Signaling Towards a Gay Future: SiGNeL and the Singaporean Gay Community
By Chris Tan
koktan@uiuc.edu
May 12, 2004
Introduction
“Singapore,” Leong (1997: 142) writes, “appears to
be the last frontier in the Asian region for positive gay and lesbian
developments”. For a country of Singapore’s Asian Tiger stature, it
remains an anomaly of post-modernity. Singapore’s GDP per capita last year
was US$20,000 (Statistics Singapore, 2003). Life expectancy was 78 years,
while male and female enrolment rates in primary education stood at 95% and
93% respectively (World Bank, 2003a). These statistics compare favorably with
those of other developed nations. The GDP per capita for the United States as
US$37,600 (CIA, 2003). Life expectancy was also at 78 years, and the male and
female primary education enrolment rates were 101% each (World Bank,
2003b).
Yet even as US politics roils in the wake of its Supreme Court decision to
strike down Texan anti-sodomy laws and at the prospects of legalized gay
marriage, homosexuality remains a crime punishable with life sentences in
Singapore because of antiquated laws inherited from its former British
colonial masters.
“Sexuality, identity, and human rights”, Offord
(2003: 133) asserts, “are presently being taken up as crucial sites of
intervention by queer Southeast Asians” (see also Adam, et al,
1999;
Altman, 2000; and Offord and Cantrell, 2001). The fact that these sites call
for more individual privacy inevitably runs counters to the kind of highly
interventionist policies that the Singaporean government undertakes. How then
does the gay community in Singapore negotiate the tensions that arise between
its need to claim its own separate identities and the heavy hetero-normative
policies of the government? “A repressive and oppressive climate of
homophobia,” Leong (1995: 12) notes, “tends to drive gay men and lesbians
underground”. Singapore is however a highly wired country. In 2001, it had a
connection rate of 89%, the second highest in the world following Hong Kong at
90% (McDonald, 2002). It should come as no surprise that instead of receding
into the dark corners of the island, the gay community took its struggle off
the ground and into cyberspace. Of the many Internet sites that now serve the
many needs of the community, SiGNeL (i.e. Singapore Gay News List) is
the primary new list that deals with political issues. In the interests of
space and time, this paper will conclude by critically examining how SiGNeL
functions as a site for identity-making.
“Crime
Against the Order of Nature”
Singapore was a British colony from 1810 to 1959 when it
was granted self-governance. Singapore did not become a full-fledged
independent nation until 1965 when it left the Malayan Federation. In England,
sodomy was criminalized since 1533 with a maximum penalty of death. It took
more than 300 years for this death penalty to be removed, but legal punishment
continued to take the forms of imprisonment and flogging (Warner, 1983:
79).
In 1957, the Wolfenden Report recommended the decriminalization of consensual
private sexual acts between men over 21 years old (public solicitation
continues to be criminalized). This proposal was enacted ten years later.
In a survey of the social and legal position of gays and
lesbians in 202 countries, Tielman and Hammelburg (1993) observe that English
legislation against homosexuality has had a negative impact on the legal
status of these groups in former British colonies. Like most other former
colonies, the then-infantile Singapore found it expedient to adopt the laws of
its former colonial master as the basis of its own Constitution. These laws
include the archaic anti-sodomy ones that provide an institutional basis for
the legal prohibition of homosexuality in Singapore. Homosexual acts are
charged under two sections of the Penal Code (Cap. 224) (Singapore Statutes
Online):
Section
377 (Unnatural Offences): Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against
the order of nature with any man, woman or animals, shall be punished with
imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment for a term which may extend to
10 years, and shall also be liable to fine.
Explanation:
Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to
the offence described in this section.
Section
377A (Outrages on Decency): Any male person who, in public or private,
commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the
commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another
male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend
to 2 years.
The range of crimes that can be construed as “unnatural
offences” is very broad. It includes but is not limited to rape, consensual
fellatio and anal sex. In Kunagasuntharam vs. PP
(1992), the accused
was sentenced to 14 years and 24 strokes of the cane for rape, 6 years for
fellatio and another 8 years for anal intercourse. In the 1995 case of PP.
vs. Victor Rajoo, the accused was acquitted but subsequently convicted of
abduction, rape, theft, and robbery and convicted only of having oral sex with
a woman. On the basis of the woman’s weak and inconsistent testimony, the
judge ruled that she had probably consented to sexual intercourse. Consent was
however not an element of the oral sex charge. In the end, Rajoo was jailed
for 6 months and fined S$2,000 for fellatio. This ruling had two implications.
