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Stand up for Singapore? Gay Men and the Cultural Politics of National Belonging in the Lion City

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Stand up for Singapore? Gay Men and the Cultural Politics of National Belonging in the Lion City STAND UP FOR SINGAPORE? GAY MEN AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF NATIONAL BELONGING IN THE LION CITY BY KOK KEE TAN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee Associate Professor Martin F. Manalansan, IV, Professor Emeritus F. K. Lehman Professor Janet D. Keller Associate Professor Alejandro Lugo Abstract This dissertation ethnographically examines how Chinese-Singaporean gay men articulate their aspirations for national belonging within a recalcitrant state and its nation-building programs. These men expose the artificiality of the nation and its categories of belonging. Even as the state compels them to submit to its call for economic and biological (re)productivity, it also chastises them for their allegedly excessive individualism. Yet, in the corporeal spaces of everyday life, they navigate a social landscape structured by the very real practices of an authoritarian state that criminalizes their sexuality. By ethnographically charting how gay men comply with and resist discourses and practices that position them both inside and outside their nation, I argue that the illiberal state achieves its political legitimacy by successfully convincing citizens that only it can secure Singapore's continuous economic growth. I further assert that within Singapore's strongly communitarian political framework, gay citizens who stress their commonalities with their non-gay counterparts tend to attain more social acceptance than those who focus solely on their sexuality. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people, without whom this dissertation would have been impossible. First and foremost, I thank my friends and fieldwork consultants in Singapore: Aaron Neo, Alan Ang, Alex Au, Bianca, Brian Ho, Bryan Choong, Charmaine Tan, Chris Low, Clarence Singham, David Chein, Dinesh Naidu, Eileena Lee, Ernest Yeo, Gary Lim, Han Lai, Harry Tan, Haz, Ignatius Low, Jazy Chen, Kelvin Wong, John Poh, Ken Hong, Kenneth Chee, Khalil, Lee Chor Pharn, Lee Nam Khim, Leow Yangfa, Nick Deroose, Nick Lam, Otto Fong, Peter Ong, Rayman Som, Roger of “Vincents” Bar, Roger Winder, Sham, Roy Tan, Russell Heng, Sylvia Tan, Terence Leong, Thomas Tan, Tim Chan, Toh Boon Hwee, Xian Hongjun, Yasser, and others whom I might have forgotten by mistake. Without the insights into everyday gay life in Singapore you gave me over the many years, my dissertation would never have taken flight. I should also mention the anonymous reviewer at the Wenner-Gren Foundation. No thanks to you and your mean letter, but I still finished my fieldwork and dissertation anyway. Maybe you had forgotten your time as a graduate student, but I put in a lot of time, effort, and emotions writing my proposal. Do not shred it as if it were chattel. Next, I would thank my four advisors – Associate Professor Martin F. Manalansan IV, Professor Emeritus F. K. Lehman, Professor Janet Keller, and Associate Professor Alejandro Lugo. I could not have succeeded without your immense and invaluable guidance over the years. I would also like to thank the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for the funding it provided me for summer research in 2005 and 2006. Of course, I must thank the members of the dissertation-writing class that later became an informal writing group – Prof. Alma Gottlieb, Karin Berkhoudt, Isabel Scarborough, Angela Glaros, Elizabeth Spreng, and Julie Williams. “As is known to all” (performs hand gesture), dissertation-writing is a painful task best tackled among friends, and you “park people” definitely eased my agony. Lastly, I would also like to thank Ethel Hazard. You steadied my hand during my first rocky years in graduate school, and you were right. Not only did I catch up, I overshot. iii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1: “WE, THE CITIZENS OF SINGAPORE …” ……………………………….. 1 CHAPTER 2: A SHORT HISTORY OF NATION-BUILDING IN THE LION CITY …..... 24 CHAPTER 3: STATE IDEALS OF CITIZENSHIP AND THE GLOBALIZATION CHALLENGE …………………………………………………………….... 62 AN INTERLUDE ………………………………………………………………...……….. 107 CHAPTER 4: THE “GREAT AFFECTIVE DIVIDE” AND GAY ACTIVIST CONSTRUCTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP ………………..………………… 117 CHAPTER 5: BEING GOOD AT BEING A CHINESE-SINGAPOREAN MAN ……..… 157 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………..... 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………………… 206 APPENDIX A ……………………………………………………………………………... 