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:

"We meant it exactly the way you meant it".

"Theatricality," Glee, Season 1 Episode 20, first aired May 25 2010.

KURT: “It’s just a room, Finn! We can redecorate it if you want to!”
FINN: “Okay, good! Well, then the first thing that needs to go is that faggy lamp, a-and then, we need to get rid of this faggy couch blan-“
BURT: “Hey! What did you just call him?”
FINN: “Oh, no, no; I didn’t call him anything. I was talking to the blanket.”
BURT: “No, you used that word; you’re talking about him.”
KURT: “Relax, Dad, I didn’t take it that way.”
BURT (to Kurt): “Yeah, that’s because you’re sixteen and you still assume the best in people. You live a few years, you start seeing the hate in peoples’ hearts. Even the best people.”
BURT (to Finn): “You use the ‘N’ word?”
KURT: “Uh, of course not.”
KURT: “Well how ‘bout ‘retard’? You call that nice girl in Cheerios with Kurt, you call her a ‘retard’?”
FINN: “Becky, no, she’s my friend. She’s got down-syndrome. I’d never call her that; that’s cruel.”
BURT: “But you think it’s okay to come in my house and say ‘faggy’?”
FINN: “That’s not what it meant…”
BURT: “I know what you meant! What, you think I didn’t use that word when I was your age? You know, some kid gets clocked in practice, we tell him to ‘stop being such a fag’ ‘shake it off’… we meant it exactly the way YOU meant it. That being gay is wrong and it’s some kind of punishable offense.”
BURT: “I really thought you were different, Finn. You know, I thought that being in Glee Club and being rased by YOUR mom, meant that you were some, you know, new generation of dude who saw things differently, who just kinda, you know, came into the world knowing what has taken me years of struggling to figure out. I guess I was wrong.”
BURT: “I’m sorry, Finn. But, you can’t… you can’t stay here.”
KURT: “Dad!”
BURT (to Finn): “I love your mom. And maybe this is gonna cost me her, but my family comes first. I can’t have that kind of poison around.”
BURT (to Kurt): “This is our home, Kurt.”
BURT (to Finn): “He is my son! Out in the world, you do what you want; not under my roof.”
BURT (to Kurt): “The place looks great.”

(from The Jumping Off Point.)

Pink Dot: The Story of Jamie Yee.

Our recent thread on the blatant transphobic discrimination against Marla Bendini has drawn some weird commenters out of the woodwork. While it's normally in my nature to ignore and delete, my educator/promoter side thinks this episode also proves a good opportunity to raise a little more awareness on trans people's plight.

Gender and sexuality are very complex aspects of day-to-day living for some of us. Just because we do not see positive and affirming representations of the different sorts of people around leading largely differently lives than the norm doesn't mean that these people are insidious deviants. The media and our larger societal machinery has only so much time to dedicate itself to playing to a wider majority -- we here on the farm obviously think this rather misled.

To begin to fix this, Jamie Yee, a post-op transwoman, bravely came out recently to speak of her own experience in transitioning from her old self to who she is today. In a very touching video (accompanied by an article), in which she is joined by her two very enlightened parents, Jamie and family tell us the struggles they had in coming to terms with Jamie's transgender self. Her story reveals the remarkable power love has in overcoming seeming barriers of complex human life-paths to eventual acceptance and love for another human being.


Speaking of her mother's struggles:

Crucially, however, Jamie’s mother was opening to the idea that her son was really her daughter. Through her own very difficult period, while wrestling with thoughts of suicide, Mrs Yee went for counselling courses. It was there that she began to open up and learn more about diversity in human sexuality.

Transgendered people are individuals who express their gender in a non traditional manner. In Jamie’s case, she was born physically as a man, but sees and expresses herself completely as a woman. In practical terms, she has always been a female, but requires gender reassignment to fully express it.

Mrs Yee knew this. She knew that gender identity issues aren’t easy to deal with, and that family support can help her daughter. “I don’t think they have a choice”, she said, “sometimes they are born in this way, so they need the help and understanding from their family to help them and to believe in them.”

It took a while before Jamie's father learnt to grapple with her need for an operation, and eventually it would be his understanding that regardless of Jamie's complicated gender setup, they "have a child" in Jamie still, and that "I'm her parent, so it's my responsibility to see that she lives and grows as a healthy and happy individual no matter what she may be like. I cannot abandon her."

And we won't abandon our fellow friends of LGBTQ persuasion too, so we'll be at this year's Pink Dot gathering next Saturday, in our glorious pink coats of feathers and fur. Do join us too in promoting the right for people's freedom to love and be loved.

