05.31.06
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05.30.06
A Mother’s Day Tale
I brought my mother and brother to the beach yesterday. Nothing special, really, except that my mother joined me on the Sayoni beach outing. Just before that, my girlfriend and I had joined her at Novena church - a place I haven’t stepped into in 15 years.
My mother went on to exchange make-up tips with my love, picked out girly clothes she thinks I ought to wear, and lamented that the child I adopted isn’t here in Singapore yet. She treated my girlfriend and herself to fancy henna artwork in Little India.
My brother, whom I am extremely proud of, is a straight man who treats my girlfriend like a member of the family, offering to buy her durian rolls and escorting her around when I am preoccupied.
I have no qualms about leaving my brother in a room full of women-loving women and trust him to honour and respect them. Neither do I have to worry about my mother, who graciously said yes when a woman asked her to dance when visiting me in the States. This is the woman who has seen me through shaved heads and long curls, binders and D-cup bras. She has met my past girlfriends and always knew which ones are crazy and which ones are good.
Now, she has grown feeble and is not in good health, but she still picks out psychedelic clothes for me with much zest and her voice still resonates when she yells at me for wearing jeans to church.
Before I met my current girlfriend, I went through three years of solitude. My mother actually sat me down, enquired whether I intended to be single for a long time and even told me to get someone - female or not. She did not want me to be all alone.
She has come a long, long way since I first came out sixteen years ago and I am fortunate to have her.
To all mothers, let us not forget their Happy Mother’s Day!
05.28.06
The Invisibles
No, not another super-hero family with powers of self-effacement. I am referring to those among us, who cannot be distinguished from the straight population at large. Those who blend in, becoming another faceless figure in the crowd – as opposed to those who defy norms of sexual and gender expression.
The Invisibles often get a rather schizophrenic treatment – the camp who endorses such “normality” as being what will bring the straight people to our cause, and the camp who believes gay people are different no matter what, and hence the Invisibles are selling out.
In the lesbian world, invisibility is associated with “femmes”, straight-appearing women who are not visibly masculine or lesbian.
Wait. Read my last statement carefully, and you will have noticed several assumptions and stereotypes reflected already.
1. Lesbians are usually masculine girls, often butches and andros
2. To be explicitly identified and acknowledged as lesbian, one must dress and behave differently from straight women
I shall not attempt to discuss the origins of such assumptions, for it relates to extensive amounts of queer theory, history and culture. But I would like to question the validity of it – does being feminine or masculine have anything do with sexuality? There are plenty of masculine girls who are as straight as the day is long, and plenty of feminine girls who only have eyes for other women. I’ve heard people saying, “but they all look so femme!” as if lesbianism and feminity were mutually exclusive. Visibility is not equal to sexuality.
05.24.06
Take back the Night
From : movetheclouds
When I first expressed intent to write about women assaulting women, I faced much objection from the community. I have been told point blank that this either does not exist, or does not happen often enough to be pertinent even after I shared my stories of various degrees of same sex abuse.
The few who do acknowledge this issue exists are afraid to voice it out under the flimsy excuse that the community is not ready. To this, I say that there is never a good time to address thorny issues like these. I am also told that it might give others the impression that lesbian relationships are dysfunctional. Going by the same logic, are heterosexual pairings not equally screwed up, given the amount of media attention dedicated to men assaulting women?
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05.22.06
I say tomayto, you say tomahto…
http://www.usfca.edu/counseling_center/groups.html
So… I’m standing in the rain, on the grass. At a political rally. Me, the epitome of political apathy. I’m here only because my girlfriend wanted to come, and she almost begged me to come with her. So I gave in. So, I’m here, wondering “What am I doing here?! Is this what it means to be a couple?” You see, we have vastly differing political views. In fact, I don’t even care about politics, whereas my girlfriend is the sort who feels such a high from the electric atmosphere at political rallies. That is just one of our many differences.
Another difference is the way in which we communicate. To me, every little word that is uttered provides its own little nuance, whereas she listens to the whole story and only remembers the summary of the main points. Believe me, this has caused countless arguments between us. From the same message, both of us can draw two conclusions. Actually this issue about communication causes the most problems. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that relationships don’t have conflicts. It is perfectly fine for two people in a relationship to sometimes disagree or fight. But this idea in itself was a paradigm shift for me!
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05.20.06
Lesbian brains, lesbophobia and the path to the divine
(Courtesy of Yawning Bread, a most respected and incisive place for countless thought-provoking and insightful articles.)
