BEIJING, Feb. 12, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BlueCity, a world-leading LGBTQ community platform providing a full suite of services to foster connections and enhance the well-being of the LGBTQ community, launch the “Let Love Go Home” campaign, which pushes for greater LGBTQ acceptance and understanding among the families of community members in China as the country celebrates.
The campaign intends to offer information and services to support the LGBTQ community in their journey to coming out as well as other issues they might face during the festive season and beyond.
This comes as survey data released today by the brand reveals that 40% of LGBTQ respondents in China will avoid returning home for this year’s Spring Festival (Feb 11-17) and 80% want to go home during the Chinese New Year in normal years despite the pressure and tension they receive from typically conservative family members related to their sexual orientation and gender identity.
Polling 417 users aged 18-40 across the brand’s social apps Blued and LESDO, as well as other social media platforms, BlueCity discovered that:
- Over 70% of respondents still have not come out to their families.
- Despite most respondents still choosing to go home each year, nearly half of them have a complicated attitude toward going home, and the emotional need to go home is more of a dispensable state for them.
- Relatively strained family relationships have emerged as the main cause for not wanting to go home, with relatives gossiping, parents pressuring users to marry and organizing forced blind dates ranking as the top 3 factors.
Commenting on the survey findings and the campaign, Baoli Ma, founder, chairman, and chief executive of BlueCity, said: “The fast-approaching Spring Festival is usually a time of joyful reunion for families across China, but for many members of the LGBTQ community returning home can present an intense struggle between the self and family acceptance, which stops them from being able to express their true selves and develop self-confidence in their daily lives.”
“Deeply concerned by this, we recently launched the “Let Love Go Home” campaign, hoping to help our community members to find a greater sense of belonging at home and cultivate more family acceptance for the unique people they are, by reconciling older generations with a more modern, truer sense of what “love” really is.”
On Jan 30, BlueCity livestreamed an online roundtable session between an openly gay influencer, Jun Yuanbai, and his mother, who together candidly discussed his coming out experience. They were joined by Panda, head of the Rainbow Institute for ending SOGI-based violence and Li Chunjian of the Zhuangni Counseling Center who went on to answer users’ questions about how to come out to their families – covering how to prepare for coming out and avoiding conflict or misunderstandings, to building greater acceptance among traditionally minded relatives.
In addition to the livestreaming event, BlueCity also shared helpful resources, such as related toolkits and hotlines information, on its apps and social media platforms.
The latest campaign follows BlueCity’s previous work to tackle problems facing the broader LGBTQ community, which saw the brand in November 2020 pledging to donate one million yuan (nearly 152,300 USD) to further carry out HIV-prevention education and control in the lead-up to World AIDS Day.
In June 2020, BlueCity also held its first-ever global online pride event #StayProud: A Virtual Pride Experience, inviting users around the world to unite and celebrate the diversity of the community. All proceeds from the event were donated to the Los Angeles LGBT Center to support LGBTQ people experiencing food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
About BlueCity
BlueCity (NASDAQ: BLCT) is a world-leading online LGBTQ platform providing a full suite of services to foster connections and enhance the wellbeing of the LGBTQ community through its portfolio of brands. BlueCity’s mobile app Blued enables users to conveniently and safely connect with each other, express themselves and access professional health-related and family planning consulting services. Available in 13 languages, it has more than 58 million registered users worldwide and is the largest online LGBTQ community in China, India, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. BlueCity’s portfolio of brands also includes Finka, a leading gay social networking app for a younger generation in China, and LESDO, a leading lesbian social networking app in China.
For more information, please contact BlueCity Holdings Limited at:
Vincent Tang: Tangyue@blued.com
Kent Sun: KSun@webershandwick.com