Pink Dot
15 May 2010, Saturday
1700-1830hrs
Hong Lim Park

More information: Facebook Event Page.

4 Non Blondes - What's Up?

I admit, sometimes I forget that International Women's Day is on March 8, because Porkchop here lives with an astounding privilege on a farm with his two and four-legged friends as if every day is International Women's Day. Such an existence, contrary to popular disbelief, really isn't difficult when you respect everyone as a full entity deserving the full range of common human rights. Two of the prerequisites to achieving that is in fully understanding and practising the concept of equality (hint: you either have it, or you don't), and knowing how to keep your unsolicited trotters and objectification club member privilege discount card to yourself.

Consider me naive, recalcitrant, wistful, slow, emotional, but whenever shit happens, I do often find myself affected, thinking "what's going on??????"

Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
And I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means

And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar

And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?

And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
ooh, ooh ooh

And I try, oh my god do I try
I try all the time, in this institution
And I pray, oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution

And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar

And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?

And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?

Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination

Good morning

Preamble: The misadventures of Rony Tan.

The animals at the Barn took time away from farm duties to attend an on-going roundtable discussion on the subject of Rony Tan, the governmental actions that have either already been taken, or are currently lobbied against him, and whether we think he should be allowed the right to think and speak how ever controversially he wishes on how ever sensitive, highly politicised a topic. Proceedings are being put together as posts and will be published over the weekend. This is a preamble.

How does one begin?

RONY. FUCKTART. TAN.

That's the founding senior pastor of Lighthouse Evangelism Church who's been making headlines over the last two weeks. He quickly established himself as a bonafide asshole who aggrieved the Taoist and Buddhist communities in Singapore when videos of his rather unpalatable sermons surfaced on the internet. The sucker punch, however, came in the form of an extremely public invitation from our lovely Internal Security Department (ISD) for Pastor Tan to join them for tea and scones. All this ended in removal of said videos, apologies, woeful sermon of regret, and other double-taking that all ran rather openly. Now his words on gay people are haunting him, as two film-makers have lodged a police report against him, ostensibly in hope of invoking aspects of the Sedition Act even if the Act is written to only protect racial and religious harmony. He has since come out to stand by and defend his position on homosexuality, "I’ve said nothing wrong, you know. Like I said, my stand is with the average person and the Government."

Here are some choice quotes that I've managed to dig up so that you can have a rough idea of what was uttered:

On religion; responding to a parishioner, Rita's experience with Buddhism:

[4:51 onwards]

Ok, now, here I pause again to, you know, let you all know that, when we talk about religions; false religions, we are not just talking about a set of teachings. We are talking about the spiritual world. we are talking about satan and his demons,coming into people's mind and dropping ideas like that, to get us away from ...

When rita was seriously, you know, in this religion, the demonic power would supernaturally put some ideas in her mind, and the same demonic power, you cannot see, put the same kind of thoughts into the Tibetan monk. So when they check up the facts, it's the same. It dazzles us. but if you were to look behind the scene, it is a cheap david copperfield trick, nothing more, nothing more, you understand? So conclusion, there's no truth in reincarnation.

...

When Buddha was dying, do you know what he said to his disciples? "I'm still searching for the way..."

[Grunts to suggest last breath, then steps forward.]

And Jesus comes, "I am the way." (Source)

On homosexuality:

What Pastor Rony Tan of Lighthouse Evangelism thinks about gays and lesbians from Kenneth Tan on Vimeo.

Don’t believe all those loud-mouthed gay people who tell you they are born this way... If we don’t warn people against this, then there will be more and more homosexuals... Many of these people will be harrassing and seducing young boys, and they in turn will become homosexuals... Half the world will be homosexual! Proper sex means life — it propagates life. Lesbianism and homosexuality simply mean death and barrenness... If you allow [homosexuality], next time people will want to get married to monkeys. And they will want rights. They’ll want to apply for HDB. With a donkey or a monkey or a dog and so on. It’s very pathetic. (Source)

You can see why animals and people alike have gotten prettttty upset with him. Yet, should we play Volitaire and defend his right to speak even if we gravely disagree with him?

Lest you too are the curious sort, you can view copies of the videos pertaining to religious insult here. Pastor Tan has beseeched that copies of the video be taken down as well, but I personally find this forced erasure/ amnesia of mistakes frankly stupid. I'm glad copies are floating around so that we can be constantly reminded of how horrible he was, even if those who took offense have since forgiven him.