It suggested that a person could be charged for fellatio even if the act is
consensual and performed between heterosexual adults in private. It also
implied all sexual acts other than vaginal sex are “unnatural” and
punishable under Section 377.
These implications raised a range of issues (The
Straits Times, 1995a and 1995b). Oral sex is common enough a practice in
the bedroom that a high proportion of the married couples would have been
guilty of it under Section 377. Even if they had not tried it, what if oral
sex became an issue in marital disputes and divorce proceedings? If fellatio
is historically embedded in Chinese culture as “playing the flute”, why
should it be considered a crime “against the order of nature”? Indeed,
“Section 377 was shown to be itself unnatural, imposed from another cultural
tradition and anachronistic in the contemporary setting” (Leong, 1997:
129).
The issue of fellatio was resolved when a defense lawyer asked the court to
rule in the interests of the public whether oral sex between two heterosexual
parties is an offence or not (The Straits Times,
1995c). Justice Lai
Kew Chai admitted that as long as the act is used as “a prelude to natural
sex”, it is permissible. When pressed to clarify the statement that fellatio
between two consenting adults is an offence or not, his reply was more
non-committed: “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it” (The
Straits Times, 1995d).
Whereas Section 377 targets both heterosexual and
homosexual couples, Section 377a singles men out. Like “unnatural
offences”, “gross indecency” is equally undefined. From the sting
operations that the police carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s
however, it implicitly includes oral sex between men, mutual masturbation and
touching the genitals of another male. In the AIDS panic following the first
reported case of AIDS infection in 1985 (Heng, 2001: 84), the government
embarked on a misguided attempt to control homosexuality on the belief that
AIDS was a homosexual-only disease and that this would halt its spread. A
number of gay clubs was forced to close for no apparent reason. Niche,
for example, had its liquor license revoked and it is believed that this was
in reaction to the first reported AIDS death in Singapore (Heng, 2001:
85). Shadows,
on the other hand, did not have its lease renewed in 1992 despite it being the
most popular gay disco at the time. Leong (1995: 16) attributes its closure to
what Stan Sesser wrote in New Yorker earlier that year. Sesser (1992:
56) had alluded to Shadows when he argued that despite Singapore’s strict
governmental control, there were some free-spirited undercurrents.
The police also began conducting entrapment operations.
It sent very young male constables in revealing attire (i.e. shorts and tank
tops) to loiter around parks, public bathrooms and shopping malls. Making eye
contact to signal interest and striking conversations with cruising gay men,
these agents provocateur arrest their unsuspecting victims the moment they
were touched on the buttocks or genitals. The charge was use of criminal force
to outrage one’s modesty. If the cruising gay man did not touch the
decoy’s genitals despite the provocation, the police might invoke Section 19
(soliciting in a public place) of the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and
Nuisance) Act (Cap. 184). This Section covers both prostitution, where money
is involved in the transaction, and soliciting “for any other immoral
purpose”, where a proposition for sex is made without monetary transaction.
This offence carries a fine of up to S$1000, doubling on a subsequent
conviction, and includes a jail term of no more than 6 months. If the cruiser
used a symbolic gesture to signal sexual interests with the decoy, he could be
tried under Section 294A of the Penal Code. Originally a Section called
“obscene songs”, it now includes the commission of any obscene act in any
public place to the annoyance of others. The punishment here is a maximum of 3
months’ jail time, a fine, or both (Leong, 1997: 131).
The worst of the sting operations was carried out in
March 1992. Ten policemen were deployed at the East Coast Parkway beach where
gay men were known to cruise. The police worked alongside the news media in
this ambush. The March 9 and 10 editions of The New Paper reported
eight arrests and published face-snapshots of four of them. It is clear from
these media reports that there is a symbiotic relationship between the news
media and the police. Since the published pictures were taken at the scene of
the raid, it was speculated that journalists from the sensationalist press
(i.e. the English-language The New Paper, the Mandarin-language Lianhe
Wanbao and Shin Min Daily News) had orchestrated such media events.
Acting as “moral entrepreneurs”, or people who make rules of behavior (Becker, 1963:
147), these journalists alerted the police to the “scene of
the crime”. The police, obliged to respond to the “complaint”, conducted
a raid. The journalists were therefore present to report and photograph the
“ambush”. In the end, the consequences of the raid went far beyond the
S$1,000 fine that was slapped on each of the eight men. So great was the shame
that one of the four men whose incriminating picture was published committed
suicide (Leong, 1995: 15 – 6).
