https://wewhofeeldifferently.info/interview.php?interview=101&chapter=4
I chose the culture from We Who Feel Different because I am interested in comparing the viewpoints of different cultures. Among the many interviews, the first two I watched were about the Korean people.They talked about how rare and small the LGBT communities are in South Korea. Kim Seong Jin, one of the interviewees, is currently working on his project in order to help the LGBT come out of the comfort zone by expressing their real selves without fear of discrimination or judgement. I also saw a Female-to-Male (FTM) interview, and this person named Hanmuji provided me with the history of how the transgenders were considered in different countries; there has been notable difference on how they were treated between the Eastern and the Western cultures, as the former thought of it more as a disorder while the latter was more open to it. Another one I watched was about Hossein Alizadeh, an Iranian member of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). Whereas some other videos had two parts, Hossein’s interview had four parts. Under the Islamic values, similar to those of Christianity, homosexuality can be considered as a crime. Hossein is currently working as the IGLHRC member in order to grant sexual freedom in Islamic countries. I learned from him the difference between the interests of the Western culture and that of other countries. Another thing he taught me is that not only do some people have no access to lawyers in Iran, but the lawyers are not willing to work for them even if any. One of the interesting things that he mentioned was the hierarchy between the gender; since men are considered superior to women, a man’s desire to become a woman is like moving down a class and therefore cannot be accepted. Such issues regarding the sexism and homosexuality seem especially overwhelming in Islamic countries, and people like Hossein are trying their best to earn the equal human rights for everyone.
