Put a ring on it

Here is Lee Kuan Yew talking to Mark Jacobson of National Geographic, in an interview which showcases a wide array of Lee Kuan Yew's characteristically bizarre opinions. (Special mention must go to the persistent spectre of the "disloyal" Muslim Singaporean, and to the idea that citizens are workhorses who need "spurs" to be put to their "hides".) But what particularly caught my Magical eye is how Lee Kuan Yew channels Beyonce.

All the single ladies, all the single ladies...
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it.

He really can't stand the fact that there are single women running around out there, doing their thing and living their lives without official state assignation to a man. It gets his goat something awful. The idea that a woman might have plans for her life that are more important to her is besides the point: indeed, it's a nuisance. She can't be trusted to know what's good for her.

I’m undergoing physiotherapy because I had a fall on the bicycle, so I’m stuck there for one hour talking to the physiotherapist [...] she was 32-years-old. I said are you married. She said no. I said you shouldn’t leave it too late. She said well, I haven’t found the right person. I said how is that? you are meeting fellow nurses, you better join, you have got a social development unit where you meet men above board, they are looking for spouses, you are looking for spouses and you meet in groups, unless you decide we are friends, and you want to cultivate a closer relation, and she said no, no, no, I'm a Christian, that limits my choice to 20 per cent of the population and we meet in Church.

If someone hasn't found the right person to marry, then they shouldn't be married. It's not a crime, it's not a failing, it's not a problem. It's just what happens. It's also none of your business.

Once the women are educated, they have equal job opportunities, some of them earning as much if not more than men, there is a certain independence of choice. I mean they say what’s the hurry? Singlehood is no burden, my daughter is 55, unmarried, mother has been nagging her when she was in her 30s, she's quite happy. [...] I've got two boys who have got grandchildren but I feel sad for her. Because when my wife is gone and I'm gone, this hotel which keeps her going. She will have to manage it.

She's independent. She's a hugely successful doctor! She's - in his own words - happy! But he has to "feel sad for her" because it's not her - the person - and what she wants out of life that matter: it's whether she fulfils Lee Kuan Yew's master plan for the destiny of female reproductive units.

We can't undo women's education, equal job opportunities. But the whole problem springs as I was talking to this physiotherapist, I said suppose you were not educated to a point where you are independent, your mother and father would have got you matched off. [...] Father and mother will look for another father and mother with an appropriate background, no inherited diseases and similar social affluence and then they marry them off, they get them together and meet and no objections and then you are married. Then you love the man, or you love the woman you marry. But she's educated and she's thinking of a degree in physiotherapy and upgrading herself and so...

As a matter of fact, women don't yet have equal opportunities for social and economic participation (see here and here for starters). But even to the extent we do: these opportunities are part of the basic requirements for humane society. They aren't optional and you shouldn't lament being unable to "undo" them.

You'll note, for example, that he doesn't for a moment speculate about denying all men education and career opportunities so that they might be required to stay at home and bring up the kids of their financially successful wives - even though that might also bring birth rates up. The suggestion that we should solve any problem by deliberately sequestering men at home is ludicrous and unacceptable on its face - and it should be equally so when it applies to women.

When you characterise women's education as some kind of unfortunate historical residue...

When you daydream wistfully about starting over again without it...

When you talk of putting women on conveyor belts heading into arranged marriage and complete financial dependence, and expect the woman you address (who has already stated her desire to choose her own partner and further her career) to respond to this with anything other than complete rejection...

When you do these things, your fantasies are grounded in seeing women as subhuman.

This fetishisation of marriage is degrading enough even before you consider that the state he exalts is one of permanent rapeability for women (to say nothing of society's failure to take seriously other forms of domestic abuse).

Single ladies don't like it. Put a sock in it.

People we love: Ms Tania De Rozario for "Avoid being judgmental with children"

ST Forum publishes something actually REALLY AWESOME. In her response to a recent series (still on-going, I believe) on apparent teenage delinquency, Ms Tania De Rozario writes to dispel the loose and stereotypical correlation of cause and effects.

I wish I'd written it myself: (emphasis mine)

Jan 2, 2010
Avoid being judgmental with children


I REFER to Tuesday's reports, 'Errant parenting helps breed teenage crime' and 'Divorce is start of downward spiral for duo'. As someone from a background of divorced parents, I find the association of teen crimes with divorce offensive.