It is unknown the actual number of arrests the police
made over the years. From 1974 to 1986, the government published an annual Statistical
Report on Crime in Singapore. Now, access to these figures is now granted
only by the Criminal Intelligence Unit of the Criminal Investigation
Department on very special grounds, with the added proviso that these figures
are not to be published in any form (Leong, 1997: 128). Between 1990 and 1994
however, the newspapers reported 67 convictions of homosexuals stemming from
police undercover activities. The punishment ranged from fines between S$200
to S$1,000 to caning (see The Straits Times,
1993). These 67 cases were
very likely to be just a minute fraction of the total convicted, since
reporting depends on such exigencies on the news collectors as whether or not
there were more interesting news that day. The majority of those arrested also
pleaded guilty in order to avoid the shaming glare of the media inherent in
trials and appeals (Leong, 1997: 132).
One would notice that lesbians were never convicted.
Section 377A is applicable only to men, and the courts have only punished men
for same-sex acts. This is not to say that lesbianism is legal. In principal,
certain lesbian acts are punishable under Section 20 of the Miscellaneous
Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act (Cap. 184), which refers to
“riotous, disorderly or indecent behavior” in a public setting. The
punishment is a fine not exceeding S$1000 or imprisonment not exceeding one
year (Singapore Statutes Online). In 1993, The New Paper
reported two girls kissing and fondling each other in a public swimming pool.
Since the girls were not identified, no police action was taken. In reality
however, the impact of the legal omission of lesbianism goes beyond court
cases. Leong (1995: 14) writes:
The legal omission of lesbianism
amounts to the symbolic annihilation of lesbians: officially, lesbians do
not exist in Singapore. Silence, or the absence of discourse on lesbianism
is no better than the legal oppression of male homosexuality: it is
representative in itself by way of denying the existence of another form of
human sexuality, thought and behavior.
Traditional
Media
Despite the anti-sodomy laws and the AIDS panic-inspired
police raids, the government does have a certain tolerance for homosexuality.
No matter how discreet their façades may be, the numerous gay bathhouses and
clubs that now dot Singapore’s urban landscape cannot operate without the
government’s tacit agreement. Indeed, I have heard some gay Singaporeans
commenting that the government is wary of something akin to the Stonewall
Riots might happen and ruin Singapore’s reputation as a politically stable
business center. The government therefore allows these gay businesses because
they act as important safety valves for disgruntled gay Singaporeans to let
off steam in an otherwise homophobic and repressive environment.
This tolerance for homosexuality is however balanced with
a strict suppression of homosexual representation in traditional media. The
Media Development Authority (MDA) administers a series of guidelines for both
traditional media like television, and new ones like the Internet. For
television, the Free-to-Air and Cable TV Program Codes stipulate that any
television programming must be congruent with such national objectives as the
observation of societal and moral standards as well as the promotion of
positive family values. The use of “guidelines” here to describe the
MDA codes is however misleading. “Guidelines” by definition are suggestive
but not legally binding. Yet depending on the severity of the violation, any
breach of these codes can attract fines ranging from S$1,000 to S$50,000. On
16 March 2003, MediaWorks TV broadcasted an in-depth interview with Anne Heche
that featured a significant discussion of the actress’s life with Ellen
DeGeneres. MDA subsequently found MediaWorks TV guilty of “[glamorizing] the
lesbian relationship between Anne and Ellen and [portraying] them as role
models”. It slapped the company with a hefty S$15,000 fine, even though the
program was about Heche’s life and hardly pornographic at all. What these
guidelines effectively do then is to prevent the media from portraying
homosexuality in a positive light. In a press release about the MediaWorks TV
fine, MDA states that “while information, themes or subplots on
homosexuality or lesbianism may be explored, the Code disallows content that
promotes, justifies and glamorizes such alternative lifestyles”.
For the printed media, the Singaporean legal system has
also demonstrated over the years its capabilities in censuring publications
for printing inappropriate material. In October 1994, International Herald
Tribune published an opinion piece written by an American academic about
Asian repressive regimes that have a “compliant judiciary”. Although
neither Singapore nor any specific persons were named in this piece, the
editor, printer and distributor of the newspaper were charged. The academic
himself was fined S$10,000 for contempt of court and was subjected to an
S$100,000 libel suit by Lee Kuan Yew (Lingle, 1996). Other publications like Time,
Newsweek, Asian Wall Street Journal and The Economist
have also been subjected to similar treatment (Leong, 1997:
128). Asia Watch,
a New York-based human rights watchdog organization, notes in 1989 that
besides banning and censoring magazines and newspapers, and applying heavy
fines to unruly editors for defamation, the Singaporean government is also
known to bar journalists from entering Singapore as a strategy of restraint.