You never know who's listening!

Singapore transgender writer and activist, Leona Lo, picked up a letter we'd published earlier on Velvet Underground's apparent blanket ban of transgender women. (Lo's commenter, Nurra Mahat, corroborates that "Velvet has NEVER been a TG friendly place, unless your IC says you’re female AND (the big AND) passable.") Shortly after that, we learn that just shortly before Christmas, another transwoman was barred from Zouk, further corroborating that something shitty is happening at that place.

I very much want to recommend Lo's "quick response tips" for transwomen to seek trans-friendly venues, document places that discriminate, and report the latter accordingly. In short:

(1) Check beforehand on their policy for a fuss-free night;

(2) Use your mobile phone's video camera to document mistreatment;

(3) Share with the media.

We at the barn are particularly aware of the paucity of getting minority people to come out to openly share their stories about offending people and organisations, often as Lo points out, "for fear of attracting “trouble”". So I encourage Point 4:

(4) Tell anyone who'd listen! Write in to the papers, write in to the management, write in to Leona Lo, one of the social media websites, or one of the LGBTQ blogs, or even to us so that we can air the experience. The more fodder we receive, the more people read about it, the stronger it is for us to build a case of holding people accountable.

Don't be too quick to discount the power that your voice will provide, and what bad press circulating about can drive people to salvage.

When The Online Citizen did a feature on the abject state of migrant worker housing, the effort was made by individuals and groups to air the issue and write in to relevant bodies, seeking accountability. What came out of these efforts is this:



Even when we at our small barn wrote about the racy 'APEC' event, our reader wrote in and it became a racy APPEC event.

Pressure works! Companies are in it for the money, and bad publicity, or worse, health, environmental and manpower incursions are definitely not good for business. Clients and developers can be encouraged to award tender to companies that boast better housing amenities that do not bring the projects into disrepute, which eventually affects sales. Patrons can askew clubs that discriminate for clubs that don't.

I hate to tie the worth of minority rights to economics, but it seems when faced with the wall of The Bottomline, appealing to people's money minds might be a helpful, additional strategy.

Also, I want to agree with Mark that perhaps firms are not always as heartless or as aware as they seem. While I have my suspicion that they will take the easy out by providing the minimal or ignoring the problem, I think there's very little harm in approaching them in good faith.

Besides, it saves us all more heartburn, and you never know who's listening!

+++
If you haven't signed this petition: Petition to Improve Foreign Workers' Housing.

ur chewren iz belongz 2 us!!11!!!1ONE!

Leading member of the local chapter for the preservation and promotion of gayism, Jewish Goose, has sent the following video as a must-watch-otherwise-(...), tagged with a urgent message appended below:

I couldn't find no Jewish, howling gays, and anti-family feminists to dance to good, old Hanukkah tunes, so this clip of twelve delectable, merry men flaunting and spreading their gayism in song and dance shall do. Watch and learn, people, for this shall be how your children (girls, boys and others) are going to turn out when we've accomplished everything on our feminist-aided homosexual agenda: THEY WILL BE CUTE & FANTABULOUS!

Meanwhile, merry Hanukkah, happy Christmas, and a delightful 2010 to all readers and animals at Barnyard Chorus!

Should've Had One

I'm always pretty uncomfortable looking at displays of indigenous artefacts in museums. Unless the collection was curated by the people in question who also have full rights to all the items (which, I don't think I've ever encountered and I am a museum junkie), I just feel like I'm gawking at the end result of a dispossessed diaspora. Not cool.

The display I was at the other week was no exception. To add insult to injury, the places of origin on the labels accompanying each item had names like "New Ireland" and "New Britain" - clearly not what the people who actually lived there called the land.

I mention this to my partner (who very early on in our relationship proudly showed me a picture of his fairly recent forebearers as colonists in India) and he deadpans,

"Well, it's their fault - they didn't have a flag."

And sure enough, I look around and that is exactly what is missing from the display of frankly every other object that could conceivably be found within a community of people.

What it Says About You

Today I witnessed a discussion about whether differing viewpoints on LGBTQ rights should be a dealbreaker in a heterosexual relationship. Points such as "it only affects us by extrapolation/if our kids turn out to be gay" and "it's an intellectual disagreement" came up.

So, I write to offer my unsolicited advice.

If I have to explain to someone why people whose sexualities fall outside of the one man-one woman norm should also be granted the same legal rights to marriage and adoption, then that someone to me isn't someone worth spending time with. LGBTQ (and everything in between) rights is not a subject for intellectual discourse because anyone arguing against the provision of such rights are arguing against the humanity of the people involved. It is also a stunning display of privilege that is frankly acutely unattractive (since when were your rights brought up over drinks as a point of intellectual debate?).