A Swedish researcher has found that lesbians’ brains respond in a way that is distinct from heterosexual men’s and women’s, to two hormone-derived chemicals. This is yet another piece of evidence that there is a biological basis to sexual orientation.
Ivanka Savic from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm carried out the study using two chemicals.
One, labelled “AND”, is derived from progesterone and found in men’s armpit sweat. In heterosexual women, she found that sniffing this chemical triggers a response in the anterior hypothalamus of heterosexual women’s brains. This area is involved in sexual interest, lying as it does very close to the pituitary gland. In homosexual women however, AND triggers a response in another part of the brain, the olfactory region. This is the region where smells are normally processed.
The brains were imaged using positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.
What the results show is that where heterosexual women respond to a male smell in the sexual part of their brains, lesbians respond to it as just another smell. The lesbians’ response is similar to heterosexual men’s. The latter too handle AND as just another smell, in the olfactory part of their brains.
The other chemical that Savic worked with was derived from oestrogen and found in pregnant women’s urine. It was labelled “EST”.
Savic knew from earlier studies that EST produces responses in heterosexuals that are opposite to the effects of AND. In straight men’s brains, EST triggers a response in the hypothalamus (the sex area). In straight women’s brains, the response is located in the olfactory region, as just another smell.
Interestingly, this latest study found that lesbians also handled EST in the olfactory region.
Thus it isn’t correct to say that lesbians are somehow analogous to straight men. The response pattern in their brains to AND and EST put them in a class of their own.
Earlier work with gay men
A year ago, the same researchers published a study comparing gay men with heterosexual men and women. Both gay men and heterosexual women, on sniffing AND, triggered responses in the sexual area of their hypothalamuses. This was different from the response of straight men, whose response was located in the olfactory region, as mentioned above.
Heterosexual men responded in their hypothalamuses to the female-derived chemical EST, but gay men and straight women reacted to EST in the olfactory region as just another smell.
Gay men’s response to EST and AND paralleled straight women’s response.
But the latest study showed that lesbians’ response did not parallel straight men’s, so once again we are reminded not to assume that lesbians are mirror images of gay men.
As controls, the researchers had used the scents of cedar and lavender, showing that men and women both responded to these in the olfactory area, the usual part of the brain that processes smells. This underlines the significance of any chemical that triggers a response in the hypothalamus.
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05.19.06
Your Rights As A Counselling Client (Part 2)
We all go through times of difficulty, crisis, loss, tension or uncertainty. Counselling is a service and a support to individuals and families who are facing life issues.
These problems may range from financial hardship, marital discord, stress at work, relationship conflict, child management to crisis of confidence in oneself.
In any counselling intervention, counsellors are guided by a set of beliefs and principles.
These are:
- a belief in the dignity of the human person
- a belief in the uniqueness of the individual
- the respect for confidentiality and privacy
- a belief in the responsibility of every individual to decide and initiate change
As a counselling client, you have a right to:
- have your points of view, decisions and emotions respected, not ridiculed
- know the qualifications and experience of the counsellor
- have the counsellor state his/her professional and objective point of view
- ask to be referred to another counsellor or agency
- be informed of any negative consequences that may follow a particular course of treatment
- expect confidentality of information within the limits defined by the counsellor, the agency, and the courts of Singapore
Qualified counsellors have undergone professional training in both the theory and practice of helping people with life issues. As professionals, they are skilled in structuring and guiding the counselling intervention and are effective in their response to individual needs.
There is no fixed method or approach for helping people through counselling. Instead the counsellor’s personality and professional skills form an important factor in the counselling intervention.
(The above text is extracted and adapted from “Do I need counselling?”, a guide to professional counselling services published by the Singapore Association for Counselling.)
05.17.06
Straight but not Narrow
On 17 May 1990, the General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. The fight for the recognition of equal rights for lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender people did not end there though.
That is why Sayoni is strongly committed to celebrating this second International Day Against Homophobia, launched one year ago by the International Day Against Homophobia Committee (IDAHO).
We embark on this long fight against homophobia with a post by a straight sympathiser for the cause - the best sort of people, in our opinion. We let Soo Mei tell us about being straight, but not narrow.
– Bizarro. From the Sunday Times, Singapore, 14 May 2006.
Hi, my name is Soo Mei, and I’m straight. To the bone. Not typical of the Sayoni crowd. So why write here, you might be thinking?