Having been long whipped into submission, local traditional media therefore
perform a role drastically different from their counterparts in the United
States. Leong (1997: 139) writes:
In America, most journalists
perceive themselves as muckrakers or whistle-blowers exposing corruption,
political scandals, and unfair monopolies. The press thus assumes an
adversarial position against politicians and big corporations. In contrast,
the Singapore press tends to take a celebratory position toward public
officials. Negative reporting of politicians, policy, or the nation in
general is not the order of the day.
The laudatory stance towards politicians is however
predicted upon a confrontational “us” versus “them” attitude”. The
West is portrayed as foreign devils and an influence on the population
responsible for “evils” ranging from causing Singapore’s national
downfall to the spread of homosexuality and AIDS. The facts that declining
birth rates are a characteristic common to all industrialized countries, and
that the major ethnic groups in Singapore (i.e. the Chinese, the Malays, and
the Indians) all have their own historically entrenched same-sex cultural
traditions (see Baba, 2001; Dynes and Donaldson,
1992; Hinsch, 1990; Khan,
2001; Ruan, 1997) were conveniently forgotten. Indeed, “the deployment of
that representation as a focus of difference between Asian and Western
cultural values and attitudes” (Offord, 2003: 134 –
5) forms the basis of
what is popularly called the “Great Marriage Debate” in the early 1980s.
In 1983, Lee Kuan Yew accused the country’s mothers of jeopardizing the
country’s future by willfully distorting the patterns of biological
reproduction. According to him, Singapore’s highly educated women, defined
as those with college education, were failing to either marry or bearing more
than 1.65 children per couple. As such, they were not reproducing in
sufficient numbers to secure their self-replacement in the population. On the
other hand, women of “no education” (i.e. those who did not complete the
equivalent of an elementary school education) and only primary education were
having 3.5 children and 2.7 children each respectively. This far outstripped
those Lee called the “graduate mothers” (Heng and
Devan, 1992: 344 - 5).
The problem here is this. Lee reasoned that because
graduate women have completed their college education, their genetic stock
must be superior to those women who did not. Un-apologetically eugenic, he
argued that in not reproducing enough, these educated women would cause the
few remaining intelligent Singaporeans in the future to be “increasingly
swamped by a seething, proliferating mass of the unintelligent, untalented,
and genetically inferior” (Heng and Devan, 1992: 345). Since Singapore had
few resources other than manpower, Lee (The Straits Times,
1983)
warned:
If we continue to reproduce
ourselves in this lopsided way, we will be unable to maintain our present
standards. Levels of competence will decline. Our economy will falter, the
administration will suffer, and the society will decline. For how can we
avoid lowering performance when for every two graduates (with some
exaggeration to make the point), in 25 years’ time there will be one
graduate, and for every two educated workers, there will be three?
The root of the problem, in Lee’s opinion, was the
Western education that the educated women had received. He believed that such
an education was steeped in decadent individualism, which in turn caused the
educated women to resist marriage when they should have behaved like good
women of Confucian upbringing, gotten married and borne children. Indeed, Lee
openly reminisced the past when families would enforce their daughters’
marriages by arranging such unions for them. He also regretted how his
government’s decision to allow women’s suffrage and universal education
relinquished to women some control over their biological destinies:
When we adopted these policies they
were manifestly right, enlightened and the way forward for the future. With
the advantage of blinding hindsight, educating everybody, yes, absolutely
right. Equal employment opportunities, yes, but we shouldn’t get our women
into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers … You just
can’t be doing a full-time, heavy job like that of a doctor or engineer
and run a home and bring up children … we must think deep and long on the
profound changes we have unwittingly set off.
Lee went as far as to think of reintroducing polygyny
even though it had been outlawed since the passing of the 1961 Women’s
Charter. He openly admired the Chinese patriarchs of the past whose retinues
of wives, concubines and illegitimate children were proof of both their
virility and genetic superiority (The Straits Times,
1983).
A decade later, the tensions between Western “decadent”
liberalism and the East Asian Confucian logic of family reproduction would
form the crux of the so-called “Asian values” debate of the 1990s, where
Singapore was a particularly vocal proponent. Singapore’s elder statesman
Lee Kuan Yew had insisted that East Asian Confucian values are different from
Western ones. In doing so, he drew upon that strand in Confucianist thought
that privileges the heteronormative family as the basis for Asian societies.