Monogamous hetereosexual people may feel that they are not affected by whether those who fall into other categories are seen as full people under the law. But that's not true. Their humanity is affected by the opinion they hold on whether a person's humanity can be decided by referendum. I'll make it simple for you - it can't. My humanity is not up for discussion, neither is anyone else's and if you feel differently then I question how much you have considered the world around you and how much you have decided that you, by virtue of an accidental alliance, should be entitled to so much more than anyone else.

A few weeks ago Senator Diane Savino spoke eloquently of how us heterosexual folk have squandered our right to marry by constantly making a mockery of the institution of marriage itself. She followed it up with a breathtaking description of the very human people who are denied this by an arbitrary and cruel standard enforced by prejudice and by nothing else. If you can, please take the time to watch it now (full transcript here):

A quote from the video:

You know I’ve also been lobbied, quite interestingly, on this bill by people on both sides. I’ll tell you one funny story. I was on 6th avenue in Manhattan, I was in my car, I was driving, make a left turn onto 52nd street, I was stopped at a light, I had my window open. And a young man on a pedicab stopped and stuck his head in the window of my car, which I thought was kind of strange. But he recognized the senate license plate on my car and this was right during the week that the assembly was taking up the vote earlier this year.

And he said to me, "Excuse me, is there going to be a gay marriage vote in Albany this week?"

And I said, "Yes, the assembly’s going to take it up, but the senate probably won’t take it up any time soon, I’m not sure when."

And he said, "Are you going to vote for it?" and I said, "Yes I am", and he said, "Why?"

And I said, "Because I believe that people should be able to share their life with whomever they want and the role of government is to administer that contract that they agree to enter into."

And he stopped and said, "But they’re changing the definition of marriage."

And I said, "Don’t get so excited about this marriage stuff." I said, "Think about this, we just met, you and I right here at the stoplight. You stuck your head in the window of my car. Do you know tomorrow we could go to City Hall, we could apply for a marriage license, and we could get married, and nobody there will ask us about the quality of our relationship or whether we’ve been committed to each other or any of those things. They will issue that marriage license and we can get married."

And he said, "Yes, that’s true."

I said, "Do you think we’re ready for that kind of commitment?"

And he stopped and he said, "I see your point."

Human rights shouuld not be up to a vote, neither should they be subject to discussion. I would not piss to put out a fire on someone who disagrees - they have demonstrated to me how they feel about the humanity of others, leaving me free to disregard theirs.

Authentic Azian Senzation™

In both Poultrygeist's awesome post on early absorption of racism and a comment left at Complaining Cow's missive on the embracement of insensitivity by certain people, it is proposed that the majority class will only begin to understand the problem with "harmless" stereotyping when the tables are turned on them.

I think they're absolutely right.

I'm totally reminded of an Australia and New Zealand Bank (ANZ Bank) TV commercial that ran on the Australian free-to-air when I was there as part of a Animals Are Friends, Not Food world tour a year ago.

The entire campaign peddled ANZ's apparently superior credit card security tracking system that picked up suspicious spending trends. In this particular ad, the example was Fiona Tyler's credit card that was used simultaneously in both Melbourne and Singapore. It starts from inside the ANZ security oversight office, before cutting to a scene of "Singapore" where the credit card fraud perpetrator is attacked by ANZ's campaign mascot.

Their idea of Singapore? Shops with large chinese signboards, hanging red lanterns, food hawkers along pedestrian walkways and what looks like our preferred mode of transport, the trishaw. Complete with old-school, yellow tint to the film and cue Chinese New Year-esque, chirpy Chinese mandolin and drum soundtrack for maximum Authentic Azian Senzation™!


(Er... I don't think Singapore has looked like that since the 1970s.)

And I really don't think it does anything to inform people of the realities outside of Australia. Information that, I figure, might be useful for its people since I learnt some things while I was there:

- Some people have impressions that Singapore is in South China, populated by only yellow-skinned people. And yellow-skinned people are bad in English.

- Being bad in English receives similar warmth (typically yellow-skinned) Singaporeans accord (other typically yellow-skinned) migrants in Singapore: leave the country if "you speaky no ingrish".

