A journo's juvenile jeers

Journalist Joyce Hooi has weighed in on the whole degradation-of-divorce-proceedings-into-a-flesh-parade barfery that my dear comrade Porky talked about. Hooi's argument, as far as she has one, is that there's no problem with courts treating all divorcing women as hawkers peddling themselves as commodities in a jolly old meat market, because that's precisely what divorcing women are. Products which can be helpfully ranked to assist browsing consumers, since all straight men are exactly the same and can classify all women on the same one linear scale of what they want in a mate.

I excerpt Ms Hooi's offering with humble observations of my own.

THIS weekend, when men in bars all over Singapore size up the pickings available, they will use a new lexicon for attractiveness: a woman will be either 'lump sum' or 'monthly' instead of 'hot' or 'have a few more drinks before you look again'.

Women are "pickings", to be rated by a cost to quality ratio. Charming.

This was triggered by the divorce settlement of a 37-year-old Vietnamese Singaporean woman in which another judge had asked if the woman in question was attractive.

Why is her background even mentioned? As a commenter on Piggy's entry pointed out, you have to wonder if this question has arisen in part because of the nasty stereotypes Singaporeans have about Vietnamese women.

From the subsequent appeal of the lady in question - the maintenance sum for her son had been cut from $12,000 to $600, among several things - I have no choice but to imagine that she's the spitting image of Gisele Bundchen.

Pay attention here, this is a real live example of sexist culture at work. The original report was quite careful to state that "attractiveness" isn't assessed purely on physical terms - which doesn't make the assessment any less problematic, since it still assumes that all divorcing women will and should get remarried, and that women are essentially interchangeable commodities of varying quality. But Ms Hooi has neatly elided this to ensure the discussion is all about women's appearances again, thus using a bad judgment to further an even worse cultural trope! Skilful work.

The cut in child maintenance might not have been solely influenced by the woman's attractiveness, of course, and might have something to do with the fact that $12,000 is a lot of Xbox 3 games, but that's fodder for another column.

Please don't write it. We don't like you.

In any case, enraged feminists (a redundancy, if there ever was one) have objected to the idea that looks have any bearing on alimony.

Yeah, we're pissed off. Gee, you noticed? Quite obviously, being frequently pissed off can only mean we don't really have anything to be pissed off about. It's a mathematical law:

{ IFF* Cause = 0, THEN feminist = enraged }

*IFF: If and only if

Her name is Joyce Hooi, and logic is her weapon.

The two main links in the argument that they object to are: attractiveness is objective, and attractiveness is an indicator of how quickly you can get someone to say 'I do'.

The short rebuttal to both arguments is: surely you kid.

You need to make the long ones, because the short one is lousy.

Actually, on second thought, please don't.

The longer one to the first concern about the subjectivity of attractiveness is this: while there might be room for quibbling about how someone is more of a 7 than an 8, the gulf between a 2 and an 8 is wide enough for most people to see (unless, of course, you're Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Railing against the objective definition of beauty is like saying that America's Next Top Model is bunk; it is futile and makes everyone suspect that the person doing the complaining is ugly.

She's doing the logic thing again! Everybody take cover! Here I refer you to the frolics of some friends of the barn on Twitter (or Clucker, as I would like to see it renamed):

illyrica: Joyce Hooi playground reasoning: "If you object you are ugly haha!" OK I'm ugly. Big fucking deal. This makes me wrong how?

MizHalle: she considers ugly people to be worth less than non-ugly ones so she doesn't have to listen to them
and if you disagree with her article you must be ugly.
So therefore, if you disagree with her article she automatically doesn't have to listen to you!
And therefore, she's automatically always right!
Circular logic FTW! *shoots things*

As a matter of fact, Hooi is simply wrong. It may well be the case that in the artificial playground of Hollywoodified media, there is an "objective" scale of "attractiveness" against which people can be ranked, according to their ability to meet some arbitrary checklist of requirements.

But back on planet Earth, when it comes to the daily grind (heh, heh) of people meeting others, and getting to know one another, and deciding who they like or don't like, and fitting their values and tastes and senses of humour and different sexualities together, and dare I say it falling in love, there simply isn't a scale. We aren't all in the hopeless thrall of the latest Mr & Miss Universe. Many of us yearn for actual people who touch us (giggle) in highly individual ways. There are certainly people who never cultivate brains of their own, and only ever strive for partnerships and marriages as status symbols to be valued in the way that the television producers and the glossy magazine editors tell them to. But they are fewer than they believe, and public policy shouldn't be made around them.

Diversion aside, the other concern - that attractiveness does not have a correlation with chances of remarriage - is naive. Some have brandished the Women's Charter, saying that physical attributes are not mentioned.