The individual is not above the wishes of the family and neither is the
government. In this genetically, philosophically and culturally heterosexist
configuration, the state is cast as both the organ of the family as well as
the protectorate of its values (Offord, 2003: 153, n2; see also
De Bary, 1998;
Jacobsen and Bruun, 2000; and Sen, 1997). Reflecting his government’s views,
the then-Minster of Foreign Affairs Wong Kan Seng stated at the 1993 World
Conference on Human Rights in Vienna that “Singaporeans … do not agree …
that pornography is an acceptable manifestation of free expression or that
homosexual relationships are just a matter of lifestyle choice. Most of us
will agree that the right to marry is confined to those of the opposite
gender.”(Wong, 1995: 244)
The
Internet
The negative
association of homosexuality with pornography and other controversial material
surfaced once again in 1996 when the government instituted guidelines for new
media like the Internet. Administered by the Media Development Authority (MDA),
Clause 4(2)(e) of the Internet Code of Practice bans access to sites with
material that “advocates homosexuality or lesbianism, or depicts or promotes
incest, paedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia”. No one has been charged
yet for breaching the Internet Code of Practice and hosting gay-positive
material on his/her website. If such a case were to happen however, one can
expect the punishment to be similar to the fine MediaWorks TV received for
airing the Anne Heche interview. Indeed, nobody seems willing to test the
MDA’s limits because none of the gay community’s key Internet sites are
hosted on Singaporean servers. Fridae.com, a non-pornographic Asian gay
and lesbian lifestyle portal that organizes such gay-centered events as the
immensely popular Nation party, is hosted in Hong Kong. Yawning
Bread is hosted in the United States. This is the personal homepage of
Alex Au Waipang, one of the more publicly outspoken members of the Singaporean
gay community, and it offers numerous essays about the Singaporean political
economy. Such key news lists as SiGNeL, RedQuEEn and Adlus
also operate out of the United States. They are all Yahoo! groups.
It was inevitable
that the gay community took its struggle against the state’s
hetero-normative policies off the ground and into cyberspace. Besides being
subjected to unprovoked police harassment in the places of consumption like
the clubs and bars, the gay community also cannot organize legally. People
Like Us (i.e. PLU), Singapore’s only political organization that advocates
gay and lesbian rights, says in its mission statement that it “[works] for more informed understanding, the removal of barriers and a
fuller integration of sexual minorities with the larger community.” It
lodged its first application to become a society in November 1996, but the
Registrar of Societies rejected the application without justification. Even
appeals made to the Prime Minster proved to be fruitless. PLU lodged a second
application in 2003. This time, it was rejected again. On 4 Apr 2004 at 4:47
am, Alex Au posted the rejection letter on SiGNeL. Citing Section
4(2)(b) of the Societies Act (Cap. 311), the Registrar justified his decision:
“The society is likely to be
used for unlawful purposes or for purposes prejudicial to public peace,
welfare or good order in Singapore”.
Comparatively, the
Internet provides a far less repressive but far more democratic environment
for the gay community. Unlike the overly rigid Singaporean society,
Kleinwaechter (1998: 119) notes that “the decentralized Internet is to a
certain degree the most organized chaos in the history of mankind. It is
unmanageable and uncontrollable. It is a new dimension, a new culture, a new
way of communication.” In its state of chaos however, the Internet
“represents a deep realignment of human community, one which circumvents
borders” (Sondheim, 1997: 6). It provides a means for the gay community to
challenge the state’s silence on civil rights and develop an awareness for
gay and lesbian issues (Leong, 1997: 142). Offord (2003: 141) writes:
[The
Internet] has facilitated an educational role, a place of gay and lesbian
Singaporeans to share their feelings and thoughts regarding a variety of
subjects that include activism, the political culture of Singapore, the
media’s representation of homosexuality, coming out issue, family
constraints, gossip, and more.
Ironically, the
government helped the formation of such sites as Yawning Bread, SiGNeL
and RedQuEEn. As one of the technological and global capital hubs of
the region, the government is deliberately guiding the country’s future
towards a completely “wired” and “intelligent” society. The
government’s goal is to transform the Singapore into an “Internet
island” (Shari, 1999). It actively engages in what
Brunn and Cottle (1997:
243) call “cyber-boosterism”, or the “self-promotion by states in
cyberspace through the electronic transmission of visual and typescript
information, often accomplished in a corpus of official state World Wide Web
homepages”. Cyberboosterism therefore enables Singapore to sell itself (on
the official Singapore website at www.sg.) and
compete on a more equal footing with larger countries that its small
geographical size does not allow it to. In response, Internet connectivity
among Singaporeans has grown tremendously. According to the Singapore
Broadcasting Authority (quoted in Offord, 2003: 142), “Internet use in
Singapore has jumped from 100,000 dial-up accounts (in July 1996) to 321,575
by end-June 1998. If we include corporate accounts and users in the tertiary
institutes, the total number of Internet users is approximately 500,000.” It
is not surprising then that in 2001, Singapore had a connection rate of 89%,
the second highest in the world following Hong Kong at 90% (McDonald,
2002).
