

Upcoming:

My upcoming plans are posting another blog, item and update. In addition, to figure out how should I do the comparison in the archive.

Japan

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In Japan, it is legal to being LGBT and 54% of the population are thinking the society should accept LGBT community in 2013 (Pew Research Center, 2013). However, some people still think LGBTs are sexual minorities in Japan, and there are bullying like violences, exclusions, ignored, making fun of, and avoid. About 33% of the population feel unpleasantness toward LGBTs, in fact, there were several cases happened in Japan for LGBT people. The most remarkable news was a male graduate student was committed suicide in 2015 because of the psychological harassments he had from other students because of his friends who exposed the sexuality he had into public. Another case was happened in 2000, a group of people attacked/murdered some amount of homosexuals. But the most horrified thing was one of the perpetrators said it would not be a case to attack homosexuals (Nagayasu, 2016).

From this brief introduction of the LGBT community in Japan, you will have some sorts of fears toward Japanese society. However, most of the things in the world have their own reasons. So the questions were how and why do Japanese start to think in this way? What about the past and what is the current condition in Japan?

 

“In the Shinto creation story, sex precedes the birth of a nation and her people.”, “Nanshouku, male homosexuality” (Koichi, 2015)

It is an interest fact for now that back in the past, homosexuals are normal and unlike now, people were very open with it. Why? The question can be found in the article called “The Gay of The Samurai“. This article was published in September 30, 2015, written by Koichi. The article gives the history of people’s positive behaviors toward homosexuals and how the idea changed into now.

It is a significant item for this website is because it explains everything that you want to know in LGBT community back in the history. It has gives you the cultural, historical, and behavioral reasonings for the community. So you can get the idea easily with full understandings. In addition, it would also give you a comparison between LGBT community in the past of Western. The article also set up a cushion for the community in modern society in Japan.

 

“Suicide-Related Events Among Transgender People” (Katsuki, 2019)

The graph came from “Things to Know About the LGBT Community” published in March 20, 2019 written by Harima Katsuki, a director of the Harima Mental Clinic. The article talks about the reality of the current society in Japan and the serious problem of the numbers of transgenders who committed to suicides due to the malicious attitudes from outsides and “internalized homophobia”, which blaming themselves as abnormal by outside resources, such as televisions. The article appeals to the society to change the behaviors toward the sexual orientation.

After reading the first article, “The Gay of The Samurai”, you might think the acceptance of the LGBT community is not as very bad as other countries, because the article is focusing on the history more than modern. However, the truth of Japan society is not like that. This article is an important article to shows you one of the perspectives of the modern LGBT community in Japan.

 

Recent activity for supporting LGBT in 2019|Photo taken by Ryusei Takahashi (Tanaka, 2019)

There is a news, “With spirits high, the LGBT community and supporters marks Tokyo’s 25th pride march“, came out last month, April 28, 2019. The author, Chisato Tanaka, wrote about a current event happened in Japan for the rights (human rights and marriage rights mostly) in the LGBT community. In the article, the author interviewed the organizer of the activity and some participants who are considering themselves as LGBT. It gives you some common perspectives from the community, and you will find the status of the LGBT community in the current society in Japan.

It is another significant item because it provides the most recent event and the perspective of the LGBT community in Japan. Since it published in April 28, 2019, which is quiet new. It is important to know about the history of LGBT community, but it is also important to know about the current community. So that you can get a full perspective of Japan community and easier to find the differences from other countries.

Blog 1

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What customization choices have you made to your Archive Project website so far? Why did you make the choices you’ve made?

I change the theme of the website, font of the words and adding five pages. The reason for changing the theme is because I want to make the website feels relaxing and do not hesitate to access, thinking it is a very formal website. So I chose a theme that plays a little on the title background, but also has a clear background for the content that makes the visitors easier to read. From my experiences, I think the font of the page is very important. Even how the website has a great work with many resources, if the font is hard to read, I would not want to keep open the website and read it. So I decided to use “Arial” font. It is a common font to be used, and it is easier to read. But also the font won’t give an impression of hard, like “New Times Roman”, and stylish, like “Bombshell Pro”, to the audiences. Five pages that I added are the home, explore, blog, all the posts, and about this website page. For home page, I wrote a guide of the website with the links corresponds to each tab. I did not have a post on the explore page yet, but this page would be the posts of different countries’ story for LGBT. This Blog #1 would be my first post in this website, and will located in Blog page. I also create a page for all the posts just if visitors want to see the posts in a chronological order. In the about the website page, I introduce the website, the reason I started, and a little bit about myself. So that when people visiting this website with any purpose, they could easy to access and know what this website is about.

What is your title and what does it mean?

The website title is “LGBT: The Difference between Western and East Asia”. It simply means the website is going to be showing the visitors about the differences of people’s behaviors about the LGBT community in western countries and east Asia countries.

If you’ve chosen a specific color scheme or image for the home screen, why did you select those design features?

The first purpose of changing the theme color of the website is to makes the website remarkable. The second purpose is to having a warm color, visitors could feel welcome and enjoy the website.

If you’ve created tabs, what function will those tabs have?

I created tabs for easy access into the page that visitors want to visit and read.

If you’ve turned certain features on or off, why might you do so?

I turn on the comment feature in every post. I wish the website can be not only as a resource to show the information, but also a place to share everyone’s thoughts and opinion. Since the purpose of this website is to knowing the differences of different regions’ perspectives of the LGBT community, I want to know more about the opinions and thoughts that are shared from people who come from different countries and visiting the website.

How have concepts of identity (especially LGBTQ and other acronyms) or community informed your design choices? 

I did not really think about the concepts of identity when I design the choices. All my choices are based on the impressions that I can give to the visitors, which are easy to access and remarkable.

Is gender or sexuality (or both) a more central concern for your project, and how does the design of your site convey your focus?

Gender and sexuality are not central concern for my project, rather my central concern is the the countries. So in the explore page, most the posts’ name would be the names of country. In that way visitors can focus on each country’s manners for the LGBT community.

How does your website design suggest an inclusive or exclusive audience?

I tried to change the color of the website to give a welcoming impression to all the audiences whether it is sexuality, ages or races.