Well firstly because pleinelune asked me if I would. Something towards the idea of being a (rare) “straight sympathizer”, to quote her. At which point she promptly tried to explain that she meant that I am straight but that I get along really well with GLBT (no T yet, though, actually) friends. Which meant that she really quite messed up her own explanation, because I don’t think of my non-straight friends as non-straight. If anyone asked me how many non-straight friends I had, I would have to sit down, slowly run through the known sexual practices of my friends (something I don’t normally think about, yeah), and count the number off very slowly. It always makes me feel funny. Like, for the people I’m not attracted to, I don’t ever think about what sex or how much sex they have. My parents, for example. *gags*
Let’s move on quickly to the next reason.
05.16.06
Being Single
What does it mean to be single? Single-hood to some means the in between relationships where we date and have numerous flings. While to others, it means to occupy time with friends and many social outings so as to be able to detect a potential partner for a relationship, yes just short of going out on an actual date. Then, there are the rest of us who devote most of our time meeting friends every now and then but concentrate on work and doing things alone.
Single-hood has a different meaning for me each time. The first was the fear of not being loved by anyone again. After all I had just discovered my sexuality and was lack of a direction. Then of course each time I was left single the aftermath feeling evolved. I would say age played a part too.
No prizes for guessing which kind of singles I belong to mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. Okay, if it is not obvious enough… yes I belong to the third kind.
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05.14.06
Happy Mothers’ Day
When i was little, my mother is my teacher, discipline mistress, chef, and source of moral stories rolled into one.
As a teacher:
She invested into my education heavily, traveling miles to fetch me to and from classes.
I was taught English by British teachers; Chinese by Mainland Chinese teachers; how to prepare for survival when disaster strikes by Ang Mos; how to paint a black goldfish and a translucent tail using a Chinese brush; how to play the piano… before i was 12 years of age.
As a discipline mistress:
She believed in “spare the rod, spoil the child”.
And so, mischievous as i was, i was well-acquainted with “Mr. Cane”. It was not one of those “you make me so angry that it went over my threshold and now you are paying for it muahahah!” sort of discipline. I was never confused why she was upset with me- she would tell me why and backed it up.
As a chef:
She would research on the latest nutritious food and cook a storm.
I drink Cantonese soup frequently because she believes in brews.
I get to savor all kinds of Chinese herbs because she says they are good for me.
So, i was kept from “heatiness” and she brewed whatever she could to “strengthen” my body.
The home-made dishes are (till today)… Low Fat, Low in Salt, completely without white sugar and very green. I eat tons of vegetables as well… because “too much meat is not good for you darling.”
As a source of moral stories:
She related stories of her life to me.
She told me of people around her- at work, at play and those in the huge family tree.
She taught me to listen patiently, to treat people with kindness and respect, to love animals, to care for the environment, to save water, to greet my neighbors whenever i see them. It was also she who cultivated in me, the love for the beach. To learn to appreciate the beautiful things of creation.
Little things… Big things…
She covered them as much as she could.
As i grew older, my mother stop using physical discipline.
Correction now takes the form of acoustic sounds- we talk.
But that’s where the challenge comes in. After i started to question the status quo, she had to back up every single argument she had that i didn’t agree with. As a parent, an elder, you wouldn’t expect an opened heart especially towards a child who “have had less rice than the salt” she ate.
But this is what i admire about my mother-
She doesn’t take the stance “I am older than you and therefore i know better forever and ever and ever Muahaha!”
She does not utilize death threats to manipulate me…
“If you don’t do as i say, i will jump outta this window! And then you will burn in hell, you unfilial child!”
Neither does she close her ears to all i have to say.
Communication is two-way… She took time to understand how i think and how i feel.
She never said sorry when she transgressed the boundaries… Some Chinese elder pride thing. But “sorry” takes other forms…
She would cook my favorite food and the issue would melt away into oblivion.
These days, our relationship is reciprocal.
We would hang out together… yes, i am Mummy’s girl.
We would set aside every Sunday for a hearty breakfast… just me and her… and we would talk about life and people.
We would share our aspirations, our dreams and ambitions. At age 50, she has ambitions! She has never stopped learning… and i am proud of her. She is one of the uneducated women of her era… but that has not stopped her from pursuing what she loves. I admire her for her passion.
We encourage one another in our daily walk… when i told her of my challenges, she said, “Don’t worry. You will do well.”
“It’s easy to shine under your care… Thank you for loving me.”
Happy Mothers’ Day to all you wonderful mothers out there. =)
