Perspectives of vietnamese facebook users towards lgbt parade expressed under posts about hanoi pride parade

The study analyses 915 comments collected in the comment section under two posts about Hanoi Pride Parade on Hóng Chuyện Hollywood and LGBT Việt Nam.. 3.1.2 Selection of comments 11 CHAP

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HÓA CÁC NƯỚC NÓI TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

QUAN ĐIỂM CỦA NGƯỜI DÙNG FACEBOOK VỀ DIỄU HÀNH PRIDE CỦA CỘNG ĐỒNG LGBT ĐƯỢC BIỂU ĐẠT TRONG PHẦN BÌNH LUẬN DƯỚI BÀI VIẾT VỀ DIỄU

ACCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I: Nguyễn Hồng Hạnh, class QH2016.F1.E10, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Honours program, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s

Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the

care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Secondly, I would like to send a special thanks to my constant companion – Pham Bao Anh for giving constructed advice and encouraging me through all the ups and downs I would also like to pay my special regards to my dearest friends – Nguyen Hai Linh and Vo Thi Truc Quynh for supporting me spiritually throughout my research

Last but not least, I would like to extend my gratitude to family members for their devotion, unconditional love, support and optimism which create a strong motivation for me to fulfill this research

ABSTRACT

This research seeks to explore Vietnamese Facebook users’ perspectives on LGBT Pride Parade when it is publicly discussed on Facebook platform The study analyses 915 comments collected in the comment section under two posts about Hanoi Pride Parade on Hóng Chuyện Hollywood and LGBT Việt Nam Qualitative method was applied in this research to investigate the underlying perspectives of Facebook users The comments express both the support from the public and the prejudices against the Hanoi Pride Parade While more than half of the comments express positive perspectives towards this LGBT social movement, some prejudices can still be found Supporters explain the underlying message of the Hanoi Pride parade and reveal the prejudices that LGBT people still face in contemporary society Ideas in opposing remarks appeal to normativity and trivialize the self-pride and LGBT rights Paradoxically, while expressing supportive attitudes towards the Pride Parade, the commenters reveal their aggressive attitudes towards LGBT protestors and the regional prejudice against the Northern region of Vietnam This has created the circle of prejudices between supporters and objectors and also disclose the sense of cultural inferiority in some Vietnamese people The study contributes to our understanding of the current perspectives of Vietnamese Facebook users about LGBT community

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.2 Statement of research problem and objectives/questions 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.2 Vietnamese social and sexual norms 8

2.3 Public attitudes towards the Pride Parade 8

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1.1 Selection of Facebook’s fan pages 11

3.1.2 Selection of comments 11

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Frequencies and evaluation in comments 13

4.2.2 Social attitudes under supporters’ perspectives 17

4.2.3 Supporters’ attitudes towards objectors 19

4.2 Prejudices of Facebook’s users about Hanoi Pride Parade 22

4.2.1 The standard for being an LGBT 22

4.2.2 Self-pride and LGBT rights 26

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

5.2 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 35

REFERENCES 36

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study

In the ever-growing world of technology, social networking sites have become

an indispensable means of communication in people's daily life Murray and Waller (2007) described social media as virtual communities that create room for people to interact with others who share the same interests Facebook, launched by Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the most popular social networks worldwide It is reported to attract 1.15 billion active users every day on average (Clement, 2019) This social networking site enables users to freely create accounts and reveal their owners’ information It also allows people to express their own opinion, feelings, activities publicly or send messages to other users regardless of time and space Moreover, users may establish their relationship when they join different groups based on their workplace, hobbies, or other categories Thousands of Facebook fan pages are also established to provide people with the latest news every single hour so that users can keep up with the constantly changing world through their Internet devices Furthermore, people can leave comments under friends’ posts or other public ones on Facebook to give a personal perspective or show their attention to a topic (Stroud, Duyn, & Peacock, 2016) In Vietnam, by the end of 2017, the number of Facebook users had accounted for 3% of global Facebook users and shown signs of increasing

in later years (Phuong, 2017) In 2019, it has been reported by Clement that the number of Facebook users in Vietnam reached around 58 million people This rapid increase in the number of users indicates that Facebook has become a part

of the Vietnamese social community

Gender and sexualities have been given so much attention for years as more and more LGBT social movements have been organized The term LGBT (or GLBT)

is an abbreviation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, which was used since the 1990s (Mitchell, 2017) Pride Parade is known as an outdoor event organized by LGBT community and LGBT supporters to celebrate social and

self acceptance of LGBT people along with raising awareness about the LGBT community This event has been annually celebrated in many countries around the world dated back in 1970 in Chicago (Smith, 2019) The Pride Parade was first considered as a political movement to acquire LGBT rights; however, after LGBT community has started to be approved in some countries, the event is now

a special occasion for people to show their pride of being themselves and encourage people to live with their actual sexual identities (Thompson, 2019) Pride Parade has recently been celebrated in Hanoi with hundreds of participants including LGBT people and supporters from Vietnam and other countries (VTV, 2019)