The Women's Charter (which begins titillatingly with the definition of 'brothel' but sobers up pretty quickly thereafter) mentions 'income, earning capacity, property and other financial resources' of both parties as some of the determinants of maintenance quantum.

Since marriage is correlated with financial security especially where a woman is concerned, why can't her marriageability be considered part of her earning capacity? The day Donald Trump breaks with tradition and marries a Plain Jane, I will stand corrected.

Open your eyes. Every day people enter relationships and/or marriages that confound the shallow expectations of your sexist media narrative, a narrative which calls them "exceptions" or "oddities" and then pretends they don't exist. "Plain Janes" - that is, the vast majority of normal human beings, who have better things to do than get hung up on boring media stereotypes - get married all the time. Your glib correlations are not borne out by reality.

But also importantly, not everyone wants to get married. Not everyone who gets divorced wants to get remarried. Being married is often, for women, actually quite a bad idea. Not everyone who wants to get remarried can do so to the person of their choice, because same sex marriage is still not possible. The courts of law have no business financially penalising people for not wanting to treat their personal relationships as bargaining currency.

But it gets better. Ms Hooi then tries to pretend she is against reducing people to their appearances and for women's rights:

One of the many studies done found that plain people earn 5-10 per cent less than average-looking people, who in turn earn 3-8 per cent less than those who are good-looking.

...

If a relative lack of attractiveness qualifies as an impediment to your capacity to make a living, it confounds me that people would object that the courts try to redress that imbalance. Some have railed against the idea that women rely this much on marriage. But they do; studies in America have shown that single parents consider their economic situation far more precarious than married parents.

And if you argue on the basis that marriage is simply a technicality that can be postponed even by good-looking women, then the court's approach can be seen to be incidentally progressive. Even if a beautiful women never marries, she is likely to be better taken care of by the workplace and quicker to find a companion who will split the COE with her, compared to a plainer woman.

How exactly are the courts redressing any imbalance here whatsoever? Is the daily objectification and prejudice faced by women over our appearances going to be reduced by this judgment, or is it strengthened by this institutional support? (Hint: the answer is in the first paragraph of your column.)

It might also be good to ask what, in reality, is the "advantage" that Ms Hooi believes "more attractive" women enjoy over "less attractive" ones? Consider the experience of job seekers in China:

In China, sexual harassment and being asked to sleep with interviewers in a tough job market was a very real concern to my friends in their final year of university, and they themselves attributed it to men being valued so highly that women are asked to ‘give a little something extra’ to be considered.

The imbalance that needs redress can't be seen for what it really is without understanding the role gender plays in this. The problem isn't "hot" and "ugly" women battling it out in a vacuum-sealed room of our own. The problem is misogyny, which women are encouraged to ignore while we battle one another for the scraps tossed to the "pretty". The problem is misogyny, and the solution won't be found by defining women as commodities whose value depends on heterosexual male use.

Family law, not Ms Singapore pageantry, pls.

The farm was fazzled this morning when it learnt that a court judge called into question the attractiveness of a divorcee in deciding the quantum and form of her maintenance. The case was brought to public attention as the claimant filed for a review of the judgement on grounds of biasness. I append the contentious portion of the article, with emboldening to my whimsy (read the full article after the cut):

Divorce and the attractive woman
Straits Times
K. C. Vijayan
3 June 2011, Friday

A JUDGE who asked during a divorce settlement hearing if the wife involved was attractive was not being biased, the High Court has ruled.

Dismissing a move by the woman for a judicial review of the case, Justice Choo Han Teck said that was not an irrelevant question for a judge to ask.

He said the court could take into account a woman's prospects of remarriage when deciding the financial support she should receive from her former husband, and whether it ought to be a lump sum rather than monthly payments.

Justice Choo's judgment, released yesterday, explained why he rejected the woman's application for a judicial review to set aside the court orders to settle maintenance issues between her and her former husband.

Lawyers contacted yesterday said that in deciding on maintenance for a divorced woman, the court could consider her attractiveness.

That did not mean only her looks but also other attributes, such as her character, that might affect her prospects of marrying again, said family lawyer Koh Tien Hua.

'The possibility of remarriage is one of the factors the court considers in deciding on the quantum of maintenance payments the woman should get,' he said.

Monthly maintenance payouts lapse when a woman remarries.

Family lawyer Rajan Chettiar said a woman's remarriage prospects were not a factor in the maintenance assessment, pointing to the Women's Charter and his own experience in dealing with family cases.

The Charter lists the woman's age, financial needs and status among factors to be considered when deciding on maintenance.

But the courts have the discretion to consider attractiveness as well when deciding on alimony.

Before I continue, I'd like to remind readers that we on the farm have many issues with the current outdated conception of the Women's Charter and call for a more comprehensive review/amendment. But let's focus today's discussion squarely on the problems of including a woman's attractiveness and the possibility of her remarrying in determining the quantum and/or form of her maintenance (monthly pay-outs or lump-sum).