I got pats on the head and cookies for "speaking such good but accented English" and possessing "a really wide vocabulary". ("Why, thank you! Your English isn't too bad too! Where'cha learn to speak like that?") I'm "not like the other Asians"--you know, the two or three other Asian data points with whom your interlocutor has had extensive conversations to speak so authoritatively on. (No worries that I, a badly drawn, male unfeminist barnyard animal can talk at all, yo!)

- Some have anxieties quite alike Singaporeans--a loud quarter wants migrants to just "go back to your own country!" (I will, mate, once you return to your own country, since most of you shouting can't rightfully claim to be native.)

- It's hard to absorb that there're other skin tones from Singapore. If you're a slight shade of brown, then you must be from Malaysia or Indonesia. Darker and you're from India, and if you're from India then you have a whole different subset of problems. Somewhere between and maybe your family are boat people, and that you probably were a delinquent mall rat at some point. All in all, everyone gets treated with suspicion at some retail or F&B outlets, if not by staff then maybe clientele.

- Being Asian also means that if, like me, you shop at Alternative Lifestyle™, then you're a docile, subservient boytoy who only wants it up his ass, and wishes to be either dominated by an apparently white(r) partner, or handed with extreme care like an exotic, delicate flower that bruises to touch. Oh yeah... You also worship MONSTER COCK. (By the way, I don't think Magical Chicken appreciates her boyfriend being referred to as "monster".) All of which points to a really troubling conception of femininity and gender roles pegged to your race.

- Certain strangers feel they can take liberties with you like publicly manhandle you (lift you up, pinch your cheeks, pat your head, even touch you on more inappropriate spots etc), comment on your Asian cuteness, and how much they like your food. It doesn't matter if you're Singaporean, because that's just part of Asia and it's all the same since they can't tell all you people apart. (Though, seriously, why do you need to tell us apart? So that you can be selectively racist?) If you insist that being Singaporean should mean something--because we on the island like to tell ourselves that we're better than our Asian counterparts--but all you receive is knowledge that the interlocutor has been to Singapore too, "and it has a really nice airport."

Stereotypes don't only trap you in a certain mould complete with often false expectations of what and who you are. They also trap people absorbing it with a certain image of how you should be treated. For every person who thinks these images innocuous, there're many others who can't or won't quite differentiate fact from fiction. And unless you're out there convincing everyone that your approved stereotype is actually not wholly safe for consumption, then I suggest you jolly well not encourage it at all. Because so far, I haven't found a stereotype that benefits anyone.

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

"If your marriage is fucked up, it's because you fucked it."

Oh Holy Jeshua Christ! What the bug-eating-Rafflesia is with so much male-cow dropping of patronising condescension from institutions (you cleared up nothing because nothing's been "misperceived", but thanks for making it pointedly clear how you know we see the road to hell you pave with your good intentions; see Redux tackled by brilliant Leona Lo) and a sympathetic married woman!?

Is this, as Complaining Cow says, "wing-nut week at the ST Forum editor's desk"?

I'm in no mood to get further upset after yesterday's hogwash parading as magnanimity (as reader, Madhairday, notes in the comment section, "the HONOUR of the tolerance [Jerkface] has bestowed upon us lower beings") and if people don't see what's essentially wrong with the positions they hold, I think we're just going to have to pretend to agree to disagree, but silently know that my Magical friend is onto them and in all its infinite and magical wisdom sees them for the "nasty, contemptuous assclown" that they are.

To ease tensions, I'll let the wonderful comedienne, Wanda Sykes, share some incisive humour on the seemingly delicate institution of marriage and--by its extension--Traditional Family Valuez. The very illusions of problems brought on by people whose complex lives have led them down different, yet functional and surprisingly mostly happy (if not for your constant shitting on them) paths from your "classicist" structures.

From her 2006 "Sick and Tired" stand-up comedy show:

If you don't believe in same-sex marriage, then don't bother marrying somebody of the same sex. How does someone else's marriage affect your marriage? If your marriage is fucked up, it's because you fucked it.

Are straight couples in marriage counsel now; "we just ain't been working together since Bill and Ted hooked up. We just can't get along."

I don't know. "We got to protect marriage", that's what they say. "We got to protect marriage." I don't think same-sex couples, I don't think they're the biggest threat to marriage. I think the biggest threat to marriage is divorce.

That's what fucked up my marriage.

So if they're so concerned about preserving marriage, and the sanctity of marriage, they want to protect marriage, what they should is ban divorce. Make marriage like the mafia; once you're in, you're in.

...

What is the fear? What are people afraid of? What you're scared that gay marriage is going to be better than your marriage?

"Look at them happy-ass gays..."

