自去年10月國內首條女同性戀者咨詢800免費熱線在上海開通后，“拉拉”群體開始引起社會的關注。這條熱線全部由女同性戀志愿者接聽，熱線義工多數具有專業背景，所有義工都接受過專業培訓。如今，中國同性戀正處于一種慢慢“浮出水面”的狀態，如各大城市都有同性戀酒吧，網上則有很多同性戀網站和論壇。但是，為數不少的女同性戀者卻仍然“躲在柜中”，成為社會關注的盲點。相對于男同性戀者而言，女同性戀者承受著更大的家庭和精神壓力，更屬于社會“邊緣群體”中的“弱勢群體”。

A Chinese movie on lesbians,directed by Liyu

Between 2 pm and 4 pm every Saturday, the volunteer is busy at her office desk in Xinjiang Road in Shanghai. She has to attend to all the calls from women from across the country, and advise them how to solve their personal and inter-personal problems.

She is one of two volunteers on the shift manning a hotline that was opened on October 25 last year, and has to answer five to six calls in two hours. But her job is different from others because all the callers arelesbians.

And she too, like her colleagues, is one of them. The only difference is that the volunteers have undergone thorough psychological, medical and legal training.

"We have a dozen volunteers and are recruiting more," officer-in-charge Shen Yimu said yesterday. Shen is from Hong Kong's Chi Heng Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to improving the lives ofhomosexualsand AIDS orphans. The NGO was started by To Chung in 1998 to provide education and care to children whose parents had died of AIDS.

The callers on the hotline can be teenagers to women in their forties. They seek counsel for their relationships,gynecological diseasesand legal matters, Shen said.

But most of the callers are desperate middle-aged women married and even withbiological childrenbeingblackmailedfor disclosing their lesbian identity.

"Lesbians are a very weak group. They are almost neglected by society," Shen said.

While male homosexuals are more daring, and demand their rights, lesbians tend to keep everything under wraps.

Shen said the greatest pressure on lesbians comes from the family. To many, homosexuals are a social malaise, and lesbians are nothing but a familystigma.

When a lesbian college student told her father about herself, he broke down and had to be admitted to hospital to be treated for shock and depression. He recovered only when his daughter swore to lead a "normal" social life.

Zhang Beichuan of the Qingdao University, said that while gays have attracted much attention and get more understanding and help, lesbians are lonely and helpless.

So far no official organization has come forward to help this group, not even the Women's Federation, Zhang said. They can only try to solve their problems by discussing them at group gatherings, nightclubs and online chatting.

A hotline can do little to change such a situation. "It's more like a garbage can in which lesbians can throw their pains," Shen said. "But it also offers an outlet where they can vent their feelings."

（China Daily）

Vocabulary:

lesbian：女同性戀

homosexual：同性戀

gynecological diseases：婦科疾病

biological children：親生子

blackmail：詐騙、勒索

stigma：恥辱、污點

（英語點津陳蓓編輯）