The reason children from 'broken' homes feel 'broken' is that they have been sold the idea there is only one type of home or family structure worth having and anything different is, well, broken.

I have friends who are the products of a variety of family structures: happily married, unhappily married, divorced, separated and so on. None is a criminal.

Many teen criminals come from what you may call 'wholesome' families.

From my observations, if parents want to keep lines of communication open with their children, they must realise their children have a different understanding of the world they inhabit and not be judgemental about things that are essentially non-consequential: the way they dress, the colour they dye their hair, the tattoos and piercings they want.

Is a teenager supposed to be responsible for the fact that in his parents' time, getting a tattoo meant one was a criminal?

If parents don't want their children to deviate, then don't make them feel deviant. No child will drift away from you because you teach him that stealing or killing is wrong.

Children drift away from you when you make them feel like louts for expressing themselves or liking the things they like.

Another fast way to alienate your children is to demonise the company they keep. If you catch a glimpse of your child's friends and become paranoid that he is moving with unwelcome company, invite the friends to dinner. I can tell you as someone deemed a 'weirdo' by many a 'proper' adult - because of my bald head and piercings - that many have found me pleasantly surprising. And those who treated me fairly have been rewarded with respect and a strengthened loyalty to my friends.

Parents should also watch against demonising everything from sex to drinking to smoking. Instead of condemning them as signs of immorality and bad company, they should focus on the harm they can cause the human body. Let your child know you don't want him to suffer pain.

Tania De Rozario (Ms)

Word!

On the point of sex and safety, I just want to point to something else I read that I hope prompts sex educators, concerned friends and family to re-situate their advice should they aim to be in the least relevant to anyone who really needs the info:

Worse yet, today's sex education still bears the scars of abstinence-only. So it's not like we've provided our young with advice they can trust or embrace when they are naked and alone together. Instead of offering a genuine interest in their sexual enjoyment, we begrudgingly acknowledge their sexuality by insisting they put gross-looking and strange-feeling latex galoshes on their penises. (Sauce.)

She sports a "bald head and piercings" (so what?) and she gets it. For that Ms De Rosario is welcome to come play with us and share our delicious treats here at the barn. ^^

2010, so far so good!

Public Service Annoucement: "To have self-esteem."

My turkey spectral pal's really awesome and very sad moving tale of her first encounter with pedestrian racism has really put me in such a horrible mood. I'm bowled over by the sort of shitty things parents, guardians and mentors can teach children in the name of love and the latter's self-interest. As I said in the comment section there, I'm reminded of my own experience in having to listen to the sort of bullshit about race and "bad animals" that my elders tried to inculcate in me, which for some reason never really stuck because I was and continue to be doubtful of authority figure and authoritative--and worse, authoritarian--tones.

Unlike many other people, I was always in the company of authority figures who fought a lot with each other, make all sorts of mistakes and cause all forms of hurt behind closed doors. That slightly dysfunctional background led me to understand intuitively that even purported role models are not always right. As my feline friend discovers, older people are not necessarily relevant in their 'wisdom'. By all means respect your elders as you should other people, especially with the common decency that we should accord all human beings (see: Human Rights), but screw that listen to your elders unremittingly bullshit.

This is going to be hard to accept, but even we on the barn makes mistakes for the simple reason that nobody's perfect. (Though, we're still pretty damn close to cutesy perfection, yo!)

So dear searching kid, teenager, jia-buey-tua (literally: eat no big) adult who feels different and alienated from the majority, please find delight in the fact that the sagely ones and even your media bigwigs might be wrong, but that you are capable of change and differing from them. Therein making you a little more real (human or otherwise), and a little more prepared for a life of infinite betterment.

Finally, I dedicate the following clip to Poultrygeist and all the other barnmates for showing us that one can actually wade through all the misogynistic, anti-gay, racist, et al bullshit to come out stronger, wiser and brimming with such admirable self-esteem. This is by yet another American comedienne, Margaret Cho, whom I mostly piggishly love, from her stand-up "Notorious C.H.O." (2002):

And I have a lot of self-esteem, which is amazing 'cause I'm probably somebody who wouldn't necessarily have a lot of self-esteem as I am considered a minority.

