CEBU CITY- Rainbow Rights Inc., together with Outrage and the US Embassy launched Pink Ink training in a move to help journalists be more sensitive to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, and discuss the challenges faced in reporting LGBT issues, news and information.
Rainbow Rights Inc. brought its Pink Ink advocacy to the Visayas area where media practitioners from Tacloban, Bacolod, Iloilo and Cebu attended the forum held in Cebu last August 13.
The occasion aimed to empower professional media practitioners to deal with LGBT issues.
Pink Ink is in line with the #HateWatchPH, which aims to document LGBT-related hate crimes happening in the Philippines; to empower LGBT people to report, and/or do something when such crimes happen; and to form partnerships with like-minded organizations to eradicate LGBT-related hate crimes.
Michael David Tan, publishing editor of Outrage Magazine, who was among the speaker during the training said, it is still a long way towards empowering the media to appropriately report on LGBT issues.
He cited on the case of Jennifer Laude where she is referred to as Jeffrey Laude, the victim’s real name.
But in several news reports, the victim was always referred in the masculine pronoun.
Tan claims it was disrespectful to Laude’s true self-identification when he was still alive.
Also present during the training was couple Aiza Seguerra and Liza Dino.
The former child star, who has declared himself as a transman, said self-identification among lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender is very important.
“We cannot make people accept us, being us, if we ourselves haven’t found our self-identity,” Seguerra said.
He, together with Liza, conducted the sexual orientation and gender identification and expression (SOGIE) for the media practitioners who attended the one-day forum.
The SOGIE 101 was aimed to make the media practitioners better understand the LGBT community in understanding concepts of gender, its biological dichotomy as well as gender expression.
Meanwhile, Pink Ink is also eyed to get mainstream media involved via consultations with editorial policy makers.
This is supported by the development of a stylebook that mainstream journalists may be able to use when covering LGBT-related issues.
“We are hoping that through Pink Ink, we could somehow effect changes, and strengthen our ranks in fighting for equal rights for LGBT Filipinos,” Tan said. (AHLETTE C.REYES)
