PART III of the Phoenix Rising, 

The 5^th ILGA Conference Bangkok.

This whole report thing is getting too long already, I feel, but same time I am surprised by all the impressions I got, the enthousiasm, etc.... and I was just an observer, wandering the corridors, lobby and attending workshops or parts of them, taking in all what was being discussed and going on.

Also checking up on our Phuketians, how they were doing and feeling.

First sidestepping again:

Something very sad happened as well. Tung, one of our 3 Phuketians, received an urgent message from home. He had to return immidiatly home, and so Saturday late afternoon, early evening we were busy organising his speedy return.....

Evaluations...

Our first evaluation the day before, was more one of 3 people slightly overwhelmed by the whole conference, the first impresions, etc but determined and motivated to get the most out of it.

Tungs emergency made us decide to cancell the second evaluation.

The consensus though was that it was highly interesting to see if a membership of Andaman Power of ILGA was something to seriously consider and slowly moving Andaman Power, like so many of such organisations before her all over the world, to more general LGBT advocacy without deminishing the HIV/AIDS prevention and support-work that is still the present goal of Andaman Power.

I told them that we would, if Andaman Power would ask for and obtain full membership of ILGA take upon us the first 2 years minimum of contributions which then needs to be payed and that we would help and support them were needed and asked for, as far as it would be in our power to give of course.

We agreed it would be something which should be very seriously considered once we were back on Phuket.... One thing was clear, they felt such a move woould be a very big step for them and not sure if they would be able to live up to possible expectations as a result of such a move to more general LGBT advocacy.

It was though more then clear that attending this conference triggert a whole series of contemplations about their futur, in, with and for Andaman Power, etcetera. I applauded these contemplations and let them go on with it! Such things should not be decided upon under any kind of pressure because the wish for it should clearly come from within them.

There positive toughts though in that direction made me get more seriously informed about the procedure and demands for full membership of ILGA , by boardmembers as well as secretariat, and I talked about it with representatives of Rainbow Sky, a bangkok based LGBT organisation and one of the two only Thai members of ILGA. Both applauded the idear of Andaman Power becoming member of ILGA!

Now of course we have to wait and see how Andaman Power feels, after the conference is over, Songkran celebrated and low season has truly started.

SOGI

The first time I saw this word was while preparng for the conference, and I had no idear what its meanng.

Now I do!

SOGI stands for Sexual Orientation Gender Identity.

Why? What does it stands for?

Well, as I got the explenation during a workshop by an Indonesian initiator, they got so fed up by discussions about how to describe their divers group as LGBT community, adding Q's and I's etc.

And how I sympathized with that, remembering the, in my eyes at least idiotic discussions within our (farang) Phuket community about the same.

So they tried to find an all encompassing description of what and who we are and try/like to represent.

Result: Sexual Orientation Gender Identity, short SOGI... an alternative which also sounded pretty good.

Most likely it was thought up first by politicians trying to describe some committee(work) without wanting to get into this LGBT etcetera thing and trying to be politically correct as they could be... a rather succesfull find that now also found its way into the community itself and into Asia ;-)

When they started to use SOGI, they also discovered that where first doors stayed closed for them as LGBT organisation, they now opened for them as SOGI. Weird huh, what a change of label, name can sometimes do?!

I thought, and think, till somebody comes up with something better, that this is a most pleasing sollution if and when we like to be all inclusive.

Hence, from now on, I will do my best to use SOGI instead of LGBT.

At the conference both were used, people need really to get used to this “new identity”? ;-)

Disasters (preparedness) and the Sexual Minority Community.

Won't give too long of a report on this workshop only that I was surprised, baffled, also about myself!

I can't remember any emergency, contingency plans, from the ones made on my request in my days as city manager or as acting/deputy major, which took into account the sexual diversity of the population.

The simplicity with which representatives from Japan (Tsunami), Indonesia (vulcanic eruptions and earthquakes) came with all kinds of SOGI(=LGBT) – issues which came up dring the relief actions, the discrepancies, the discrimination and lack of respect for the sexuality of those involved, how insensative people were treated. Shocking not only to hear, BUT to realize that in all those plans in my country The Netherlands, I sofar never have seen any contingency plan taking into account more then age and man/woman/(dis)ability.

It also made me pleasantly aware that our so-called community has been quite allert about this these last years here in Asia, regardless for the standing our SOGI(=LGBT)-community found themselves in, in the respective countries!

Our Asian friends, I likewise happily noted, as I did later as well when I followed the workshop about education, are quite on top of things and they try to act very practical, regardless the status of our community in the respective countries, and are eager to share their expereinces to help their fellow communities in other countries.

I wondered how things were dealt with during the Tsunami of 2004, which also, among others, devastated Phuket …..

My Phuketian friends were not aware of any SOGI-angle in disaster relief plans in case of one, which included (specialized) care for our SOGI-community. This workshop made it clear that it is something to pay attention to when the opportunity arrises!

