Singapore's LGBT history remains largely unknown to the vast majority in mainstream society and even to many LGBT people themselves. This is partly because the LGBT community is a relatively "invisible" one - it is not easy to identify who is gay or lesbian, although transgender Singaporeans who do not "pass" well may be more obvious in a crowd. Moreover, with male gay sex having been criminalised for almost a century under Section 377A of the Penal Code, procreation being culturally seen as an important aspect of one's duty to society and with considerable peer pressure to adhere to gender norms, there is much shame associated with being gay or transgender. This leads to a great reluctance of many LGBT Singaporeans to come out to the general public and to make the details of their intimate lives known.
Historical and media records also tend to suppress or euphemise the description of LGBT activities because of colonial Victorian morality and the current regime's insistence on the censorship of positive portrayals of LGBT Singaporeans. However, if one ploughs through archival reports and reads between the lines which were often derogatory of LGBT people, many instances of salient events can be teased out to reconstruct a credible historiography.
The documentation of local and regional LGBT history is also of immense importance in countering the oft-heard argument that LGBT culture is alien to Asian values and is a corrupting import from the West. A study of archived evidence reveals, on the contrary, that it is homophobia that was foisted upon us by the European colonial powers and that we are the inheritors of a long tradition of acceptance of gender diversity and expression.
Understanding the sociopolitical environments our predecessors survived in and keeping track of the developmental milestones through time enables us to gauge our progress or regression and chart a course for the future. One eventual goal would be the attainment of equality in all aspects of our lives, enjoying exactly the same rights that heteronormative Singaporeans take for granted.
Documenting and knowing Singapore's LGBT history is important for several reasons:
- It helps LGBT people understand and be represented correctly. LGBT history shows the diversity and complexity of human sexuality and gender identity across time and culture. It also reveals the struggles and achievements of LGBT people who fought for their rights and dignity. By learning about LGBT history, people can appreciate the contributions and perspectives of LGBT individuals and communities, and challenge the stereotypes and prejudices that often marginalise them.
- It can spare LGBT youth years of needless alienation, denial, and suffering. LGBT history provides role models and inspiration for young people who may be questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity. It also shows them that they are not alone, and that there is hope and support for them. By knowing LGBT history, LGBT youth can develop a positive sense of self and identity, and cope better with the challenges they may face in their families, schools, and society.
- It can help people understand how LGBT people were treated in the past and what’s led to the changes that we see in the world today. LGBT history traces the evolution of social movements, laws, and policies that have affected the lives of LGBT people throughout history. It also highlights the resistance and resilience of LGBT people who faced persecution, discrimination, and violence from various authorities and institutions. By knowing LGBT history, people can recognise the historical roots of homophobia and transphobia, and the need for ongoing activism and education to promote equality and justice for all.
Challenges of documenting LGBT history[]
One of the biggest challenges faced by archivists of Singapore's LGBT history is finding records of the various LGBTQ+ communities written by these communities themselves. All too often, researchers are left to piece together the lives of queer individuals in earlier eras by looking through the records created by biased or ignorant sources – newspaper or sensationalist tabloid reports of people being arrested for cruising or the high incidence, prevalence and deaths of HIV-infected gay men and transgender women. This is what makes archives so important - they save the stories of many whose lives would otherwise have been forgotten or distorted.
When looking for LGBT history in non-LGBTQ sources, at best, one may find one or two references, usually simplified versions that reduce the community down to stereotypes, and do not show the wide variety of people that live under the LGBTQ umbrella. At queer archives, the sheer quantity of records preserved ensures a more accurate picture of their lives. Many laws have been used to prosecute GBT men who go cruising. Records created by members of the community can provide insight into the real lives behind those arrest records, turning LGBT ancestors from sad statistics to stories of resistance and survival.
Oftentimes, things like buttons or t-shirts or small, handmade zines, things that were not considered important by large institutions at the time they were made – never make it in to mainstream archives. But these objects can shed so much light about how the communities presented themselves, spoke about the issues that mattered to them, and organised for their rights.
Stories of LGBT people falling in love, being best friends, or dealing with simple everyday life are rarely captured in history books that focus on so-called important world events. But these tender moments remind them what they have always been fighting for – the freedom to be themselves, to love themselves, and to love each other.
Technological advancements facilitating archiving[]
Traditional archiving of articles suffers from the problem of deterioration of the paper on which they are printed. Newsprint is a low-cost paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and is not suited to long-term archiving. Apart from being fragile and easily creased or torn, it ages and deteriorates rapidly under conditions of high heat, humidity and light. These conditions first turn it off-white, then eventually brown and then brittle. Humidity stimulates the growth of mold, which considers damp newsprint an ideal growth substrate. It also makes it an ideal environment for silverfish which are attracted to consume the carbohydrates, sugars and cellulose which paper is made of, and the glue which is used to bind books.