Hanoi Pride Parade is one of the most noticeable social events held by LGBT community in Vietnam (Dao, 2016) Following the step of LGBT community in the world, the first Pride Parade - Viet Pride was organized in 2012 in Hanoi with the aim to connect LGBT people and encourage them to feel proud of their identities (Gia Đình Mới, 2018) Since then, the Pride Parade has become an annual event that spreads out all over big cities in Vietnam such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, etc (Dao, 2016) In September 2019, Hanoi Pride Parade marked Hanoi’s eight-year of organizing this LGBT event with more than

1000 participants (VTV News, 2019) The event aimed to convey spirit of happiness and pride via the theme “I Am Also A We” This event comprised of

a series of activities that lasted for seven days from 16th to 22nd On the first four days, exhibitions, talk shows and workshops were held to provide people with better understanding of the LGBT community The two following days were time for seminars and art performance, which LGBT people and others could share their own opinions and talents The last day of the series of activities was celebrated with walking bicycle parade

1.2 Statement of research problem and objectives/questions

Twenty years ago, homosexuality was considered against the social norms in many countries in the world (Burston, et al., 2017) During that time, LGBT

people had to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault and even extreme violence due to their sexualities In the 21st century, the LGBT community is now receiving more acceptance and legal rights in several countries (Lax & Justin, 2019; Smith, Son, & Kim, 2014) However, despite these supportive acts, anti-gay prejudices do exist, particularly on social networking sites (Hinduja & Patchin, 2011) McHenry (2011) points out that with the unstoppable development of the Internet, a new form of bullying was established He also emphasized that the victimization was extended right to one’s home through computer or personal communication devices After the Hanoi Pride Parade was organized on 22nd September 2019, the news about the parade has attracted a large number of Vietnamese users' attention and created numerous debates in the comments section when they were updated on some Facebook fan pages Hundreds and even thousands of comments presenting their own perspectives were given right after those posts were uploaded In order to find out whether the LGBT Pride Parade is supported or not on the Facebook platform, this research

is going to explore the perspectives of Vietnamese Facebook users on Hanoi Pride Parade posts expressed in Facebook comments The study is going to

answer the question:

What perspectives towards the Pride Parade do Vietnamese Facebook users express in the comment section beneath two posts about Hanoi Pride Parade?

1.3 Scope of the study

For this research, the total of 915 comments under a post about the Hanoi Pride Parade on Hóng Chuyện Hollywood and a repost on LGBT Việt Nam were collected The content of both posts is about the heavy criticisms of the netizens against the Hanoi Pride Parade It also reports that many debates between LGBT supporters and protesters have been raised after the Hanoi Pride Parade was organized The reason for choosing the two mentioned posts is that they were both uploaded publicly on two fan pages with more than two hundred thousand

followers on each page Hence, a large number of users can see the post and freely express their personal perspectives in the comment section Moreover, as the topic was related to a sensitive issue, it holds great attraction from both LGBT people and others Finally, the selected posts attracted a huge amount of contradictory comments which led to further discussions in the reply section As collected comments are written in Vietnamese, they will be translated into English

1.4 Significance of the study

The field related to LGBT has been increasingly concerned by scholars as the LGBT community has more freedom to express themselves to society Many studies in the discipline of media and communication have shown interest in LGBT representations on online platforms along with their influence on people (Chu, 2017; Norton, 2016) The framing of LGBT community was also explored

to reveal the attitude of society toward homosexuality (Baider, 2018) However, more research should be carried out to understand about this community and people’s perception of this community in Vietnam This is because sexuality is considered a sensitive topic in Vietnam and some Vietnamese still hold prejudices towards LGBT (Luong & Pham, 2016; Sen, 2018) Therefore, this thesis is going to uncover the perspectives of Vietnamese users about LGBT Hanoi Pride Parade on Facebook comments In the end, this paper aims to contribute to our understanding about the perspectives of a part of Vietnamese people on Pride Parade in non-anonymous online environments