Now of course I do not know if by now this has changed in the Netherlands, but my gut feeling tells me that might not be the case.... and the examples I heard from the what happened during the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, made me very aware that we should review our contingency plans on this and ask our SOGI(=LGBT)-organisations to help to evaluate them accordingly!

LGBT in national education systems.

SOGI(=LGBT) in education systems specially attrackted my attention because of my own involvement in the years 2006-2008 getting this on the agenda first of the DWH, the independent gay association in Delft, as well after on that of the local and regional authorities and putting it at the attention of our national representatives, departements and parties in parliament.

So we begin with a sidestep here:

At that time we were viewed rather sceptical with our arguments, not only by the heterosexual world, but surprisingly for us who drafted the report in which this issue, among quite a couple of other issues, was put forward, also by our own membership, our own community. But we managed to overcome the sceptisisms, making us tronger with our arguments at the same time, and we spread our views as mentioned above.

To my pleasant surprise the report was rather well received and looked at, but quickly all fingers were pointing upwards, to our national political level.

At that time I had already met Kik, decided to get married, etc. and because I was now a lot of the time in Thailand, also resigned.... BUT things went so positively quickly that we hardly had to put up a complete lobby trajectory. Late 2008/early 2009 the then (relative) new Cabinet Minister of Education, who had taken SOGI-affairs as one of his responsibilities, had addopted our point of view in his paper/policy proposals for our Lower House (=2e Kamer). Since then it has not only been adopted/picked up by many others but it also became part of the policy statements by following Cabinets and is now put into effect troughout our education suystem and curriculums.

A Dutch representative was comming to speak about this and I was very curious to hear how they had implemented the whole and how the experiences had been with getting the large and very divers education boards to underwrite the new educational policies regarding SOGI.

Sadly though it was announced that the Dutch speaker had been detained elsewhere and could not make it to come to this conference after all. So far for my curiosity about these things;-)

It was then that I offered, if so wished, to at least tell the workshop how BUT more importantly why we got were we are now! With enthousiasm my offer was accepted, though I quickly regretted doing so because I had to improvise unprepared as I was, but my enthousiasm had gotten the better of me.

The Taiwanese and Indonesian initiators spoke of course first and what struck my how proud I actually felt that the respective SOGI-representatives were so pro-active. While they not even had the rights as we have in The Netherlands since the early ninyties of the last century, they already had recognized the importance of SOGI in education!

And they were making effective inroads, getting SOGI slowly but clearly established within the educational system.

Because its only when we will be able to teach the young about the normality of SOGI, the respect it deserves, as much as is given to every one else, we can truly establish a real, strongly fundamented and true emancipation of SOGI in the respective societies! Wise words aand ideas!

In The Netherlands we came with our education proposals as a defence meganism to try to keep what we thought we had established during the '80, '90 and early years of our present century, but feeling the threat by the orthodox Christinas and Muslims starting to align themselves in their opposition towards our SOGI rights!

When it was my turn to give my impromptu contribution I described mainly the process and motivation as mentioned above as well as the sometimes brutal bullying, violance, discrimination within neighbourhoods, old peoples homes, housing, schools, in healthcare and hospitals, etcetera. People looked at me with surprised faces thinking “in Holland????”. 

All of  the above triggert our policy committee to write the mentioned policy-report, to try start doing at least something and not be quiet and accepting about it as something normal happening to us as a community, which seems to be in the genes of the general SOGI population. The tollerance level of our overall SOGI-community is very, very high, too high for our own good and health!

Same time I kept on saying I was so proud on what I heard was happening in countries like Indonesia and Taiwan, and that for me they were now shining lights/examples of direction all should try to take. They clearly were pro-active instead to us, in the Netherlands that is, now being defensive. Theirs is, as far as I can observe now, the prefered, positive way.... but of course same time very glad that we have what we got … so far! ;-)

Same time by showing our struggles and fears we had and have in the Netherlands, they also felt, I hope, less alone and that even one of their shining examples, because thats how they look at the Netherlands, but also to the Scandinavian countries, still had their so-called SOGI-demons to fight.

Sadly most Asian countries were not even close to getting SOGI issues implimented and educated in their education systems, Thailand among them! And sadly a country like Malaysia, were even the opposite is now taking place!  This might turn out to become a true drama for our SOGI-community there and might very well influence over time the whole ASEAN because allready Malaysia, sadly, time after time refuses all kinds of things which include or mention SOGI-rights.... They more like to put us back deep in the closset and preferably then lock it and trow away the key, it seems.....:-(

EDUCATION ABOUT THE NORMALITY OF SOGI SHOULD INDEED BE A PRIMARY GOAL FOR OUR SOGI-COMMUNITY WHERE EVER WE ARE!

Part IV will be the last and will deal with some a workshop about ILGA and sports, as well as some observations about the conference and its closing on Sunday the 31st of March with the choosing of a new Board for Asia, etcetera, as well as  the new host city for the 6th ILGA Conference in 2015!