SiGNeL
How exactly does
the Internet help the gay community build its own gay and lesbian identities?
In this last section of this essay, I will examine the role SiGNeL
(i.e. Singapore Gay News List) plays in the furthering of this goal. Launched
on 15 March 1997 by a few members of the PLU core group as preparation for an
alternative in expectation of failure to gain legal recognition (Heng, 2001:
92), SiGNeL is not the only cyberspace venue for gay Singaporeans to
interact. At the time of its establishment, there were other news lists like
the now-defunct SinGLe (i.e. Singapore Gays and Lesbians) and Singapore
Pride. It does “[have] a certain degree of serious debate and dialogue,
an investigative spirit” (Offord, 2003: 149). Offord continues his
description of the site:
This
is a moderated site that demonstrates the intersubjective interaction that
can occur among individuals who are in conversation about human rights,
values, attitudes, movements, influences, government policies, and much
more. It is a space for critical engagement, interrogation, and exchange of
perspectives.
Through the
postings they make on SiGNeL, gay and lesbian Singaporeans are able to
discover what it is to be Singaporean and possessing a sexuality that is
incongruent with the one the state champions. Earlier this year, I began
noticing that even though the Singaporean gay community’s struggle for legal
recognition can be traced ultimately to the gay civil rights movement here in
the United States, the identity labels that the community are lagging behind
those used here. While labels like “queer”, “hasbian” and
“heteroflexible” enjoys a certain currency here, they are almost never
used in Singapore. Instead, Singaporean sexualities are identified using
labels from the older and less accurate tripartite system of heterosexual,
bisexual and homosexual. I thought that this was peculiar, because the
semantic domains of relatively simple sexuality labels like “gay”,
“lesbian” and “straight” usually change once the local community
adapts these labels. In Taiwan, for example, the lesbian community there
localized the butch/femme dichotomy of performative roles as T/Po
(Chao, 2001: 185). Why has not the Singaporean gay community done the same
with labels like “gay” and “straight”? Certainly, there is no lack of
terms that describe same-sex relationships from any of the ethnic cultures
there. Chou (2000: 22 – 3) lists many of the ones that the Chinese have. For
male same-sex relationships, there are pi (favorite), duan xiu
(cut sleeve), fen tao (shared peach) and han lu ying xiong
(stranded heroes). For female, there are jin lan jie mei (golden orchid
sisters), mo jing (polishing mirrors) and hou ting hua (backyard
flower). One possible reason for this historical amnesia is that these labels
are archaic and/or literary. Unless one is historically and/or literary
inclined, one is unlikely to come across them.
“Are there any
modern non-Western labels that the community can adopt then”, I asked
myself. In the past decades, the label tong zhi have gained increasing
currency in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Tong zhi seems to be the
Mandarin equivalent of “queer”. According to Chou (2000:
3),
unlike
“homo” and “hetero”, tongzhi is not defined by the gender of
one’s erotic object choice, but connotes an entire range of alternative
sexual practices and sensitivities in a way that “lesbian”, “gay”
and “bisexual” does not. It rejects essentialism and behaviorism, and it
does not require counting the incidence of same-sex sexual acts to qualify
an individual’s tongzhi identity. There is no “sex” in the word
itself, thus helping to counteract the pervasive vulgarization of tongxinglian
(homosexuality) in the mainstream society; yet it also helps to pluralize
sexuality, as tongzhi refers not only to tongxinglian but to
all forms of sexual practice that have been marginalized by hegemonic
heterosexism.
Acting as a devil’s advocate, I posted on SiGNeL
on 20 Jan 2004 at 7.30 pm about how essentializing “gay” and
“straight” can be. I asked, “Given [the Singaporean gay community’s]
easy access to the cultural influences from [China, Taiwan and Hong Kong], why
then [is it] still using ‘gay’ instead of ‘tong zhi’?” That
triggered a 15-day debate that ended in the rejection of tong zhi
because it is too narrowly sinocentric. Not all Singaporeans are of Chinese
descent, and those who are do not necessarily identify with China. After a
brief exploration of alternatives, “gay”, “lesbian” and “straight”
remain the staple labels of sexuality in Singapore. In his reply later the
same day at 10.53 pm, Yawning Bread argued that “Singapore is not part of
Greater China. In the general case, Singaporeans are not Chinese”. In a
posting on 21 Jan at 2.02 am, he further added that
from my interaction with
the Chinese Tongzhi activists, I think their agenda is misguided. They were
on a rejectionist path, saying the gay experience of the West didn't apply
to Chinese, because Chinese culture and the Chinese experience was unique
(echoes of Chinese particularism and cultural supremacy again!), and that
was why they would not use terms from the West but had to invent their own.