Alimony is based on the idea that a man entering a marriage becomes legally obliged to provide for his wife throughout and past that marriage. ("Till death do us party; in sickness and in health, etc" ya?) The obligation however terminates when the receiving party enters into a new marriage/contract, as said woman now has a new partner who's taking on these obligations.

Upon dissolution of the marriage, the former husband is automatically obliged to provide for his ex-wife. The maintenance sum is usually dependent on the wealth and financial needs of both parties, although admittedly this is sometimes hard to pin down accurately. There are also many good reasons that people may choose to file for a lump-sum pay out (eg. ailing ex-husbands, cutting ties and moving on, etc) and we respect people's and the court's decision on this. However, we think that, by default, maintenance should be made monthly. This will, after all, be quite befitting of the term "maintenance".

By tying alimony to the *perceived* marriageability of a woman, the court not only assumes but basically frames marriage as a goal for divorcing women. While remarriage is a proposition we're perfectly all right with, should divorcees find someone new (or old) with whom they wish to reenter the institution all over again, there needs to be an understanding that a failed marriage - for many reasons - may very well mean the end of the pursuit of marriage (but not love) for many - this can have little to absolutely no relation to one's looks at all.

As learned as our judiciary may be, I doubt it's vested with the premonitory powers to accurately assess the marriageability of people. Does the courts' assessment, which apart from looks also includes "other attributes, such as her character" (OOoooOohhh, how holistic!), necessarily lead to the divorcees' getting married? What happens when changes (physical and otherwise) occur after the ruling, and these women suddenly drop in ratings (by the courts' standards, not ours) to get remarried? We can haz maintenance review, puhlease? This doesn't even begin to touch on the fact that someone being attractive (by whoever's standards and terms) doesn't mean that they can/will get re/married.

Let's consider the scenario between two women: Ms A who's deemed more likely to get remarried and Ms B who's deemed less likely. Say both women remarry say some 40 years down the road, when they're all of 75 years old: does the court then suggest that Ms A deserves to receive less money than Ms B in the interim 30 years because... What? She didn't do her best to get herself hitched to the chap much earlier, in which case her maintenance term would have terminated itself? If you sense a disconnect here, it's likely because there really isn't any relevance in how much maintenance a woman deserves based on her marriageability.

When did our jurisprudence enter the remit of beauty pageantry to be able to (legally) determine the physical attractiveness (to the ends of marriageability) of any person? Wait, of course ANY ONE, much less a judge, can determine this! This is because there're no absolute definitions of beauty, so any assessment of it necessarily relies on fancies of the beholder/s. An assessment of a woman's attractiveness, therefore, can really neither be conclusively right nor wrong. It is precisely because of this bloody arbitrariness that one's looks cannot and should not be relevant in the decision-making process of maintenance allocation.

What would possess anyone to even begin to consider a woman's chances of remarrying and her looks to be a legitimate factor of the sum and method of maintenance!?!? I understand certain paternalistic reasons for framing a woman's goals and worth as a wife/mother, and also the over-reliance on the institution of marriage and the extended family network for all sorts of social support (e.g. healthcare, public housing, etc). But these are grossly outdated models of human relations, with entailing problematic policies, that all need revision, instead of being further propped up and encouraged by anyone.

The Farm Awards: Your Candidate and Their Track Records

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ETA 28 Apr 2011: Singapore Democratic Party published their manifesto yesterday, and they have an exclusive section on women's issues AND disability rights. We won't rate them against the other parties/candidates as it's past our deadline, but we strongly encourage everyone to head over there to read it!
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Candidate Rating Table
(JPEG on Picasa; downloadable)


67-page Assessment of Candidate/Party Quotes
(PDF on Google Doc; downloadable.)

Fur and feathers are flying. In preparation for the elections, we on the farm have done some homework, looking into the stances various parties and candidates have taken on some issues close to our animal hearts. Drawing on parliamentary records, party manifestos and websites and some personal blogs of candidates, we've put together remarks from a number of candidates on topics including: abortion rights, parental benefits & family building (single parents, paternity leave), sexual autonomy (sex education, enforcement, sexual orientation & employment rights), sexual violence (marital rape, inmate rape & child abuse) & workplace sexual harassment, foreign domestic workers’ rights (with a small mention of foreign worker spouse), and a bit of disability rights.

As you can see above, we've put it all together in two nice fat tables. One sets out direct quotations from candidates, and our remarks. The other is a chart which shows our assessments of candidates' track records on each topic, with a four-colour rating system to show whether we Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree or Strongly Agree. (Sometimes we've put Disagree or Strongly Disagree when we haven't necessarily found them saying outrageous things, but the party statements on a subject in their manifesto are extremely limited and cannot do the subject justice.)