1.5 Organization

The research paper comprises five chapters

The first chapter - Introduction provides background knowledge about the research topic including the use of Facebook, the popularity of Facebook in Vietnam, the definition of the term LGBT and general information about LGBT Pride Parade, along with the recently LGBT social movement - Hanoi Pride

Parade in Vietnam Additionally, this chapter presents the research problem and question followed by the study’s scope, significance, and organization

In the second chapter - Literature review, the theoretical background of the research is clarified The chapter focuses on explaining the public frames of LGBT community, Vietnamese social and sexual norms, and LGBT social movement in Vietnam

The method applied in this research is explained in detail in chapter three - Methodology The first part of this chapter contains the selection of Facebook’s fan pages, comments as well as the language of the research’s data The second part explains the data analysis procedure

Chapter four - Findings and Discussions reveals major findings of the perspectives of Vietnamese Facebook users on Hanoi Pride Parade based on the collected data Then those findings will be interpreted in light of the previous studies to formulate a deeper understanding of the research and explore their contributions to the field

The last chapter of the research is Conclusion which comprises the summary of the findings The research limitations and suggestions for future studies are also briefly stated in this chapter

CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter elucidated the theoretical background of the research including public frames of LGBT, Vietnamese social and sexual norms, along with LGBT social movements in Vietnam

2.1 Public frames of LGBT people

According to Wallin (2016), people’s judgments are strongly affected by the framing effect Framing has long existed in social perception about the LGBT community and still continues in modern life People frame events, things around them based on their own personal values which are strongly influenced by the society that they live in Though homosexuality and other sexualities have been more accepted than twenty years ago, there are still some stereotypes about them (Ha 2013) Some specific frames about LGBT are a social disease, abnormality,

a negative trend and anti-tradition (Lauren & Shelley, 2016; Faludi, 2016, Davis 2008; Padva 2008; Raley & Lucas 2006)

Disease is defined by Marinker (1975) as “a pathological process which is deviation from a biological norm” (p.82) In short, disease is an abnormality from the original state When considering homosexuality as a disease, people assume that people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc are not normal Baider (2016) finds out that many users called same-sex relationship as “an unhealthy and degenerate practice” (p 83) Some people also think of LGBT as a mental illness

or even an infectious disease that needs to be cured (Faludi, 2016; Luong & Pham, 2015)

Secondly, many studies reveal that the term used to signify people who are heterosexual was “abnormal” (Nguyen, Poteat et al 2016; Institute of Studies for Society, Economy and Environment, 2011b) This term has built a border between “normal person” - heterosexual person and one who belongs to LGBT community Nguyen et al (2016) point out that the term “normal person” is widely used by both sexual majorities - heterosexuality and LGBT community

non-Earlier research concludes that some groups of people believed homosexuality

is an unexpected trend from Western countries (Flaudi, 2016; Ha, 2013; Hortona, Rydstrøma & Toninia, 2015) As the first LGBT social movement started on 28 June 1969 at New York City’s Stonewall Innin, America is considered the cradle

of the gay rights movement (BBC's The Travel Show, 2019) Therefore, many people claim that being LGBT is just a short-lived trend that youngsters temporarily follow to keep up with Western culture

The fourth frame is anti-traditionalism Family values and morality are considered the most important aspects of Vietnamese beliefs However, after the increasing flow of Western culture, these values are claimed to be devastated by homosexuality (Ha, 2013; Horton & Rydstrom 2011) Ha (2013) also finds that people reckoned homosexual people as irresponsible since they can easily break the family relationship whenever they want In Vietnam, the National Assembly

of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 2000 defined a good family as a monogamous, heterosexual couple who voluntarily entered into marriage had no more than two children Therefore, during this period, any form of a family not following this norm was considered a transgression Though the National Assembly of Vietnam passed a law that approved same-sex weddings (VNA, 2018), the social discriminations still exist since some people argue that the “fine customs and beautiful traditions” of Vietnamese culture is violated (Horton & Rydstrom, 2019) Arguments against LGBT believe that human reproduction and the stability of the nation are being threatened by the existence of homosexualism (Horton & Rydstrom, 2019; Faludi, 2016)