My deep suspicions were
proved when some years ago, the organisers of a Tongzhi Conference asked PLU
to submit a paper and send a representative.
I asked why we were
invited. They replied saying because Singapore is also a Chinese society. I
demurred, saying we're multiracial. They said, we're majority Chinese. I
then counter-proposed that PLU can send a speaker, but he will be racially
non-Chinese. The Tongzhi people came back and said cannot, he must be a
Chinese person.
Until that racist
attitude changes, I think we should stay clear of this kind of thing.
Chunu298 disagrees in his posting on 21 Jan at 6.14 am:
I disagree. Seen China News on TV
lately and according to President Hu Jing Tao, overseas Chinese are regarded
to be part of the Chinese race. That was part of his New Year's message.
Included in it are the terms " si hai yi jia", the usual
"Chinese as one family" concept.
To this, Kelvin Wong replies on 22 Jan at 3.55 am:
Well,
that is HIS idea of what CHINA should be, by making relations with all
Chinese, it’s a nationalistic speech! Do we call Americans and Australia
English after all? Why?
I
am Singaporean, but of the descent of Chinese, that really all. I am happy
with being able to grow up exposed to so many cultures like Malay, India and
the West and it is because of this, that I don't see myself as China
Chinese. My roots are in this Malayan island and I see myself as part of
this region, not a displaced Chinese person who floated from China to the
straits here.
I
think the problem really is this, what makes a Chinese Chinese? Just because
we are born Chinese does not make me China Chinese. My entire growing up and
persona is so different from mainland China Chinese that I could as well be
called an American instead. What about Chinese of mixed parentage, which
land do they belong to? What about the Perenakans, the Straits-born Chinese?
I
am just a Singaporean, I am just a product of the melting pot of rojak
languages, culture and influences, and it makes me Singaporean and not
CHINESE and I am proud of just that.
Dinesh Naidu commented on 22 Jan at 4.06 am that there is
no need to look for a new label because “we here in Singapore have already
invented our own beautiful term which embraces the diverse (cultural &
sexual) spectrum and has local historical resonance, i.e. 'people like us' or
'plu'.” Although associated with gay Singaporeans (especially after the
media limelight it received in the run-up to its second application to become
a society), PLU’s membership is not limited to gay Singaporeans only. In
fact, according to the PLU website, two of the original ten signatories who
made the first petition in 1996 were straight women. With this in mind, I
chipped in later at 5.27 pm:
I do question the comment about
"PLU" being our local version of "tong zhi". Even though
many people use "PLU" synonymously with "gay", do these
two terms really mean the same thing? Being gay is one thing, but PLU is a
political organization that pushes for more gay civil rights. Its members
are not limited to that region of the sexuality spectrum that
"gay" is located in. People like Alex and Kevin can legitimately
lay claim to this identity because political activism is what they do. What
about the other people? I suppose they don't need to join PLU in order to
call themselves PLU, but do they share Alex's and Kevin's political
commitments? Or are they merely using PLU as a code word for "gay"
so that potentially homophobic bystanders will not understand what they are
talking about, in the same way these people will say "Ajay" or
just shorten "gay" to "g" to avoid negative reactions?
Although tong zhi was rejected because of its
overly sinocentric focus, the fact that several of the SiGNeLers wrote about
the multi-ethnicity of the Singaporean raises a crucial point about SiGNeL
and the Internet in general. Compared with traditional Singaporean media, SiGNeL
is a less repressive and gay-affirming forum for gay Singaporeans to engage in
conversation. Nevertheless, it is by no means a truly democratic space. Access
to SiGNeL and the Internet in general presupposes both the wealth to
acquire this access (through use of both a computer and, in the very least, a
modem), and the proficiency in English. Singapore may be an affluent country,
but it is unrealistic to assume that all Singaporeans are wealthy enough to
acquire the technologies needed to access the Internet. Some Singaporeans,
especially those of the older generations who did not have an English-based
education, may also find the Internet’s English-dominated environment a
hurdle that they cannot cross easily. The tremendous incongruity between the
estimated two dozens or so SiGNeLers who post regularly and the 1207 users who
subscribe to SiGNeL also suggests that some quality inherent to SiGNeL
is preventing the vast majority of the subscribers from posting and
participating actively. While a certain number of lurkers is expected in any
news lists, the fact that most active SiGNeLers are racially Chinese may deter
gay Singaporeans of Malay or Indian descent from participating actively.