You're scared your wives will nag you and stuff like, "Honey, honey, look at Bill and Ted. Oh my god, I love those guys. They sat on that porch for hours and talk. I run into them all the time at the mall, I see them shopping. I mean they spend a lot of quality time together. I wish we could do that. I wish we could be a little more like Bill and Ted."

[In husband tone] "Really? Well, maybe if you let me fuck you in your ass a couple of times, that could be me and you right there, baby--we could have that."

The Holy Gospel of the Easter Bunny

(Cross-posted from my blog earlier.)


The Easter Bunny is said to be "born from the pastel coloured egg of a virgin hen, while others suggest he was found in a basket of cellophane grass". He died in the window of a butcher shop in Chinatown for our sins, just right before he was sold to a Ukrainian family and eaten.

Have you been saved by our Lord Animal Christ Jeshua Cottontail, my friends?

(Watch to learn why chocolates are dangerous for dogs.)

Public Service Announcement: No To Rape Petition Ending!

Following our badly drawn friend's post on seeking immediate help for rape, I'm reminded to make a belated public service announcement.

Firstly, on behalf of all the friends on the farm, I would like to give thanks to the good people at No To Rape for both their efforts in forwarding the important cause of recognising marital rape, and giving us a blog mention.

We on the farm are very honoured to be able to forward conversations on rape culture extant in Singapore--a phenomenon that has really caught us by surprise and disturbed us when it finally reared its unabashedly ugly, misogynistic and abhorrent head since the campaign caught the attention of the Singapore blogosphere.

Secondly, No To Rape will end its petition come 30 November 2009, Monday. That's just three days left for us to spread the message! Please visit the site and sign the petition if you haven't already. (Make sure your friends, family and pets have done it too!)

I reproduce all three of their advertisement videos:





SIGN PETITION!

Singapore Democratic Party's "Let's Talk" series.

Since the Farmer's in the house, I figured I'll just let everyone know that there's a series of interviews showing on Youtube carried out by the Singapore Democratic Party.

The inaugural episode interviews the face of Singapore LGBTQ activism, Alex Au, and the second has AWARE founder and long-time activist/ writer, Constance Singam, sharing her views on women and politics, political change, new media influence, etc.



Responding to the interviewer's query on glass ceilings for women in Singapore politics, Singam says:

There's a glass ceiling for both men and women in politics. It's not just women. It's more difficult for women. Women are interested; I'm not saying that women are not politically interested; they are, from my own experience, I see they're interested. When the need arises, they can be easily mobilised; they're there.

But, their work, work in Singapore is about 16 hours a day, that alone can put impossible burdens on a person--man or a woman. Then you have the women who are married with children and who have a home to look after. So where is the energy and the time to go beyond that.

Thirdly, we're confronted with the culture, and it's a very, very Asian culture. Which is strange, it seems to be more apparent in Singapore than in the region, like Indonesia and Malaysia, they're also very traditional, but they have more women in politics. Which is why I think one of the biggest problems in Singapore is that we have been de-politicised. (3 Nov 2009)

(via Seelan Palay.)

People we love: Tegan & Sara

It's a sad day for LGBTQ rights and human rights, as we here at the farm mourn over Maine's stupid, jack-assed decision to repeal a same-sex marriage law it passed one year ago. How a majority is able to have the power to vote and dictate the personal decisions and lives of minorities is something I'd never understand.

So I thought I would inject some cheer by posting a video by one of my all-time favourite bands Tegan & Sara!!! Whooo!!

If you don't know who Tegan & Sara are, they're a twin rock duo from Canada who are....wait for it...gay.

OMFG LIKE WHAT!

Yeap, and while they haven't hidden their sexuality from their fans, they haven't used it as a marketing gimmick either (*cough Katy Perry is fake and exploitative cough*).

However, Tegan & Sara's sexuality (they're a lesbian rock band! lesbianz!) has certainly been of interest to the media, especially in their early days, when music reviewers/journalists preferred to talk about their sexuality than their music. Take for instance this indie music blogger who started a review of their gig by talking about how many lesbians/women there were.

Would a straight male-dominated rock band get the same type of treatment? Uh no. No serious music reviewer goes to a heavy metal gig and talks about how many men there are in the crowd.

Fucking double standards.

But anyway, here's a video about Tegan & Sara talking to Causecast about gay rights and about having their sexuality out in the open right from the very beginning of their careers. You can even read the entire interview here too.



I'm also posting up Tegan & Sara's song I was Married, which was featured on their fifth album The Con. In the song, Sara writes about her civil union with her partner Emy Storey and the opposition they faced only because they were trying to marry the person they loved most in the world.