We'll hopefully also be publishing individual blog posts on certain topics over the coming days.

We like honesty, so we're going to admit a number of limitations here. We've done some searches but we can't pretend to have covered everything under these headings. If you have any further information about the policy intention of candidates or parties that we've missed out, please send it in.

There's also a lot more we wanted to cover, but didn't. Trans rights. Sex workers' rights. More on employment discrimination, including unfair termination for pregnancy. More detailed research on disability rights, rather than the very little we've found. But as a motley bunch of frazzled farm stock, we haven't got very far. Again, if you have more information to share, please hit up the farm email.

We also recommend reading the material with a heavy dose of understanding of some background facts:

1) Whatever the appearance of internal dissent within the PAP, the actual policy results you get by voting for them is easily determined as a matter of record. For example, we have some quotations from a handful of PAP MPs advocating sensible positions well at odds with what the government actually does, but this may not be very significant, as long as these particular backbenchers don't have much direct input into ministerial policy formation. So tread with caution.

2) We're publishing what we've found online. It is difficult to find information on the Internet about what some of the parties think on many issues. This may reflect their lack of policy intention in these areas, or it may reflect their failure to put it on the Internet. Be aware that there are silences here.

3) Good rankings on particular points aren't necessarily an endorsement of the candidate as a whole or their parties (see, for example, point 1). There are lots of other topics that we on the farm think are important, like economic equality, education, and freedom of speech. We're just trying to help build a fuller picture of the positions that have been taken on particular issues that matter to us.

Read, share, and discuss our findings. And vote well.

Call for topics: GE candidates' views on women's issues.

By popular demand, this farm will attempt to research and publish findings of potential general election candidates' views on women's issues, including but not limited to abortion, family maintenance, sexual assault, etc.

Should readers have particular topics of interest, and/or have leads on what you deem will be beneficial for our compilation, do let us know either in your comments or email us at farmer*dot*plantalot*at*gmail*dot*com.

On Women's Charter: What About the Menz!?

This is the final week Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) is seeking public feedback for the draft Women's Charter (Amendment) Bill 2010. You can download the consultation paper (PDF) that lays out the proposed changes in simple language, or attempt the Amendment Bill (PDF).

Some of the more interesting parts of the proposed amendments are the creation of Children's Development Account where a portion of divorcing parents' shared assets is automatically channelled into for the children involved. Courts will also be empowered variously to crack down on maintenance defaulters. My personal favourite is that "divorcees who are remarrying will be required to declare in the presence of their new spouses, whether they have any maintenance arrears towards their ex-wife or children from their previous marriage(s)."

We on the farm strongly encourage everyone to give MCYS your opinion on changes to the Women's Charter. Now, however, the animals and I are departing from our usual farming duties to present a roundtable discussion we have on the Women's Charter. Gentle readers are free to steal our ideas and submit them officially, because it's very hard for us to explain why farm animals are so concerned about the Charter.

Roundtable Discussion.

Contrary to popular belief of who we are, it is the belief here on the farm that the biggest lacuna in the Amendment Bill is in its maintaining the alimony-only-to-women stance. Last year, Kanwaljit Soin reintroduced the idea of revising the Women's Charter Act to a Family Charter Act [ed: AWARE used to host "Women's Charter to Family Charter" speech transcript here, but not anymore; after the cut, we offer you instead an excerpt of a parliamentary debate by Dr Soin from 1996 when she first introduced the idea], in which maintenance is adjusted to allow husbands to claim maintenance should their wives be the higher earning spouse--I believe it's for shared custody cases.

I think this makes some sense as roles change, and men begin to step up in their caregiving roles. Not to mention, perhaps with such a system in place, we can begin to drop any machoistic shame of being primary care-givers. An adjustment to leave entitlement will also make especial sense for single fathers.

If we focus on the benefit of the children, rather than What About The Menz, there's probably much more that can be done in terms of this bill as well, perhaps latching onto expanding benefits to single parents.

Oh My Goat:
I think there are also men who have some pretty reasonable issues with the Women's Charter. It's not to say that it's unnecessary - it was revolutionary as far as its protection of women was concerned - but there are parts of it that need to evolve with the times.

Maintenance payments, for one, need to be fairer - it doesn't make sense for a father to pay maintenance to a wife (note: not for the child, but for the wife, which is a separate claim altogether) who out-earns him or is more than capable of caring for herself. It was probably unheard of when the Charter was introduced, but it's not so uncommon nowadays.

If you're a husband living a lower middle class sort of existence, your finances are more worse off after a divorce. You frequently find yourself homeless, likely not earning enough to rent another flat and on top of that, you have legal fees and maintenance payments. It's what it is, and yes, men ought to be responsible for their children, but if you're not earning much to start with, it can make you feel like you have the rough end of the deal.

