Not Just 377A
For many queer people in Singapore, they see the oppression, marginalization, exclusion, and violence against all queer people in three numbers and a letter: 377A.
A law, a demand, an imposition, telling people that same-sex behaviour in Singapore won’t be tolerated. Sure, it may be ‘unenforcable’, but it exists on our books. This causes queer people to be fearful of potential threats or exclusion.
We need to banish this law. Let it die on the colonial high horse it rode in on. Pretty much every queer person agrees with this. An archaic law that doesn’t just prevent sexual acts between men, but repealing it can lift a roadblock on many an issue. Reporting & receiving treatment for STIs & other health issues that may arise. Sexual assault survivors could receive greater support. People may be less fearful or afraid to openly support queer rights. Repealing 377A is good.
But many think queer rights begins and ends with 377A. It doesn’t.
Repealing 377A alone will not affect:
- The ridiculous age ratings on films that has queer people or queer families.
- Conversion therapy practices for trans and queer people.
- The prevention of queer families from entering marriage or civil unions.
- How schools affect trans student’s transitions or sexual education for queer students.
- New adoption laws that prevent same-sex couples from adopting kids.
- Rights to public housing being privileged towards heterosexual, nuclear families.
- The general inaccessibility of trans-affirming healthcare.
- The institution of sex as a binary, concealing intersex people from their actual sex and excluding them from society.
- The structural & societal erasure of non-binary/agender/genderqueer folk.
If 377A is ever repealed, we still need to fight for queer rights, for queer families, for queer bodies, for queer liberation. Because, in our laws, in our communities, in our families, and in our lives, being queer is not just 377A.
Is repealing 377A the first step?
But hang on, 377A is just the first step, right? We can’t undo and modify every law at once. And hey, our government did say that they will ‘consider different viewpoints’ to 377A, so this must mean they are actually willing to repeal this and look out for queer people & their families, right? After all, on a staircase, we can’t make a leap all the way to the top, so we have to take things step by step, see? And since the government is taking that first step to reconsider 377A, they are surely on their way to grant queer people their rights. It’s just a matter of time, right?
No. Some of us don’t have that time. And even if they take that one step towards queer rights by repealing 377A, they may take MANY steps further from queer liberation. The same month Singapore was ‘considering’ 377A, they put forward new adoption laws fully preventing same-sex couples from adopting kids.
Masagos: Govt does not support “formation of same-sex families” and “deliberate single parenthood”
Our ministers are guests-of-honour or platformed at Focus on the Family meetings & conventions.
Our leaders may be open to suggestions from groups to include the current definition of ‘marriage’ in the Constitution, setting a social norm that privileged heterosexual families into stone. Our future PM, when speaking of gender identity issues, issued a warning against “importing culture wars“.
To some, this seemingly hypocritical approach by the state towards queer lives may seem odd. It isn’t odd to me, though. In fact, it’s made the state’s position pretty clear.
There is no doubt that a key motivation for most incumbent political parties is maintaining power.
State Power and 377A
If the state repeals 377A, this helps sway some queer people and LGBT+ allies to support their power. Primarily, this may convince those that are privileged enough to avoid state harm through their existing privileges, be it through wealth, gender, race, and the like. But, they are also maintaining and tightening laws surrounding the ‘traditional family’ to maintain their voters too.
This is playing both sides, both for the oppressed and the oppressor. The problem is that ‘playing both sides’ does nothing much to change our lives. This doesn’t change restrictions to public housing. This doesn’t improve healthcare for trans people. This doesn’t affect societal marginalization of queer people. This doesn’t give space for queer families, queer kinship, or queer love. And, most importantly, this doesn’t change how queer people are harmed or materially affected in everyday life.
See, the same State that is doing the bare minimum by repealing 377A after eternity, is also the same State that dishes out ratings for films with scenes involving gay people. It is also the same State that, not too long ago, moved a children’s book, “And Tango Makes Three” with gay penguins into the adult’ section.
It is also the same state that may potentially repeal 377A and enshrine the definition of marriage in the Constitution.
The State is concerned about maintaining power and control over us, no matter the discrimination and exclusion we face as queer people. Recent statements suggest that future changes to laws in this area should be under the purview of Parliament instead of being decided in the Courts.
This is what ‘being pragmatic’ means. So, when you see them caring only to repeal 377A, whilst rejecting other calls for queer liberation and potentially ‘compromising’ on our rights to keep our oppressors happy, just know that it may be all about maintaining power.
The way we should go about this is, obviously, to push for more than just repealing 377A. Personally, though, I think it’s a shame that most of us don’t aim beyond this repeal right now.
2 steps forward, 1 step back?
It should be in the core of anybody who is queer, any ally of queer people, or any organization claiming to represent queer people, to oppose our oppressors. To make a clear and distinct push for queer liberation. To challenge existing powers that harm queer lives through the structures and systems of society they enforce. To be united in pushing for the rights of all queer people. Well, that’s what should be the case.
Like I said at the start, we need a repeal of 377A, and the bigger LGBTQ+ advocacy groups in Singapore are doing an excellent job organizing, mobilizing, and making change around the repeal, in addition to providing some forms of support and community care.