And if you are a woman; if you are a person of color; if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender; if you are a person of size; if you are person of intelligence; if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.

And it's going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere, especially women's and gay men's culture. It's all about how you have to a look certain way, or else you're worthless. You know when you look in the mirror, and you think: Urgh! I'm so ugly! I'm so fat! I'm so old!

Don't you know? That's not your authentic self?

But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself, so that you will take your hard-earned money, and spend it at the mall, on some turn-around cream that doesn't turn around shit!

If you don't have self-esteem, you'd hesitate before you do anything in your life.

You'd hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for.

You'd hesitate to ask for a raise.

You'd hesitate to call yourself an American. [BDP: please feel free to substitute this with your appropriate nationality.]

You'd hesitate to report a rape.

You'd hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender.

You'd hesitate to vote. You'd hesitate to dream.

For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution, and our revolution is long overdue.

XOXO

When she was a young hatchling..

The past week, had this Spectral Turkey's giblets in a twist. Not only was it Thanksgiving when many of my fellow feathered family were mindlessly slaughtered for dinner, there were a slew of letters to the ST forum really bringing the crazy.

Ethnic stereotyping has been discussed here, thanks to my bovine barnmate, but this fowl feels she should weigh in, with perhaps a personal story on the consequences of what may be to people harmless stereotyping.

Many many years ago, this fowl was but a primary school-going hatchling. She loved going to school, and loved playing with all her fellow barn animals. She used to play hopscotch and five stones during recess, and after school she looked forward to playing with her little friendly neighbourhood barnyard creatures. The hatchling had a friend, a little foal and they soon became the best of friends.

One day she realised that the foal (let's call her Fiona) did not want to play with the hatchling anymore. The hatchling felt, and asked Fiona for the reason. "Hatchling," Fiona said. "Look at us - I'm a goldet tan colour, with hooves and a glossy tail. You? You have a dull brown plumage and two little claw-like feet. My family says that because of that, you can't achieve as much as me. And that I should find friends similar to me."

The hatchling did not understand what Fiona meant. She had never noticed the differences before. She started noticing that her classmates used to tease her for being "smelly", and ask her if it was true that her plumage was brown because she didn't shower. The hatchling's classmates would refuse to include her in games and projects. Soon, little hatchling meekly accepted that she was different, and sought out her fellow brown-plumaged hatchlings to play with. She was finally happy.

One day, the teacher told all the brown-plumaged hatchlings to report to the Principal's office. The hatchlings were petrified - what had they done??

The Principal eyed the hatchlings, and admonished them for segregating themselves from the rest of their classmates and refusing to mix with them. This was unacceptable, said the Principal, and directed that the hatchlings be arbitrarily assigned to groups in the class. The hatchlings found that her group-mates would frequently meet without her and would frequently fail to assign her duties, saying that they didn't think she'd know how to perform them adequately. They almost exclusively communicated in a language she did not understand, though it was a project for English.

The hatchling had never realised how different she was from the rest of her classmates and consciously tried over several years to fit in.

Many, many years later, she would realise that children learned prejudice from the world around them, including but not limited to their parents as well as the media. And it's true isn't it? If a child consistently hears its parents denigrating a member of a certain ethnic or religious group, it is likely the child will grow up harbouring that stereotype. Similarly, if the child grows up exposed to constant stereotyping in the media, then these stereotypes will continue to be harboured in the child's consciousness. Sensitivity in programming therefore has less to do with "political correctness" and more to do with engendering a substantive consciousness to eradicate such stereotyping. It is from "harmless" stereotypes that stems systemic racism.

Both parents and the media have a duty to not pass on this sort of mindless ignorance on to their children. But of course, the majority will never realise this, until they are an ethnic minority in perhaps another country. Believe this Turkey, she knows. And feels that perhaps, "family values" of this sort should be encouraged. You know, teach your kids to be colour-blind. Not tolerant in spite of differences.

You won't be needing that

Just before the MARUAH Open House to which my porcine friend alludes below, at the same venue, MARUAH is also hosting a session on the education of children with disabilities:

At this stage, we hope to garner support for children with physical disabilities to be included in Singapore’s Compulsory Education Act. This is also in line with the Convention on the Rights of Children, which Singapore is a signatory party. We also hope to gather comments and feedback on special education in Singapore.