Certainly, more research into the factors that determine participation is
required.
Conclusion
For a nation-state of Singapore’s affluence, it is an
oddity of modernity. While nation-states of the same economic stature have
recognized the need to acknowledge the sociolegal rights of their queer
citizens by either legalizing same-sex marriage or, at the very least,
decriminalizing private same-sex acts, Singapore remains staunchly puritanical
and sexually repressive. Perhaps nobody else can summarize the situation in
Singapore better than Heng (90 - 2):
a)
Where legality is concerned, Singapore has very punitive laws against the
homosexual act inherited from the British colonial government. This is
written in Sections 377 and 377A of the Penal Code. The first of these
imposes a penalty of up to life imprisonment for “carnal intercourse
against the order of nature” which technically covers any act of sodomy or
oral sex between gay or straight couples. Section 337A is more specific and
prohibits “any male … in public or private” from engaging in “any
acts of gross indecency with another male person and imposes a maximum
sentence of up to two years imprisonment. Although life imprisonment has not
been meted out to anybody convicted of homosexual acts and criminal
prosecution has always targeted sex in public places and not in private, the
laws are still psychologically intimidating. They expose gay people to
police harassment for doing no more than drinking or dancing in a bar or
sitting in the park. Defining homosexuality as a crime also makes it easier
for the authority to close down gay places at their whim because the
proprietors of these places would not dare to demand an explanation or
challenge the action in court. The closing of Niche in 1989 was one
such example. The laws make for a chicken-and-egg problem. In order to work
towards decriminalization, the gay community has to get organized but
organizing to defend a “criminal act” in turn makes gay people and their
supporters cagey.
b)
Decriminalizing homosexuality would help the gay liberation cause in
Singapore as it did elsewhere but it would not automatically guarantee
legitimacy. Lesbians are a case in point. Singapore laws inherited from the
British only specifically prohibit male homosexual acts and lesbian
relations technically are not breaking any law. However, this does not make
lesbians any less a target for social oppression and proscription by the
State. In 1994 a bar in Boat Quay, a fashionable part of the city, decided
to set aside a weekly night for lesbians. Billed innocuously as a women’s
night and advertised only by word of mouth, it became very popular. But it
operated for no more than two weeks before the management received a letter
from the police requesting that the establishment ensure a better gender mix
among its clientele. That put an end to the lesbian night. Clearly, the lack
of legitimacy is equally oppressive for lesbians as for gay men and the
problem manifests in many daily situations, e.g., paucity and transience of
gay-friendly places to relax, fear of family discovery and homophobic work
environment.
At the same time, Singapore’s government has decided to
steer the country’s future towards a completely “wired” and
“intelligent” society. In planning to turn Singapore into an “Internet
island”, the government actively engages in cyberboosterism to give the
country a competitive edge in cyberspace that its small geographical size
cannot. It is therefore not a coincidence that the Singaporean gay community
has chosen to take its struggle for legal recognition off the ground and into
cyberspace. In particular, news lists like SiGNeL are useful in that
they provide a forum where the gay Singaporeans can engage each other in
conversation. On one occasion, I acted on my curiosity about the dominant use
of such Western-originated identity labels as “gay”, “lesbian” and
“straight” in the community and suggested that the more sinocentric tong
zhi be used instead. The result was an outright rejection of tong zhi
on the grounds that it is too sinocentric. Not all Singaporeans are of Chinese
descent, and those who are do not necessarily identify with China.
To the extent that cyberspaces like SiGNeL provide
a less homophobic space for the gay community to explore its identities, it is
not an entirely democratic space. Access to the SiGNeL and the Internet
in general is not only predicated upon the economic ability to acquire the
necessary communication technologies, but also fluency in the English
language. Despite Singapore’s affluence and the status of English as its
administrative language, it is unrealistic to assume that all gay Singaporeans
possess both the wealth and the linguistic proficiency to participate in SiGNeL.
The fact that active SiGNeLers constitute only a minute fraction of the actual
number of subscribers is also cause for concern. Even though a certain number
of lurkers is to be expected in news list, there is definitely a need to
conduct further research into why such a mismatch exists and how SiGNeL
can be made into a more gay-friendly space for all gay Singaporeans to
participate in.
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[1] The full texts of these
codes, along with those for codes that govern other forms of media, can be
found at http://www.mda.gov.sg/content/guidelines.html.
I accessed these codes on 9/27/03.
[2]
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AE-8F65-4D08-94CA-CF645BB1AA73}&type=date&content=, accessed on 9/27/03
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