Overall, though more than a decade has passed, the LGBT community is still considered as a social stigma, namely disease, abnormality, unfavourable trend, and anti-tradition by some Vietnamese people However, life changes every single day and people have more awareness of the LGBT community Therefore,

it is significant to explore whether those frames still exist or whether people have changed their perspectives towards LGBT

2.2 Vietnamese social and sexual norms

Social norms can be defined as a set of rules which determine the appropriateness

of people's behaviours and attitudes in a community (Pereira, Monteiro & Camino, 2009) Social norms have a great influence on individual ideologies and beliefs, and on the other way round, people’s behaviours reflected their community’s social values (Sherif, 1936/1964)

In terms of sexual norms, as Vietnam experienced a long period of history controlled by China, its sexual norms are strongly influenced by Confucianism (Tran, 2010; Nguyen, 2016) Discrimination against sexual minorities is claimed

to be shaped by the dominant ideology of a community (O’Brien, 2015; Herek and McLemore, 2013) Confucianism is still rooted in people’s philosophies and maintains as a core foundation in Vietnamese modern life (Nguyen 2002; Nguyen & Angelique 2017) Hence, some sexual prejudices exist in contemporary Vietnamese society can be affected by Confucianism Confucian ideology strongly supports heteronormativity and creates fixed roles for men and women in society (Nguyen & Angelique 2017; Adamczyk & Cheng 2015) Additionally, since the social balance and family bloodline are also of paramount importance in Confucianism, heterosexual is asserted to be the only sexual orientation that can fulfill the duty of maintaining these beliefs (Blanc 2005; Feng et al 2012) Due to this value, LGBT people are considered a threat to human reproduction

In short, the Confucian ideology has strongly affected Vietnamese norms, especially sexual ones Based on the mentioned research, it can be concluded that heteronormativity has long been rooted in Vietnamese society

2.3 Public attitudes towards the Hanoi Pride Parade

More and more countries have organized Pride parades as time went by (Thompson, 2019) Engel (2001) claims that the Pride parade is considered the foundation rituals for all LGBT activities around the world as it has encouraged

people to live with their true identities This social movement not only provides LGBT community an opportunity for social visibility but also enhances social connection along with blending together political aspects (Grupo Estudios Sobre Sexualidad, 2006)

Unfortunately, though the Pride parades are encouraged by New York and Stockholm’s politicians and citizens, the Pride parades provoke great hostility from the public in some other places (Lundberg, 2007) The Pride parades in Auckland were described as being “excessive, grotesque, and sleazy, and not infrequently injurious to health” (Brickell, 2000, p 167) Many other parades such as ones in Zagreb, Mexico, Rome, or Moscow have been opposed due to reasons like political beliefs and traditional values (Johnston, 2005) Johnston (2005) also states that because of religious beliefs, the Pride parade has received distaste and repudiation when it is organized

Based on the previous research, it can be seen that though the Pride Parade carries a meaningful message, not all parts of the public can accept this LGBT social movement since it is considered anti-traditionalism as well as going against political and religious beliefs

2.4 LGBT movement in Vietnam

As mentioned in the previous chapter, LGBT’s social movements are now more widespread than twenty years ago Snow, Soule and Kriesi (2014) defined the social movement as “one of the principal social forms through which collectives give voice to their grievances and concerns about the rights, welfare, and wellbeing of themselves and others by engaging in various types of collective action” (p 3) By fostering the representation of LGBT on social media, this community is now trying to transform the negative prejudices of society Since the LGBT representation rapidly expands on online platforms, especially Facebook, LGBT identities are more and more accessible (Sender, 2012)

In the Vietnamese setting, the tolerance towards homosexualism is more than what people can find in Western countries (Khuat, Le & Nguyen, 2009, p 305) Although some negative frames remain, it can be observed in daily life that members of LGBT community can confidently appear on TV shows, movies, at festivals; gay, lesbian, transgender people receive more recognition by society (Laurent, 2008) In Vietnam, numerous LGBT social movements have been organized to break the stereotypes about LGBT community and support LGBT people In 2008, the project “For a Positive Image of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people in Vietnam” organized by the Institute for Studies

of Society, Economics and Environment (iSEE) received great attention from the society and became an initial achievement of the LGBT community (Horton et

al 2015) Later on, many more social movements started to rise namely The Viet Pride (2012), LGBT: Legislative Provisions and Community Viewpoints Workshop (2013), a series of activities in Hanoi Pride Parade (2019), etc In June 2014, the National Assembly of Vietnam passed a new law that allows same-sex couples to organize wedding ceremonies and live together Although they have not been considered a legal family yet, this support has encouraged many LGBT people to come out as their true identities (Vietnamese National Assembly, 2018)