Magical Chicken:
Wholly agree with Oh My Goat. There's no reason whatsoever why gender should become a blanket proxy for financial capacity and contributions, when these are matters which can be reasonably easily assessed by a judge in and of themselves. I was really glad to see Kanwaljit Soin raise this last year. It's actually rather surprising that men (since they are the demographic disadvantaged by the status quo) haven't organised to push for appropriate change themselves. I wonder if there might be some kind of conflict for some men between wanting to support traditional notions of masculinity to shore up their sense of social status, and what's in their actual financial interests. Another example of how patriarchy is an ideology which fucks us all up.

Badly Drawn Pig:
This is why I think the law can take a progressive lead on things. It shouldn't always be a case of the majority, sometimes unaware or unconscious, society setting the pace of things. The law and the government can, in fact, recognise that certain change would be beneficial - I think we've actually got this in practice in many other areas - and effect amendments that would pave the way to mindset changes. A society where legal mechanisms are in place for husbands' receiving maintenance, is a largely different one in which maintenance is afforded only to the wives. We cannot possibly deny the fact that such an arrangement puts ideas in the minds of people, as often is the case such as Rony Tan, who refuses to retract his foul statement on gay people simply because a legal clause is actually in place that in principle criminalises gay men sex.

Poultrygeist:
Like Oh My Goat has said, my primary problem with the Women's Charter is the arbitrary provision requiring a man to maintain his wife, irrespective of the fact that she may have a greater earning capacity. I think the Court now deals with this issue by varying the quantum of maintenance, but I don't think this is enough in the circumstances since the wife will always have the right to apply to Court for maintenance. I think the issue of parity must cut both ways and the law needs to be amended to reflect this.
 
Second, re: maintenance for the child. Legally, both parents are obliged to maintain the child, but perhaps more can be done by the law in a situation where the man's earning capacity is lower than his wife. As Oh My Goat says, there are many fathers out there who feel they've drawn the short straw, especially keeping in mind that care and control of the child usually is awarded to the mother (with the father being granted the right of access) unless there are extenuating circumstances. I would imagine this is really painful in itself.
 
However, it needs to be kept it mind that there is only so much money to go around, especially if the father is earning significantly less, or not at all (as was the case in the article). In these situations, inevitably, maintenance payments are going to be a financial strain, along with legal fees, bills and rent etc. I don't think it's got anything to do with not wanting to help the child - it's not having adequate means to do so, and this is a salient factor which needs to be expressly considered.
 
(But of course with checks to prevent the other side of the coin - recalcitrant fathers who withhold maintenance payments for whatever reason.)

+++
After the cut, read the brilliant parliamentary debate excerpt by the woman who started the ball rolling for all of us, former-NMP and a personal heroine for us on the farm, Dr Kanwaljit Soin; taken from Yawning Bread:

Degrees of hate.

Char Siew Pau here was ambivalent to see news of American teen, Tyler Clementi's suicide appearing in the local Straits Times last week. It wasn't clear to this male unfeminist, badly drawn pig what exactly it meant for him that the papers prioritised the article on the third page of the main papers, because he was still reeling from a couple of events that broke with the news of Clementi's death.

Such as learning that one of the two guys recently caught having sex together in a local mall toilet is being charged under Section 377A [ed: please read People Like Us's statement in full!], i.e. the anti-male homosexual act law that our parliament said it won't repeal for symbolic appeal. Then there were debates amuck on the veracity of saying that homophobia was the key ingredient in driving Clementi off the bridge.

From the latter thread, one such detractor was the very rational and evidence-based--let's call him--Mr Mensch, asserting--and I paraphrase, "Until I see evidence of homophobia, I'm inclined to believe it has nothing to do with Clementi's death. Charlotte’s Interwebz encourages people to distribute exposés all over. It's free-market sexcapade galore for straight people, for gay people, for all!"

Why, what a wonderfully insightful libertarian mensch! I would have totally gotten my Pork Trotters twisted in the excitement of such sound revelation if not for fact that, hey, my stupid gay, asian Lup Cheong self looked around and saw that he remains in the shadow of a vigilant heteronormative state. A state in which the assumed default and premium is in being heterosexual (or at least discreetly straight-acting), failing which you are a frowned-upon deviant. It precedes that when straight people, who aren't presidents, hotelier heiresses or pop stars, are caught in the hanky panky on film, there's practically no uproar about their sexual orientation, only mixed reactions of privacy invaded.

Never fear, you could be a random breeder snogging in China, Alaska, South Africa or Greenland but still find that nowhere will you so pervasively come against some bigots calling for your demise, accusing you of bearing some hidden agenda that seeks to devalue the family, desecrating one's holy ground, insulting one's gods, or going against nature's ways. If you are caught on film making out with the opposite sex, no one in any part of the world has the image of you in mind when zie plans for the never-going-to-exist ex-straight conversion camp that will fix you of your widely-popular choice of lifestyle. If you were caught on film doing the heterosexual hoochie coochie, some people may be happy to reenact the scenario on a R-21 screen without the fear that censors will snip you out because we don't want to promote deviant lifestyles--and they don't mean being caught on camera.

