Taiwan Church News
3402 Edition
8 – 14 May, 2017
Topical News Taiwan Society Urged To Stop Discrimination Against Sexual Minority And Terminate Sexual Violence Against Women And Girls Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong When an end April suicide event of a young and talented female novelist was accumulating a snowball of anger and fury in Taiwan, due to her being deliberately raped by a promiscuous cram school teacher in her innocent high school days, the Garden of Hope Foundation(GHF) convened a press conference on May 3rd for a theater play, entitled “The Vagina Monologues Part III – Life of Womb and Vagina”, calling Taiwan society to stop discrimination against sexual minority and terminate sexual violence against women and girls. Ms Liu Hsiang-tze, a famous movie actress and specially invited to speak for the play, expressed her great sorrow for a tragic suicide of the female novelist – Ms Lin Yi-han, as her untimely death deeply stunned Taiwan society and painfully ripped out the dark memories of those sexually-abused girls across the island. Ms Liu urged Taiwan society shows no tolerance against sexual abuse and its offenders, and suggested that, once the case of rape happened, women and girls have to find immediate support from the third party, like the GHF and etc. According to GHF, different from previous their two plays in 2015(on sexual abuse/sexual exploit) and 2016(violence between the intimate relationship) respectively, the play of “The Vagina Monologues Part III – Life of Womb and Vagina” in 2017 mainly focused on sexual discrimination: i.e. investigating the nature or origin of violent threats or bullies toward sexual minorities like transgender people, effeminate man or mannish woman. Transgender people would also play the roles on stages to speak out their minds and thoughts, GHF said, adding that Taiwan society should give them space to express themselves freely and they absolutely were worthy to be nicely treated. To deliver a complete version of The Vagina Monologues in Taiwan, GHF prepares to perform on the stage with 10 indigenous scripts of in 2018. Through these vividly true stories in scripts, people can see the legal progress of gender equality movement in Taiwan, GHF said, for example the homicide case of Mrs Peng Wang-ru prompted “Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act”; the case of Mrs Deng Ru-wen killing her husband led to “Domestic Violence Prevention Act”; the bullying homicide case of effeminate boy Yeh Yong-chih resulted into “Gender Equity Education Act” and etc. Translated by Peter Wolfe |