To sum up, when looking at the positive side, LGBT representation is publicly discussed by many scholars Also, through earlier studies, the social movements

of LGBT show a rise in recent years However, research about people’s attitudes towards recent LGBT events is necessary since social prejudices still exist, especially when they are discussed in an open platform like Facebook

CHAPTER 3 - METHODOLOGY 3.1 Data collection procedure

3.1.1 Selection of Facebook’s posts and fan pages

To answer the question stated in the previous part, a detailed analysis was conducted on the total of 915 comments and sub comments collected from two Facebook posts of online users about the Hanoi Pride Parade from September 29th, 2019 to November 6th 2019

The first page is Hóng Chuyện Hollywood, an open fan page that attracts thousands of followers who are interested in news about Hollywood showbiz and Western famous celebrities Its recent uploading about the Hanoi Pride Parade

on 29th September 2019 has drawn great attention from a huge number of users The post received 9.700 likes, 4.200 angry icons, 1.700 sad icons, 302 smile icons, 66 hearts, 50 wow icons along with 6.800 comments and sub-comments, 3.600 shares up to 6th November 2019 The post revealed that the parade had come under numerous harsh criticisms from the netizens Its writer also added a picture of the objectors’ comments as evidence Moreover, to provided readers with an overview of the heated debates between the supporters and protestors the comments from both sides were copied in the post Without taking any stance, the writer only describes the situation to ask for users’ opinion

A day later, this update was reposted on another fan page – LGBT Việt Nam LGBT Việt Nam is established in order to support and connect the LGBT community along with sharing more information about LGBT to other genders and sexualities The page has followers from both LGBT and heterosexual people in Vietnam The repost on this fan page also attract many users as it has 3.300 reaction icons, 817 comments and sub-comments, and 316 shares after only a month and a half

3.1.2 Selection of comments

As mentioned in the previous part, the total comments under the post on Hóng Chuyện Hollywood were 6.800 and the ones under the post on LGBT Việt Nam were 817 However, after the process of collecting data, this thesis would only focus on investigating 286 comments from LGBT Việt Nam and 629 comments from Hóng Chuyện Hollywood The first reason for this limitation of selected comments was due to the inconsistency of the comments’ forms Remarks under posts consisted of sentences, pictures, graphics interchange format (GIF) and even name tagging However, this research would only take written comments expressing attitudes related to the topic into consideration The second cause of the mentioned problem was Facebook commenting policy Each fan page has its own administrators who are allowed to hide the comments from visitors; hence, not all comments can be seen without administrators’ permission

3.1.3 The language of data

As the comments are written in Vietnamese, all selected ones were translated into English

3.2 Data analysis procedure

To address the questions of this research, qualitative content analysis was carefully adopted during the process of examining the collected data Qualitative analysis allows researchers to uncover the ideas of commenters based on their comments Therefore, during the process of analyzing data, each comment was reread several times to explore the commenter’s conveyed idea and his/her perspectives towards the topic Deductive coding was applied to find out the themes by using frames from previous studies as codes to look at the collected data However, to reduce bias, new ideas in each comment were also noted down Then the shared ones arising in the comments were gathered as groups After categorizing the selected data, I divided them into two main sets of themes The first one was about the supportive ideas to the Hanoi Pride Parade and the other one was about the opposing comments

CHAPTER 4 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the analysis of dominant opinions in comments under two chosen posts on LGBT Việt Nam and Hóng Chuyện Hollywood is presented The chapter focuses on the support from the public and prejudices of Facebook’s users about Hanoi Pride Parade Finally, the findings are carefully discussed in comparison with the theoretical research to provide a profound understanding of this research

4.1 Frequencies and evaluation in comments

In the comments examined, the number of comments expressing positive attitudes towards the LGBT community and the Hanoi Pride Parade is dominant with 583 comments accounting for 64% of the total remarks On the other hand, there are only 36% of the comments shows opposition to the event

Table 1: Number of collected comments expressing supportive

and opposing perspectives

Fan page Supportive

comments

Opposing comments Total

frequency of words and phrases with the similar meaning which are repeated more than 10 occurrences in all collected comments

