I understand that this postbook thing is here to instigate discussion, however I think it may be highly beneficial if a group of people were to gather and openly discuss issues.
To my dismay, the AGMC resulted in me concluding that it was all very pre-emptive, as most of the speakers I was listening to could not draw links between culture and sexuality and its impact of social, emotion and mental wellbeing.
I do reside to the fact that I missed out of 1/3 of the conference preceedings, but as a worker within the GLBTIQ community the speakers who addressed health and wellbeing were very sketchy.
It is for this reason that I have conluded that there is just nothing out there that is relevant to a culturally diverse, politically-contentious Australian society. That the presenters I watched were blank and could not address anything but their own experiences of homophobia within a culturally diverse society.
I am open to further discussion, but considering the very obvious outcomes of the conference, I would like to hear from people who would be interested in having an open forum to identify the needs if there are any, and the service gaps of the community of people who are from CALD communities and just happen to be queer.
Apologies if this offends, but this is a challenge for all of us.
Hi Andrea, Wish you had the opportunity to stay for the entire conference.
You would have appreciated one of the key recommendations from the conference that "Service Providers, including those that work with the GLBTIQ communities start to understand that working across cultures and diversity is not a marginal issue."
The point that you made has to be addressed and this I guess is the start. We cannot be stuck in a situation where we let "multicultural people" deal with the multicultural issues. Nor can we stop questioning the inability of service providers to address the exact issues you are referring to. I hope that makes sense...
I think this conference is just a start for something even bigger and better in terms of discussing different topics behind sexual identity, sexuality and ethnicity. Some people came up to me and asked me what to do with all these different informations that they got. I think recognition that members of GLBTIQ communty have different issues is a good start. We all need to realise that it's not an easy step to break down the feeling of isolation, rejection, fear, internalised racism and internalised homophobia for ethnic minorities in the GLBTIQ community. That's why we need to be careful when assisting young people of ethnic backgrounds to come to term with their sexuality and ethnicity. Quite often the felt rejected because of their ethnicity with this strong emphasis on 'white is beautiful' that exists in our community. We need to implant the concept of ethnic diversity in our support groups and to let young people know that ethnicity in our GLBTIQ community is a good thing and that different stereotypes against ethnic minorities can be broken down. Maybe through greater understanding and tolerance we can achieve what we all desire, ie, multiculturalism as a healthy part of GLBTIQ community.