No, the sensationalism here never rode on the fact that Clementi kissed someone--few 18 year-olds warrant any attention with their snogfests, but that he had "asked for the room till midnight" (oh, he must be hiding something!), and later caught "making out with a dude"! GAY! TRYING TO HIDE!? GAY BUSTED! - to the whole fucking world, both friends and foes. The thrill of it comes in irrevocably exposing Clementi of his furtive engagement in something still denounced in many circles, inviting the floodwalls to collapse for all to see, celebrate, wank to, but also jeer, hiss, laugh, mock, cuss and pitchfork.

And the gates will open to the nefarious, especially since a person already doesn't even need to be caught doing anything (homo-sex-ual) except exist to cause a stir in others, then finding hirself at the brute end of all forms of physical, mental and emotional attacks from others of all walks of life--family, friends and absolute strangers—and for no reason than that they *think* zie's quee, which somehow justifies abusive behaviour. Even if one's truly queer, making no excuse for living as a proud and openly queer person, coming out as such is to continually navigate through a minefield. Because despite hir feeling secured in hir own skin--a feat not to be belittled ever, there are always unsafe spaces to come out in, and forever the unsafe people to come out to.

In Clementi's unfortunate case, such a person was Dharun Ravi, the sneaky little asshole who not only recorded but also broadcasted Clementi's make-out session. Ravi may seem like such an equal-opportunistic mercenary to the likes of Mr Mensch, but really his tactics are but a leaf out of the books of anti-gay witch-hunters, exploiting nothing but the dangers, fears and anxieties associated with an out gay person, and the sickening, self-righteous thrill of those who seek to uncover and tabloid the secrets of bones and people in closets for effect beside the well-being of the outed. (Newsflash: if you care about a queer person, do not out hir in any manner, or demand to know if zie's queer.)

So guess what? Just because thick-skulled Ravi is, presumably, unable to recognise the cause and effect of a hate crime does not mean he operated by anything less than that--imagine what the world would be like if members of the Ku Klux Klan actually knew they were being assholes! And just because Mr Mensch proves himself equally obtuse to the undercurrents of context, it proves nothing but that there're people who continue not to grasp the extant of homophobia and the real-life cruel aftermath it has on a whole lot of people.

That said, what really chaps this Suckling Pig's hide is that despite how much we protest this grave injustice, and even come to the point of publishing news of deaths brought on by homophobic pressures, this sunny-but-not-so-happy island of Singapore remains guilty of similar exploits all the way up the ranks. It makes it nearly impossible to take home any lesson on tolerance and acceptance of queer people that can be taken from this reportage when anti-sodomy laws are kept for what seems to be the express purpose of making it central to any sex-related crime between two consenting men.

Seriously, just what the fuck was the egregious crime here that Tan Eng Hong and his partner are caught for? Having sex in a public location, or having homosexual sex in a public location? A similar case involving a straight couple might have been charged under Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act--like how the nude couple in Holland Village were--instead of S377A, noting that not only is there no equivalent in “gross indecency” in heterosexual terms following the repeal of anti-straight oral/anal sex in 2007, but also that, technically speaking, "gross indecency" between two men may occur in and out of the private sphere. This is imprecise a charge, and frankly a disappointingly unfair one, given what was envisaged by PM Lee Hsien Loong in 2007.

This only leads my Braised Pig-head to conclude that, just as how the problem wasn't about Clementi kissing someone but about him "kissing a dude", this is now not about displays of sexual acts but displays of male homosexual acts between two men.

Even with the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in so many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, United States, China, Japan and Taiwan, it is still an uphill battle for queer people to get even an ounce of respect and acceptance. A not-so-symbolic anti-gay law in our legislature, so arbitrarily reapplied despite claims of non-pursuance, empowers people to continue doing and talking shit about gay people without the slightest hint of contrition (read: Rony Tan). Because always it's what the government believes in, and now even it's the greater crime prosecutable. Abusers will always be on the right side of the law, and by the government's suggestion, they’re bedfellows to a wider, bigger majority that is all right with the active discrimination and abuse of gay people.

If you think Clementi's case is free of homophobia, if you think it's okay to throw S377A at Tan et al, then you are part of this----in a clever play of language to make them sound so marginalised—(mythical)silent majority that the government seeks to valiantly protect.

Don't be mistaken though, I hear and feel every sub-decibel of contempt your silence holds to my piggish ears even if you think you know otherwise.