Table 2: Number of occurrences of main lexical items in the comments

Number of occurrences

Lexical items (>

10 occurrences) Translation Total Support

comments

Opposing comments

138 138 0 dân trí thấp, lạc

hậu, cổ hủ

low intellectual intelligence, old-fashioned

bình thường, sống như người bình thường

be normal, live normally

105 24 81 lố lăng, làm quá,

làm màu, làm lố

extreme, exaggerate, overdo

Nam – Bắc, Hà Nội – Hồ Chí Minh/Sài Gòn

The South – The North, Hanoi – Ho Chi Minh City

The data reveal that the highest frequency refers to “LGBT” which is mostly presented in supporters’ comments In contrast, the term “LGBTQ+” is only mentioned in 11 comments This umbrella term is used to refer to all sexual orientation beside lesbian, gay, bigender and transgender (John Hopkins University, n.d.) It can be seen from the data that the term “LGBTQ+” is not widely used by Vietnamese Facebook users, even by supporters

The second highest occurrence is “low intellectual standard” Surprisingly, these phrases are only used in positive comments which support the LGBT community and LGBT social events Another phrases - “The North – The South / Hanoi –

Ho Chi Minh City” are also constantly repeated by supporters The number of occurrences of the two words “normal” and “exaggerate” respectively place in the third and the fourth position These words are mainly presented by objectors

to express their perspectives against LGBT community and the Hanoi Pride parade

4.2 Support from the public

The support of the parade is expressed in a total of 583 comments, which is equivalent to 64% of all analysed ones As the fan page LGBT Việt Nam is established to share information and encourage LGBT community, there are more positive attitudes than negative ones Specifically, 224 out of 286 comments express encouragement, which accounts for nearly 78% of the fan page’s selected remarks While the target audience of the fan page Hóng Chuyện Hollywood is more diverse, the supportive remarks are 359, which comprise 57% of the total comments on this page

4.2.1 More than a parade

Among the supportive comments under the posts about Hanoi Pride parade on two fan pages, 24 remarks show positive views towards the parade by explaining the underlying meaning of this LGBT social movement

Actually, Pride is not organized to cry for equal rights or support for

LGBT community Pride is established to give people in the community

a chance to live with their true selves and be proud of themselves It is

not about being proud of being gay or lesbian No matter what type of

sexual orientation we are, we are still human Since we were kids, there

have been a lot of stereotypes about sexual identities like “boys have to

do this” or “girls have to be like that”; but nobody knows that LGBT

people have to withstand lots of social pressure and stress That’s the

reason why Pride was organized We do not need equal rights or your

pitifulness WE JUST WANT TO LIVE WITH OUR TRUE SEXUAL

You think that you have the right to freely claim yourself gay without

any helps? Lots of people have shed blood, sweat and tears to fight for

equal rights, to fight for social recognition Society does not naturally

have a positive view towards LGBT Please understand that this parade

is not about being proud that LGBT is more superior than others, it is

about being proud of the whole community that brought everything we

have today and in this parade they want to share happiness (Hoang)

The extracted comment above shows the user’s offense at commenters who claims themselves gay but expresses opposition to the Hanoi Pride Parade His/Her opinion affirms that “blood, sweat and tears” are what pioneers have to trade-off for the equality and recognition some LGBT can receive in the present day According to the commenter, the main motivation of the Hanoi Pride Parade

is to show great appreciation and take pride in people who have brought LGBT community closer to society He/She also states that the activity is about “sharing happiness” to all people regardless of their sexual preference The personal pronoun “we” is also presented in his saying to reinforce his strong stance Overall although each supporter used different words to clarify the meaningful message of the Hanoi Pride Parade, they all try to convey the idea of holding one’s head up high no matter what sexual orientations a person is Besides, though the number of comments explaining the event’s purpose only makes up 4.1% (24 out of 583) of the supportive comments, it suggests that there is still a lack of understanding in Vietnamese society about the Hanoi Pride parade

4.2.2 Social attitudes under supporters’ perspectives

Among 583 supportive comments analyzed on both fan pages, 96 comments point out the commenters’ perspective on society situation These comments reveal the bitter reality that inequality and prejudices for LGBT community still exist in daily life

I was there that day I showed my support and they smiled at me and

thanked me But other people looked at me discriminatingly Some

college students were also whispering behind my back I felt sad for

them (Linh)

The user confirms to be a participant in the Hanoi Pride parade to show her