240 iv Chapter 1: “We, the Citizens of Singapore ...” Stand up for Singapore Do the best you can Reach out for your fellow men You've got to make a stand Recognize you can play your part Let it come right from your heart Be prepared to give a little more Stand up, stand up for Singapore - Stand Up for Singapore (1984) by Hugh Harrison We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society based on justice and equality, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation. - Singapore National Pledge (1966) by Sinnathamby Rajaratnam IndigNation and the Unofficial Pink Picnic “Singapore,” sociologist Laurence Leong (1997: 142) writes, “appears to be the last frontier in the Asian region for positive gay and lesbian developments.” While repression and sexual perversions characterize orientalist discourses (Screech 2000: 759), Leong’s assertion remains not entirely ungrounded. Of all its Asian neighbors, Singapore shares the dubious honor of having laws that specifically criminalize male homosexual acts with Malaysia and Brunei. Section 377A of the Singaporean Penal Code punishes such acts with jail sentences of up to two years, and provides a legal justification for the systematic social discrimination that gay Singaporeans experience. This Section reads: Outrages on decency 377A. Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years (Source: Singapore Statutes Online ). 1 When consenting heterosexual couples perform the same oral or anal sex, however, these acts shed their criminality. Singapore's politicians made this distinction during a heated public debate in 2007 when they overhauled the Penal Code to correspond laws with contemporary social values. Strictly speaking, 377A punishes only male homosex. A most likely apocryphal tale I heard long ago traces this bias to Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603 CE). When this British monarch's counselors asked her whether they should criminalize female homosex as well, she rejected the suggestion by reputedly insisting that “women don't do that.” Whatever the law's origins may be, Singapore's current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong promised that he would not enforce it – he retained it for its symbolic value only. Nevertheless, the very act of retaining 377A cast all gay and, by extension, lesbian Singaporeans as second-class citizens. The juridical inequality and the resulting social injustice that 377A engenders stand out starkly in the light of the two epigraphs above. In the first, I present the opening stanza of Stand Up for Singapore , a nationalistic song that radio and television stations often play beginning late May as citizens prepare to celebrate National Day on August 9. Grandiose in wording, the song rouses Singaporeans and exhorts them to give their heart, body, and soul for their country's betterment. The second epigraph reproduces the National Pledge made by the live audience of the National Day parade and, more commonly, by school-going children nation-wide during every weekday morning assembly in all levels of education from kindergarten to junior college (the equivalent of the high school in the United States). Penned in 1966 by a former Deputy Prime Minister and reflecting the tumultuous ethno-politics of that era, the pledge calls on citizens to work towards a unified Singapore by setting aside differences in their ethnicity, language, and religious faith, but conspicuously not their gender and sexual identities. The sharp incongruity between the legal and sexual exclusions of 377A and the unifying call of the two epigraphs provokes questions about cultural and sexual 2 citizenship in Singapore. Do gay men reconcile their sexuality with the anti-sodomy law? Do they see themselves as Singaporeans and proclaim their patriotism? By answering these questions in this ethnography, I shed light on the larger dynamics of the state and the meanings of belonging in Singapore. In recent years, gay men began to publicly assert their cultural and sexual citizenships. Angered by the criminalization of their sexuality and other acts of state- sponsored discrimination in the past, local gay rights activists began organizing a series of gay pride events called IndigNation in 2006. Occurring in August every year to coincide with the country's National Day, IndigNation highlights the socio-legal discrimination that LGBT Singaporeans face daily to their otherwise-unaware straight counterparts, while registering their desire to become full-fledged members of the Singaporean nation. Over IndigNation 's short history, the Unofficial Pink Picnic became a popular event among participants. LGBT rights activists named the picnic after the rosy hue partly because of its historical association
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