Filial piety: fine feelings and hard work

Parenting is hard work. If only the Singapore government were as good at recognising that when making policies that have material consequences for parents, as it is in making sappy videos full of fine feelings.

But that, of course, as Funny Little World explains, is the whole point. This video on filial piety is about displacing political responsibility from the government for collective problems that need (to some extent) collective solutions. It promotes a moralising discourse, about the fine feelings we should all supposedly have about our parents (failing to recognise that they might have been wholly abusive, indeed perhaps specifically notwithstanding any abuse), to avoid questions about society's and the government's welfare obligations, about the fair and appropriate distribution of the hard work of eldercare, as between individuals and the state.

We were all ruminating on this in the Barn, prompting the following wisdom from the Complaining Cow:

The ad plays on people's fears about growing old alone and unassisted, a huge source of insecurity in a country without a social welfare system. The idea that it's possible for elderly people to be abusive is generally unrecognised (even though many people have experienced this firsthand in their own family, from what I've been told -- in particular elderly people abusing each other). Such behaviour is seen as 'demanding' and 'unreasonable' at most, but something to be put up with because the way society functions is stacked up against older people, so family members have to be accommodating.

I was thinking about the ad, where the elderly mother says she wants to move out. Personally, I think I would want to have my own household when I'm old (whether or not I have children), and I wonder, in the context of the fictional ad family, why her moving out would be a bad thing for the family? The family in the ad seems to have no choice but have the grandmother live with them. I'm aware there are all sorts of possible reasons: eg if someone for some reason she can't afford their own home anymore, or needs assistance, or does want to live with their child's family but just suffers occasional fits of pique against them, etc.

But these in turn point to problems like homelessness, access to care for mental/physical disability, general accessibility of our built environment to anyone who's not 100% able-bodied; and MCYS's response to that seems to be: have children now so that they'll provide you with these social services FOC when you need them, 'cause we sure as hell ain't going to. Which fucks over everyone who can't or won't have children, or for whatever reason doesn't want to depend on them.

The Cow also raised questions about the other toxic messages packed away in the ad:

Also: what's up with all the other toxic narratives that are peripheral to the ad's intended message but tightly woven into its fabric?! Eg setting up the woman as the primary caregiver of the family in both generations (it wasn't the man's cooking the grandmother was criticising, was it?), framing relations between the woman and her mother-in-law as adversarial, etc.

My Magical eye alighted upon these items too. Not only does the filial piety conversation attempt to displace collective obligations onto individual households, it also (less overtly) displaces collective obligations onto women, in particular, who are assumed to be the ones who should provide free care work for the sake of family togetherness. The stamps of this assumption are all over the video, which is - funnily enough - entitled "Father and Son". There is no indication of what relationship the woman has with her own parents (presumably this is a nod to the notion that they ought to have bothered to have a useful child, i.e. a son and not a daughter, of their own); in fact, there are no daughter-parent relationships portrayed at all. Not only is the work of cooking done by the woman, but also, at the beginning, she goes off to sort out tasks on behalf of the family, while telling her husband and son to stay with her mother-in-law and with each other. The lesson the boy learns is evident in his question: he asks not about the work involved in caring for his grandmother, but about his father's feelings.

The message here is gendered. The fine feelings of filial piety are for men and boys: but the hard work of elder care, which makes the sustenance of those fine feelings possible, is for women and girls.

If we have to watch videos about fathers and son, I think I prefer this ad:

"Making Room for Love"

A little bird recently sent me this article from 2001, by architectural writer and LGBT activist Dinesh Naidu, on how unmarried people negotiate physical space to express a little loving.

...

Possibly the most important spatial manifestation of mainstream sexuality norms is found in public housing. Despite 'land scarcity', the State actively facilitates the purchase of affordable homes by all young married couples through the provision of cash grants and subsidised public housing. These policies complement the promotion of heterosexuality, marriage and procreation as the norm in Singapore. The State-sponsored marital home provides couples with a relatively permanent and private space of their own. Within the constraints of monogamous marriage, couples are free to indulge in a range of marital relations in their purpose-built and sanctioned space. Indeed, traditional homes have long served as the "locus of heterosexual reproduction and socialisation".[6] Although inherited colonial era statues[7] forbid what we may assume are fairly common sexual practices among married couples, the degree of privacy and sanction provided by the marital home protects husbands and wives from the practical and psychological effects of these laws.

While couples who marry can enjoy home ownership, singles are barred from purchasing either new or re-sale public housing until they reach the age of 35, when they may buy re-sale apartments. This policy stems from an avowed promotion of the 'traditional' family unit. As a result, apartments and estates are designed for occupation by such households[8]. In addition to these State-imposed obstacles, Singapore parents often have cultural expectations of their children to reside with and support them, at least until marriage. Private housing is also unaffordable to most people [9] and this fact, compounded with housing policies and parental demands, means that most singles live with their parents at least until they are middle aged, if not beyond. Bachelor pads or apartments shared by singles, common features of middle class single life in other developed cities, remain unrealised types in the Singaporean experience.