And it shouldn't have to be that way. But that's what LGBTQ rights are basically are-- seeking equal (not more, not less) rights to that which straight people are given.

Two consenting adults, straight or otherwise, who truly love each other should never have to seek the permission of voters or the legislation in order to get married.

That's just fucking wrong.

When you're too good not to be white(r).

This is a post on three instances when you're too good not to be whiter.


(Taken from Otago Daily Times.)
Story 1 - That's Jeff Ma on the left.

He was a very smart Asian-American kid, who at some point of his life at MIT decided that he could outsmart the the game of 21 by counting cards. So he and some other very smart Asian-American mates bandied together, headed down to Las Vegas to count their way to riches.

It was. A. Lot. Of. Money.

Enough of a-lot for someone to write a book about him, which led to Hollywood making a movie about the book, lead starring the very cute Jim Sturgess, who's on the right in the photo. Resemblance between Ma and Sturgess?

Not much.

Because somewhere along the line, someone exercised a little creative genius and rewrote the story: Kevin Lewis (in-book)/ Ben Campbell (in-movie) is a very smart Caucasian-American kid, who at some point of his life at college decided that he could outsmart the game of 21 by counting cards. So he and some other mates (mostly Caucasian-American) bandied together, headed down to Las Vegas to count their way to riches.

It was. A. Lot. Of. Money.

Enough of a-lot for people to want to rewrite your identity into something more palatable for the general masses who have been told that only certain identities and looks have more selling power.

Well, at least they kept the penises. Farmer help us should they'd gone all crazy by reimagining a woman there instead.


Story 2 - In a more fictitious universe, there's the Nickelodeon cartoon series, "Avatar: The Last Airbender". The story has all sorts of culturally period Asian settings and mysticism, with the key character, Aang, looking quite a bit like a Shaolin monk (see picture above; dude who looks quite a bit like a Shaolin monk--yeah, doesn't take a PhD in anthropology to spot, ya?). Not to mention, Chinese calligraphy and pugilistic moves are featured throughout the show. There's also a strong hint of Inuit identity in two of the major 'Water Tribe' characters as well.

It's a very popular show, so like any popular work of art, book, cartoon, comic, video game, stage performance that has an inkling of a narrative, it has to translate into a celluloid blockbuster. (Of course, it has to! What do you mean why!? Question does not compute...) However, during that translation, Asian and coloured actors and actresses died of what comedienne, Margaret Cho, terms SARS (Severe Asian Racism Syndrome), so the producers and casting crew ended up with this:


(Image from Racebending.com.)
Oh.... All the coloured artistes who could have more important roles died, but lots survived for the minor roles of bad guys, of course. As is anti-hero Zuko's role, played by Dev Patel of "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) fame. Because darker-skinned people evoke more terror in the hearts of many people, ya?

(Question: who scares darker-skinned people? Racists, I wager.)


Story 3 - That's a movie-still of the most divine Jake Gyllenhaal and the very pretty English actress Emma Arterton, in their respective role as a Persian prince and Indian princess. (True fact: Persia's current day Iran.) They're from the movie "Prince of Persia" (2010), which is based on--if you have been following my point about 'good anything = good movie'--the very popular computer game of the same name from the 1990s.

(Images taken from Jordan Mechner.)
True, the computer game was no history lesson to take home to your kids. In fact, judging by the cover art of the game itself, this was just some Orientalist's dream, where you get all the culture and food of an exotic place without having to actually have the burden of factoring in the people from this place too much. (Maybe video games really aren't all that good for kids?) But in the two decades between 1989 and 2010, you'd think people have figured out that there's something really wrong about the Prince of Persia arch.

Oh, by the way, they did of course cast Sir Ben Kingsley, of half-Indian, half-white parentage as Teh Ev!l guy Nizam in the movie. He gets the dark under-eye liner, menacing goatee and doubly ornate wardrobe evil exotica treatment. Kinda like Boris Karioff's Fu Man Chu from the "The Mask of Fu Manchu" (1932).


(Nizam from IMDB; Fu Man Chu from Racebending.com.)
The problem here is that Hollywood is a really big machine that churns out so much material that is so widely marketed and shown everywhere. The Hollywood content is not some accidental, small option at the movies, instead they are the main spread in our movie culture for a lot of people. That sort of long-term normalising is the reason why, even though we still don't have a lot of Caucasians in our midst, it is really difficult to not factor them in our imagination, hence the prevalence in seeing Caucasian models selling anything and everything. And it has seeped so deeply into our consciousness that it's actually not a big deal when we do meet them living in our neighbourhoods or working alongside us as well.


Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, spoke quite recently about her experience with "the single story", of growing up reading English books by English and American authors, meeting other people outside of the Nigeria who have perplexing impressions of her and where she comes from. In the middle of it, she points out quite correctly, I think, the (suggestion) of power that gets embedded in the narrative, which really isn't a new idea but I guess it bears minding:

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali. How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story, and to start with, "secondly." Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have and entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called "American Psycho" and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers. Now, obviously I said this in a fit of mild irritation.

I would never have occurred to me to think that just because I had read a novel in which a character was a serial killer that he was somehow representative of all Americans. And now, this is not because I am a better person than that student, but, because of America's cultural and economic power, I had many stories of America. I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of America. ("The danger of a single story," Jul 2009)

In summary, don't be a Stupid Gherkin you people in your boardrooms talking up ideas about the next movie, television and story. The world is full of stories to be told, and contrary to what you think, a good story can probably sell itself without your white-washing it--not just simply by putting only white people on screen, but also making everyone look a certain type, or talk a certain way (Singapore, I'm looking at you too!). The exposure to more representation can only be a good thing, then maybe brown spectre turkeys don't have to protest against the rail-thin, snow-white fair beauty regiment of contemporary culture, cats don't have to deal with daily racists pretending that they're beyond racism (or "micro aggressive racism", if you will), and you wouldn't have to change a goat's name because it doesn't fit right inside your little non-United Colours of Benetton world. And a badly-drawn, male unfeminist pig feels obliged to write a whole meandering blog post, on top of looking for matching pictured about this.

Now, imagine that!

+++

Racebending.com is the official international protest movement that's calling for a boycott of the movie "Avatar: The Last Airbender". Pledge your boycott if you agree that the movie-makers have quite a serious case of all-sort-of-fucked-up, and believe that there's room for other coloured folks to take up screen time in more diverse roles.

18 Mighty Mountain Warriors urges best in this skit:

"Let's get heard".

BREAKING NEWS: No To Rape has a new video!



This badly drawn, gay male unfeminist pig has much disagreement to express:

No to "balanced" arguments suggesting that oppression has validity,
No to believing that women's bodies are not their personal domains to control;
No to always prioritising someone else's life (born or otherwise) before a woman's choice,
No to assuming that the homosex "bottom" role, the receiving end of The Glorious Gherkin, makes one an inferior;
No to thinking that women who are on the receiving end of The Glorious Gherkin are inferior,
No to Penal Code Section 377A,
No to censoring positive LGBTQ material in our local media and education,
No to pretending that the media has no role in moulding minds;
No to pretending that the law cannot protect the interests of the minority despite popular dis(belief);
No to pretending that LGBTQ rights have nothing to do with human rights,
No to arguing that migrant labour and domestic workers Voluntarily choose to work in drastic conditions;
No to always deferring our responsibilities to these migrant workers to someone else,
No to accepting "traditional family values" as the source of all good,
No to the political disempowerment encouraged in Singaporeans,
No to blaming Singlish on bad English;
No to believing the myth that we live in a post-feminist society,
No to using "gay" as a synonym for "stupid/ludicrous",
No to everyday racism that we think is OK since 'no one is hurt',
No to always waiting for someone else to solve our social issues;
No to accepting that 'bread and butter" should always be primed and protected first;
No to ignoring that a lot of these social issues eventually affect your "bread and butter",
No to thinking that meritocracy precludes compassion and empathy.

(This gay male unfeminist pig is unsure if he should be putting this up, because the "Notorapers" haven't done anything at their website, nor have they sent any mailer. But since it's available, I guess it's fair game? Besides, the campaign to repeal Singapore's marital rape immunity told TOC that they'll be releasing a new flick, so I guess they're expecting people to look out for it. Anyway, look at the right side for our email, and I'll remove it.)

World Day Against Death Penalty Forum.

A forum for Singapore's observation of the World Day Against Death Penalty, 10 October 2009, was held in conjunction with the clemency call for death row prisoner, Yong Vui Kong, who some years ago was caught as a drug mule. Video footage from the forum have recently been made available, so I'm posting them below.

Moderated by local poet/playwright, Alfian Sa'at, the main speakers of the event are:

M. Ravi, Human Rights lawyer
Agnes Chia, Social worker
Breama Mathi, Maruah Singapore
Alex Au, Yawning Bread