Shin Thant tried to create a metaphor for the experience of feeling culturally excluded and vilified on the big screen. It went like this; A transgender person who goes to the cinema to see a Myanmar comedy would want to duck out of the theatre at the end before anyone could see them, such would be the shame and fear.

Shin Thant, an LGBT activist, said, “The treatment of LGBT people on the big screen makes that minority feel very unwelcome and unhappy”.

Indeed, the treatment of minorities and LGBT individuals in Myanmar cinema is notoriously grim, with miraculous corrective ‘cures’ often eliminating non-hetero-normative identities completely, or making gay individuals into fools or mincing gossips. It goes without saying that repeated, unvaried negative portrayals leads to the common acceptability of obscene language and attitudes towards LGBT people, the thin end of the wedge in promoting hatred and violence. Read more via Myanmar Times