The main issue is that any liberating potential repealing 377A has is immediately undone by appeasing to those that harm us, by succumbing to their power over us, and by allowing them to further exclude and discriminate against us. This is not the inclusive, freeing, and loving change in society that a number of queer people and allies think the repeal will spark.
Homonormativity in Singapore
What this achieves is termed as homonormativity. It is when queer people only get accepted under current power structures. Structures that privilege cisgender people and straight couples. Structures that privilege those of a different class. It maintains the hierarchies of power that will privilege certain institutions, certain dominant values in society, and, perhaps even, certain kinds of queer people. By privileging certain queer rights over others by reinforcing current structures, what this does is divide queer populations through the power they are granted in society and the material privileges each of them has.
The push for the repeal in its current state achieves homonormativity by ignoring the larger social structures that affects queer lives, like access to housing or work, other societal issues harming queer people, like conversion therapy, and marginalizing other queer people and families not seen as ‘ideal’, like polyamorous families or transgender/non-binary people.
If, for example, a constitutional amendment is on the cards to enshrine the current definition of marriage, this must be opposed clearly and unequivocally by LGBTQ groups. It sets a dangerous precedent where the supreme law of the land may be amended to appease anti-LGBTQ folks. Although anti-LGBTQ groups often speak of the slippery slope, this is the real slippery slope that we should all be wary of.
The Road Beyond Repeal for Queer Advocacy
Pursuing homonormativity is a deliberate strategy taken by a number of activists in Singapore. To avoid any state backlash. To avoid not being taken seriously by the state. To work their way within the narrow bounds of change allowed by the state. In other words, resist pragmatically.
This is by no fault of these organizations or activists alike, but the state exerting their power to limit the change we can make and using that power to undo change in other ways. The way most of us imagine the overreach of state power towards making change, we tend to think that resisting pragmatically is the ‘safest’, widest reaching, and most effective way to make change in Singapore.
But this is not true.
It is just a way of making change while looking good to those that hold power over us, that control us, that restrict us, that have unlimited power to prevent such change. And thus barely any substantive change is made.
Funnily enough, this point was literally ringing in my ear as I went to Pink Dot this year, as my playlist shuffled to the song “Good Boy” by British noise rock group Thank (cw: flashing lights/loud noises) as I made my way to Hong Lim Park, which left me thinking about these lyrics as the day went on:
“I only paid attention when the causes were convenient
My life’s got so much simpler when I made the wise decision
To never learn the difference between good and ineffectual”.
This kind of resistance looks good to our oppressors. It bolsters their image. It may make our lives easier, to only fight for causes that are ‘convenient’ to our image to the eyes of those in power. But the change we make like this, by appearing ‘good’ to our oppressors, is ineffectual. Power is kept to a select few. They can halt any further progress for change at their whim. People will still be harmed.
This is not what change is. Change is when we claim power for ourselves. Change will happen when we stop licking the boots of those that stomp down on us.
Like Kokila Annamalai said while on stage at this year’s Pink Dot, “We do not request for our freedom, we do not plead for acceptance, we do not wait for approval. We do not surrender our bodies and relationships to state regulation. We do not need to bargain with the architects of our oppression.”
So, here’s the message I have to all queer organizations, groups, communities, activists, families, people, and allies. Instead of bargaining, we have to challenge those in power. Hold them to account. Show our oppressors that our being, our bodies and our bonds are not for them to bind to their self-interested claim for power over us. There are already ways in which most citizens know how to reach them.
We can write-in and email them, we can organize visits to Meet-The-People sessions, we can simply talk to them whenever they are in the area or a guest at an event, or we can take the long road and work our way into systems of power to push for the change that we need. We can do all those things, but when we do, don’t bargain, plead or ask. Instead, challenge them on our terms. Show how our lives are being affected, and we won’t accept anything less until we are no longer left to suffer in a state structured and established against queer lives.
And heck, we don’t even need to challenge them. We can build our own power. Akin to many groups that have set up independent shelters and support programmes like T Project, Transbefrienders, and many more, we can set up, or contribute to, our own platforms for aid, for care, for organizing.
Form groups to help us find cheap, affordable, or even free housing. Establish a mutual aid pool to help many of us in need, funding things from top surgery to groceries to everything in between. Create our own community spaces and safe havens when people need it, and so much more. We do not need to rely on existing, powerful structures that are violent towards us. We can build our own communities, brick by brick, through community, care, and LOVE, that will keep us alive. That will do so much more than what any repeal of any law could ever do.
I would like to end this with a quote that I’ve seen been making the rounds around the internet, from noted feminist activist, author and professor bell hooks. It comes from her definition of being queer, where she states “Queer not as in who you’re having sex with, but about the self that is at odds with everything around it”.
As queer people, whether we’re gay, lesbian, bi/pansexual, trans, non-binary, genderqueer, polyamorous, asexual, brown, single parents, intersex, or at any way at odds with the norms of society and identity, we have to keep this in mind.
Because, after we repeal 377A, we will always still be at odds with the power that harms us for our very existence. Until we all recognize how we are at odds with this power, then we can hold space, and power, for each other, where we don’t just keep ourselves alive, but where we can thrive.
Submission by Shitty Canvactivist
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