Facilitator: Ms Braema MathiAgenda for the Focus Group discussion:

1. Presentation of MARUAH’s paper on Compulsory Education for Children with Disabilities
2. Feedback from the participants on the paper
3. Any other issues or concerns of the participants

We are looking for the following Focus Group participants:

a) Any individuals with disabilities (physical and/or intellectual)
b) Parents of children with disabilities (physical and/or intellectual)
c) Educators of children with disabilities
d) Educators of non-disabled children
e) Members of VWOs focused on individuals with disabilities
f) Any other concerned individuals with experience in this area

Compulsory education is intended to ensure every child who falls within its purview is equipped with some of the basic skills and knowledge needed for them to participate in society. This Magical Chicken finds it difficult to comprehend why children with disabilities shouldn't have the same right to education as other children, and for the same purpose.

"It's basically kids having sex".

Nov 1, 2009
Straits Times
When teens have sex...
Such cases involving teens who are in love are hard to prosecute, says Attorney-General
By Shuli Sudderuddin

SHOULD teens in love be prosecuted if they have underage sex?

There is no easy answer here.

Other cases involving underage sex — for example, when one party is an adult — may have a clear-cut answer, but teen cases are hard to prosecute, said Attorney-General Walter Woon.

“It’s basically kids having sex.What do you do if the couple think they’re in love? It’s less easy if the girl consents,” he noted.

[...]

Professor Woon listed four types of underage sex.

The first is when the perpetrator is an adult and the victim does not consent; the second, when the perpetrator is an adult and the victim consents; and the third, when the perpetrator is under 18 and the victim does not consent.

But it is the fourth type — when both participants are underage and have consensual sex — that is complicated. Prof Woon referred to this type as ‘Category 4’ cases.

Since both parties are young and in a consensual relationship, taking them to court can be traumatic for everyone involved.

He cited the case of a 15-year-old boy who got his underage girlfriend pregnant. “The problem is, do we send the boy to jail? What good would that do?” said Prof Woon.

He said that in the case of a relationship that is consensual or long- term, the law usually leans towards warning, as opposed to prosecuting, offenders.

“You need to balance this against the outrage that the girl’s family may feel. They may feel humiliated and taken advantage of, and may ask why we are being so lenient with this fellow.”

He said it is very hard to make rules to deal with such cases as each must be looked at individually.

Prof Woon noted that the law is a “blunt instrument” as it forces the boy to think twice and take responsibility for his actions — by making sex with a girl under 14 illegal and indefensible.

He said: “It is not easy and this is where the non-governmental organisations, the community services play a part. The judges cannot do very much by themselves. Sending them to jail per se will not make them reflect on their lives. That is the last thing that is going to happen. But good or ill, this is the framework that we have.”

(Full article.)

This underage sex thing is indeed complicated.

If a minor has sex with an adult, the adult likely lands in prison. If an underage girl has sex with an underage boy, the boy gets reformative training and probation. (I'm not up-to-speed with the laws of Singapore in this area, but I believe that a boy younger than the girl will nevertheless end up in hotter soup.)

I wholly support maintaining our statutory rape laws between adult and minor, and I do also agree that the law needs reform on consensual sex between consensual minors. So here, I applaud Attorney General, Professor Walter Woon's enlightened view that "It's basically kids having sex".

(I take my hat off, Dear Sir.)

In terms of adult-minor sex, I echo Magical Chicken generally: adults, please "don't fuck children". Their innocence is theirs to own and develop in cadence with their peers, not with or for you. Regardless of whether or not a minor is always offering his/her daisies and asks to take the adult's sunflowers, it is an adult responsibility to avoid all that deflowering. Society and this male unfeminist pig, in fact, expects the adult to not only understand the problem but also lead by example, or at the very least exercise some restraint.

So if an adult decides to breach the law, then you prove yourself irresponsible and incapable of dealing with the greaters freedoms afforded to you. Ergo, should arguably be put out of circulation for a while.

Capish?

