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Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
About Me
- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
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14 comments:
He meets old friends that have stayed to make a difference and new friends who have turned out gayer than he himself thought possible for a place like the Singapore he knew.
Typo? impossible instead of possible, I think.
maybe gays turn towards artistic self-expressions (instead of, say, taking up PSC scholarships and later getting headhunted for Parliament) because they have repressed feelings; maybe openness would eliminate this factor and would cause gays to become dull like the rest of us; maybe that's justification for not opening up
see how creative I was in applying such logic? and I am not gay
sgsociety.com
anon 15:31
No typo. The kernal phrase is "gayer than possible", not "gayer than impossible". "he himself" is the qualifying phrase inserted to modify the meaning of "possible".
Do you know who the publisher is or what the ISBN is? A google search for the book didn't help me in finding someplace to buy a copy.
Publisher is Cannon International
Block 86
Marine Parade Central #03-213
Singapore 440086
Phone +65 6344 7801
ISBN 978-981-05-9472-5
It's true that the male body is featured in many of Royston's movies... hell, it's even there in CUT with the whole lot of the men in trunks posing. But that alone ain't exactly evidence... Hmm.
-SS
Ha,ha,ha,ha! - Richard Florida's treatise on the creative class which he then focuses & identifies the gay community as a leading contributor to creativity & creative energy. In 2002, MM Lee & SM Goh had probably read his 1st book "The Rise of the Creative Class" & in their quest to attract FOREIGN TALENT - they started to relax their homophobic laws & policies from 2003 onwards. SM Goh even publicly stating that the govt would not discriminate against gay civil servants & will try to attract them into civil service.
What MM & SM didn't expect was their own cabinet's resistance together with some ex-ministers who were totally against attracting the gay expatriate community into Spore. As the cabinet has many fundamental Christian Ministers and they in turn were supported by certain influential ex-Ministers, they were against homosexuality from the start based on their religious faith. Subsequent police crackdowns on gay events and non-repeal of 377A serves to confirm their stance. What was ironic was that the general population (>65%) who were mainly Buddhists, Taoist & Atheist were ambivalent about homosexuality i.e. they were neither against it nor for it. In short, the anti-gay movement came from within the govt & not from the public whom were indifferent as they were preoccupied with bread & butter issues. It was a non-democratic decision which was taken without consulting the public's views. 377A was maintained with precisely the same non-democratic decision along with the mentioned of a study indicating the public's support against repealing of 377A.
At the end, the conclusion about Spore is still the same old, same old - never can change, never will! S377A, Death penalty, Censorship, PAP, straight jacket education - Spore is a child still trapped in an 42 yr old adult's body.
I wear my liberal badge proudly, but I have one question about this column. While the sexuality of many of the people you have discussed here is widely known, have you asked their permission whether they might be referred to by name?
I ask because coming out must really be a matter of choice for the individual, and not for a columnist to decided.
Yawning Bread's editorial policy is that in the social context that is Singapore, there is no pressing reason to treat sexual orientation as a private matter. I will mention sexual orientation when appropriate just as I would mention race, religious affiliation, age, waistline etc. Of course gay people face discrimination, just as racial minorities and overweight people face discrimination, but that is no reason for Yawning Bread to suppress relevant information in any essay. On the contrary, a continuing effort to stay in the closet and help others stay in the closet is no benefit to gay communities generally.
>a continuing effort to stay in the closet and help others stay in the closet is no benefit to gay communities generally.
you are missing the point: not everyone wants to contribute to gay communities generally; I believe Marcus Lim's point is about the individual's privacy; if he/she chooses to remain in the closet, it might be a disservice to the community, but he/she is still within his/her rights
sgsociety.com
There is no such thing as a right to privacy about sexual orientation.
>There is no such thing as a right to privacy about sexual orientation
now that sounds radical to me; I am not sure the gay community agrees with this, nor who is entitled to speak for this "community"; further, putting "community" before "individual" reminds me of "asian values"
sgsociety.com
>There is no such thing as a right to privacy about sexual orientation.
I was going to say militant, but the point has been made. If we're not willing to respect the individual's basic right to privacy, then what's the point of your activism at all?
>what's the point of your activism at all?
I guess the idea that he fights for is equality between gays and non-gays; I have no problem with the idea itself, but there are gays who prefer "being left alone in practice" (i.e., non-prosecution and no apparent discrimination) to "fighting for theoretical equality" (i.e., repeal of law against homosexuality, even unenforced); by denying that gays have the right to choose this, Alex Au is putting "community" before individual, like PAP.
PAP, for well known reasons, feels it has done a lot for Singapore and is entitled to decide for Singapore; again similarly, Alex probably feels he has done a lot for the gay community and is entitled to decide for the community; he is being logically Singaporean, something I, a foreigner, find hard to share.
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