10.24.07
Posted in LGBT Rights, Politics at 12:28 am by pleinelune
Dear Ms Thio
I am not as learned as you in law. I am but a first-year law student. A law student who happens to identify as queer, and has spent the last two years working in the queer activism scene, who now loves a woman, who now wishes to rid this country of the blight known as section 377A.
Ms Thio, I am sure you know this section very well… in fact, you dedicated an entire speech to the impassioned defence of it, not even touching on things like marital rape immunity. I am surprised… I thought an educated, feminist woman like yourself would have some feelings on this section which effectively takes away the right of married women to their bodies…. but I digress. You expounded in detail upon the merits of retaining this law. You showed us all how much you hate us gay people - like we couldn’t tell from the letters to ST. When I read your speech, my first impulse was to laugh. Then as I read on, cringing at the leaps of logic, and wincing at the palpable hatred pouring out of the paper.
I will now proceed to rebutt you: point by point.
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- About: Pleinelune is irritated by rhetorical arguments
- Forum discussion: LGBT News and Rights
- technorati: gay, queer, lesbian, homosexuality, rights, 377a, singapore
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10.19.07
Posted in General, Queer literature at 1:58 am by Guest Writers
I’ve always found it uncomfortable attending family weddings and reunion dinners as an officially single person but family funerals are worse. Plus I never thought I would feel nostalgic for the days when people called me ‘Sir’ by mistake. Here, in this very cold room at my mother’s funeral wake, the staff of the Singapore Casket Company are calling me ‘Aunty’.
My Mum died alone. I know I should feel more upset than I do but I think it hasn’t sunk in yet. I didn’t realize people die so fast.
The problem is, we don’t schedule dying the way we schedule other family activities. When my mother died two nights ago, my brother was away on a business trip and I had gone to Phuket for a weekend to get over a break up; what’s known in the community as the annual break-up. The one that begins with,
“Don’t you care about anything?”
“Why do you have to be so intense about everything?”
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tags:
gay,
glbt,
indignation 2007,
lesbian,
lgbt,
pierced years,
queer,
singapore,
tall tales and short stories,
women,
ovidia yu
- About: Written by Ovidia Yu. It was first read in Indignation 2007, 'Tall Tales and Short Stories'.
- Forum discussion: Discussion
- technorati: ovidia yu, glbt, lgbt, gay, lesbian, queer, women, indignation 2007, singapore, tall tales and short stories, pierced years
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10.07.07
Posted in Announcements, LGBT Rights, Singapore Gay News at 1:35 pm by sayoni
Sayoni supports the effort to repeal section 377A from the Penal Code of Singapore, and we would like to request all our readers to sign the online letter to the Prime Minister with your real name.
Please do tell your friends and loved ones about it too. Every signature counts, and this is your opportunity to tell the government that discrimination is unacceptable.
To know more about the penal code and the amendments:
Amended Penal Code
Focus Group Discussion at MHA in 2006
PM Lee Hsien Loong’s Comments
MM Lee Kwan Yew’s Comments
- Forum discussion: LGBT News & Rights
- technorati: queer, gay, 377A, decriminalisation, singapore, penal code, petition
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10.01.07
Posted in General, Queer literature at 3:31 am by sayoni
Foreword by Yawning Bread
This is the “tall tale” that Ng Yi-Sheng was planning to relate on Sunday 5 August, at the planned event “Tall Tales and Short Stories” during the Indignation Gay Pride Season 2007.
The Media Development Authority (MDA) deemed such an event an arts performance, and insisted that the organisers obtain an arts event licence.
Yi-Sheng, who had planned something a little more spontaneous, then had to put down his story in words. As he told me,
“I had no inclination to write it in letter form until MDA demanded a licence application. My irritation with them imposing this system on us put pressure on me to create something *worth* their attention. And while I knew they’d probably ban it (as they did your photos), I was also completely aware that this was part of the game; that their action of covering their backsides by banning something they’re uncomfortable with (though for no specific reason) would backfire in the end, through enhanced public interest in a text that suggests that they’re gerontophilic paranoiacs.
“In short, I am not the victim here. They are.”
* * * * *
On 1 August 2007, MDA rejected Yi-Sheng’s text. He was not allowed to read it at the event. The MDA gave a one-line reason in their letter:
“The content of Lee Low Tar has been disallowed as it had gone beyond good taste and decency in taking a disparaging and disrespectful view of public officers.”
The event will still go on, but as a talk, not an arts event. I believe that Yi-Sheng will spend his allotted time sharing with the audience his views about the MDA and the inspiration behind this story.
* * * * *
A fictional, metatextual farce by Ng Yi-Sheng
Composed Tuesday 24 July, 2007.
Denial of licence communicated Tuesday 31 July 2007.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Re: Application for Arts Entertainment Licence
Thank you for your application dated 25/07/2007 to hold a public reading of literary work. As you must know, the Media Authority on Development (MAD) is extremely supportive of the development and dissemination of Singapore writing. We welcome such events as yours as a vital element in the growth of our national culture.
This being said, however, we regret to inform you that one story – and one story alone - in your programme lineup, has not met with our board’s approval. Even by our liberal standards, we have been forced to rule that Ng Yi-Sheng’s “Lee Low Tar” is not a work of literature, but a specimen of the most degraded pornography known to man.
Indeed, the author admits as much when he introduces the text in his preface as “an account of the perverse and prurient adventures of the dangerously beautiful and seductive schoolboy Vladimir Koh Nah Bay”. His unusual protagonist, an avowed nymphomaniac by the age of eighteen, is to spend the greater part of the ensuing pages engaging in a number of highly imaginative sex acts with men; a premise which our board of reviewers, in the light of Section 377A of the Penal Code, cannot condone.
This fact in itself would be sufficient grounds to disqualify the tale for licensing. Yet the author further complicates matters by making Vladimir Koh one of a peculiar and unique variety of perverts; namely, the gerontophile, one who derives erotic pleasure through contact with old men. And I quote:
Give me an elder of the city; a senior citizen, a sage, a pasha or pundit with a noble bearing and pleated skin. Give me milky eyes and delicious dapples of brown on the dermis, knobbled joints and distended bellies bearing the memory of a thousand suppers, dry lips and sweet gums, cold fruity breaths and withered tongues. Give me wizened feet on wheelchair stirrups, stone knuckles on Zimmer frames, hearing-aids, eyeglasses with chains behind and clefts in the middle for bifocal correction, give me hairlines of white and grey and caramel, receding into the napes of scrawny necks and thereafter into clothing stinking of chloroform. Off with those wet pyjamas, I will have your shrunken sex.
We believe that Vladimir Koh represents an inaccurate reflection of the homosexual community, which is commonly known for its adoration of young, muscular men. Such a contrary character will only frustrate expectations and stimulate widespread depression in the community.
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tags:
media development authority,
censorship,
gay,
homophobia,
indignation 2007,
lesbian,
lgbt,
mda,
ng yi-sheng,
ovidia yu,
pride month,
queer,
singapore,
story reading,
tall tales and short stories,
glbt
- About: Written by Ng Yi-sheng
- Forum discussion: Discussion
- technorati: glbt, lgbt, indignation 2007, singapore, gay, lesbian, ng yi-sheng, tall tales and short stories, ovidia yu, queer, pride month, story reading, mda, homophobia, Media Development Authority, censorship
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