These conditions constrict the space available for sexual practices outside of marriage. For unmarried couples who wish to spend some quiet, private time together, and perhaps engage in light petting, the parental home is a problematic venue because of the presence of family members and even maids. These household members can act to discourage or even forbid such activity, which is, ironically, better tolerated in anonymous public settings. In his short story "Evening Under Frangipani"[10], Jeyaretnam depicts the parental approval faced by an inter-racial couple, making the home a hostile area for courtship. Two solutions are presented in the sotry.

First, the couple ritualised their meetings at a small landscaped area: "A few carefully trimmed hibiscus bushes, their leaves variegated shades of green, lined the concrete path which stretched across the path -- no more than a hundred square metres -- of green. Fallen red petals stained the grass. They called it a park, according it dignity and respect because of the importance it had assumed in their routine as meeting point." [11] Here we see how private ritual and the act of naming can be used to create a vital courtship space out of anonymous urban landscape. These practices are also symbolic means of affirming a relationship frowned on by others.

Later in the story, we learn that "... her parents would be away in Malaysia over Saturday night and Elaine and Prakash would have the bungalow all to themselves on Saturday. There would be no need to meet on the crowded malls of ORchard Road, jostling with teenagers on parade... The bungalow all to themselves! A release from the claustrophobia of Singapore courtship, the lack of places away from the watching judging eyes of parents, friends and strangers."[12] The strategy employed here invovles observing family or neighbourhood schedules and patterns in order to discern small windows of opportunity to appropriate ordinarily 'unsafe' spaces for use. As this practice is trangressive, individuals may initially experience feeling guilt or fear (although some might instead / also enjoy the pleasure of forbidden fruit and the thrill of subversion). Unlike the earlier act of symbolic affirmation, this act of hiding denies a couple any sense of legitimacy and pride, and works, however subtly, to shame them. At the same time, the inability of spaces to address real social needs renders them, and their underlying ideology, open to critique. For example, as spatial trangressions become routine, dominant values become exposed as inadequate.

Gay couples face obstacles similar to those mentioned above, but with some important differences. Whereas moderate heterosexual displays of affection are sanctioned in public spaces, gay couples have almost no comparable public spaces to use. Ironically, while the act of bringing to the home or bedroom a 'friend' of the opposite sex tends to attract the notice and possibly disapproval of family and neighbours, such action tends to go unnoticed when the 'friend' is of the same gender. This stems from a lower public awareness of homosexuality. The presumed platonic nature of same-gender relationships can act to mask gay relationships and even facilitate the use of family homes by such couples.

Gay couples also can use the symbolic practices noted earlier. In his study of local gay relationships, Sinn[13] characterised this strategy as the 'symbolic appropriation of objects, spaces as well as time' and reported two cases of this. The first involved a couple who tended a small herb garden together in the home of one while other family members were out. Another example was of a couple who maintained a photo album of shared times together. Given the invisibility and secrecy whcih surround most gay relationships, such small acts, which are easier to conceal, are loaded with significance and become critical to the symbolic affirmation of the relationship, in the absence of familial and societal recognition and validation.

...

[6] Friedman, Alice T., "Not a Muse: the Client's Role at the Rietveld Schroder House" in Diane Agrest, et al (eds) The Sex of Architecture. New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc, 1996 p218
[7] [Ed: Naidu highlights the recently repealed Singapore Penal Code Section 377, which sanctioned against oral and anal sex that does not lead to vaginal intercourse between a heterosexual unit. Section 377A remains to sanction against fellatio and anal sex between a homosexual male unit.]
[8] It must be noted new typologies such as housing for the elderly ('granny flats') and the recent announcement by Prime Minister Gosh Chock Tong that these flats might be available to singles in the future does signal a move towards accommodating a more diverse range of households.
[9] According to Chua, the State has an ideological commitment to the universal provision of (up to 90% of the population) of public housing in Singapore. This leaves private property developers to cater to the housing needs of the elite top 10-15% of the population. See Chua, Beng-Huat, Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore. London: Routledge, 1996, pp19-20.
[10] Jeyaretnam, Philip, "Evening Under FrangiPani" in First Loves. Singapore: Times Books International, 1987, pp166-199.
[11] Op cit pp168-169.
[12] Op cit p171.
[13] Sinn, Wai Mu Mark, A Different Kind of Love: Gay Relationships in Singapore. Singapore: unpublished National University of Singapore thesis, 1996.

Naidu, Dinesh. "Making Room for Love," Singapore Architect, 212. Dec 2001. Singapore: Singapore Institute of Architects, pp98-100.