The Advocate recently wrote about the testimony of lesbians from Ecuador who were forced into “prey away the gay” camps. These women report being raped, starved, handcuffed, and forced to dress like prostitutes during the “curative” process. Thanks to an outcry from Ecuadorian and international LGBT organizations, a few of the clinics have been shut down since the international spotlight has shone upon them, but many reportedly remain open. El Tiempo reports that many victims are reluctant to come forward because they don’t want to denounce their parents, who forced them into the clinics in the first place.
The French website that originally broke the story reported that
clinics have also enclosed gays and transvestites and trans people, but on a smaller scale, “probably because they get to leave the family earlier than girls,” says Tatiana [Velasquez, of the lesbian organization Taller de Comunicacion Mujer].
As if it weren’t hard enough to be gay in a homophobic culture, if you’re a gay woman in a homophobic and misogynistic culture, you’re that much more easily trapped and victimized. Homophobia: a weapon of sexism.
Change.org has begun a petition, which you can sign here (there’s another one at Credo), to get Ecuador’s Minister of Health to shut down the clinics and force his country to stop brutalizing its lesbian citizens in this way.