The way our current law has been framed is that people below 16 have the least life experience, education, maturity, etc to make an informed *enough* decision to do right or wrong about somethings. That compassionate stance is, I think, great. They are also rightly deemed most susceptible to influence by someone older, given the nature of our very limiting and limited older-(often adult)-mentor/ young-mentee socialising at that age. These young people are therefore afforded the least political and rights and access, which is why we cede a lot of proxy to parents and guardians. It also explains why we do not trust our young'ns to, for example, drive, carry arms, or *consent* to sex.

Statutory rape laws begin from the place where minors cannot even give any real consent, which also means that they cannot really initiate sex as well. Yet in this folly olympics between an underage boy and underage girl, it is often the boy held culpable. There're reasons for this bias like biological consequences (e.g. pregnancy) that have very severe consequnces for women--harking back to their health and our institutional control over their bodies, although I suspect much of it stems from people's unholy obsession with women's virginity. For most scenarios, I highly doubt crucifying the boy (or girl) will improve anything.

I think folly of youth should be treated as exactly that: the folly of youth, in all its celebrations and lamentations. Young people aren't impervious to love, sexual impulses or curiosity. Regardless of what our laws and schools tell them, they're going to fall in love, and some of them are going to touch each other's flowers. Instead of automatically exerting reformative action--suggesting therein that there's something essentially wrong in love at a young age, I think we should encourage them to learn and grow into their adult responsibilities. This will mean that we don't also expect them to turn within seconds from an immature 15 year-old, whose understanding of his/her sexual rights is deemed a legal folly, into a responsible young 16 year-old adult, whose still arguably youthful folly is suddenly and magically worthy of the greater weight of our laws.

This means two things, I think.

Firstly, the law can introduce an age relativity clause allowing, for example, the compassion to be accorded to nuanced pairings. This means that consensual sex between two young people of the same or even a year age gap, are not automatically thrown the litany of reformative action. Although, I will not profess to know what action, if any, they should face; perhaps they need to be sent for all sorts of medical tests to check for diseases or a bud, and then be nagged at for very, very long about the importance of being safe and planning for their future. I really don't know, but I'll revisit this after I've contemplated about it longer.

Secondly, this also forces young people to learn what consent really means. It's deeply regretful that a lot of internet discussions surrounding No To Rape proves that even adults have a hard time grasping the concept of consent. Non-consent or incapacitated, forced or groomed consent by someone else of stronger influence will always be considered rape, which first needs to be investigated, proven and brought to our courts accordingly.

Young people's sexuality education courses, then, can begin from a place where students are not treated as complete imbeciles who have not heard of Teh Interwebz or are unable to give consent responsibly. It can then be programmed to argue the different possibilities, such as contraceptives, other models of sexual engagement/ expressions of love, and even abstinence by their own merits. Averting the sweep-under-carpet hushing that underage sex is just illegal, this then allows us to focus always that respecting mutual-consent, our right to bodily safety and hopes for the future as imperatives, which is a more meaningful if we don't begin first with threats. Hopefully, these young people, who are going to one day be in all sorts of acrobatic positions anyway, will then function in a more enlightened and safer place.

Let's be honest, our 'strong Asian values and culture' of frowning upon sex, emphasis on abstinence, and what-have-you are simply not working. Kids are not only increasingly having sex, but also starting at far earlier ages because every new generation of kids are much more sophisticated than the last--to the chagrin of lot of irrelevant Good 'Ole Days loving elders. This is not to say that, I think, all young people should and will get into an orgy--I have faith a lot of them have other better things to do. The least we, as adult humans and animals, can do is begin to realign ourselves, and see what sorts of new frameworks and lessons we can learn from the young people, and share what relevant experience we have with them.

This male unfeminist pig knows all this is going to sound like an unimaginable, family-wrecking, far-liberal, amoral vision, and that a lot of human beings are all going to go, "We don't want to listen to your pigheaded ideas, because we're not animals!" Well, I can sympathise that it's difficult to be human-headed, otherwise we wouldn't all be suffering from global warming today.

Okay, not a good rebuttal, but please, can just try?

+++
Help: If you are a young person who needs solid advice on your sexual needs, I recommend the non-judgey, neutral and much more enlightened, professional services of AWARE, and especially for gay youths, Oogachaga.

(Speaking for me only. I thank Magical Chicken for the discussions we've previoously had at the barnhouse for some ideas expressed here.)