Technological developments such as the Internet, scanners, digital video cameras, optical character recognition, NewspaperSG, and the wayback machine have greatly facilitated and expedited archival efforts.
Countering the narrative that LGBT culture is a Western import[]
The path trodden by Singapore's LGBT activists in their quest for equality is made easier by studying the pioneering work of their counterparts in other countries in the region that have succeeded in shaking off the yoke of colonial Britain's imposition of laws that criminalise homosexuality.
"The simple fact is, if we have no history, we have no authenticity, making the task of winning acceptance so much harder.
Samshasha (Xiaomingxiong), one of Hong Kong's leading gay activists, realised this when the proposal to repeal the law against buggery was floated in the early 1980s. There was thunderous opposition from the Hong Kong Chinese. Many of them took the view that homosexuality was alien to Chinese culture. Samshasha fortunately, had been doing research for some time, so he put together what he had discovered and published a book in 1984, 'History of Homosexuality in China' (Zhongguo Tongxingai Shilu) The thing about China is that its court history is unusually well documented compared to other civilisations. In addition, it had a rich literary tradition, so at least Samshasha had source material to work with, even if it wasn't representative of all social classes. Other countries have less available.
Yet even Chinese history and literature has a serious gap that stretched through the first three-quarters of the 20th century, when due to influence from the West, the Chinese themselves considered homosexuality a taboo subject, and fell silent about it. And it's been the same through the last few decades from one end of Asia to the other. This silence and the historical amnesia that results, is what makes us aliens in our own cultures.
Merely ether
Will it be different from now on? Aren't we all over the Internet now? Samshasha aka Xiaomingxiong was Hong Kong's first gay activist. In 1980, after a series of homosexual scandals involving British expatriates, the colonial Government again attempted to introduce homosexual law reform but its attempts were fiercely resisted by sectors within the Chinese community which insisted that homosexuality was a western vice, unknown in Chinese tradition. To counter this myth, Sam began to publish gay liberation texts in Chinese including A Chinese Gay's Manifesto (1980) which was the first such booklet published in Hong Kong and The History of Homosexuality in China.
We'd like to think so, yet we should still ask ourselves, is it merely conceit to somehow think that the Internet is sui generis, that it will last when so many other modes of communication have been stilled by time? After all, in generations past, they cruised, they loved, they cried and they commiserated. Their lives were expressed in whispers, in chat, in letters and sometimes in bawdy jocularity. Likewise, we of our generation chat, opine and joke, and given our technology, there's a torrent of it digitally. But it may prove just as ephemeral as in ages past.
What has lasted through time has generally been information that is organised and annotated. It can take many forms: factual records of events, biographies, fiction, poetry, painting, sculpture, collections of artifacts, maps... but all of them share the characteristic of somebody taking the trouble to organise them. In our generation it can take additional forms of photography, cinema, and oral histories, but no less than before, we still need to organise and annotate the stuff to be of any use. How often have we encountered in some shoebox somewhere an old photograph of a group of people smiling into the camera - we recognise two faces and know their names, we think we recognise two more but can't recall their names, but who the hell were the other three? Where was this taken? When was this taken? On what occasion? Such a photograph is as good as useless historically. When we are dead, even the two recognised faces become unrecognised. Ditto with email, online forums, blogs and webpersonals. These too suffer death, for as soon as the host server goes offline, there is no guarantee that anyone will have archived it. So for all our loquacity today, it may still mean that few in the next generation may know anything of us and our time. Our lives, our struggles and our joys may float by as unremembered as those before us, and once again a future generation is left without history, without authenticity.
What's gained can be lost
History is not linear. Rights and social space won today can be lost tomorrow. Democracies collapse into dictatorships, peaceful inclusive communities rend themselves asunder with new bigotries and dogmas. What we know today can be unknown tomorrow. If we want the progress we have made to take root, we must document our times and our lives, so that future Samshashas have source material at hand to defend their rightful place in our nations, and future gay teenagers don't feel like aliens in their own communities.
How many of us have written about our self-discovery? Our coming out? Our families and friends? How many are writing about Phuket and Nation V? How many of us have organised our photographs in retrievable, meaningful ways? These we need to do. But equally important, we need to start thinking about how all these can survive us to become part of our various cultures' collective memories and our countries' national histories. Then only do our lives survive us."
Being visible to demand equal rights[]
A community without is history is like a ship without a compass and a rudder - it does not know from whence it came, nor which direction it is headed. It can only react passively when buffeted by waves or when currents lead it to slam against treacherous rocks. This is compounded by the fact that LGBT Singaporeans are largely invisible to the public eye. The Census of Population, which is done once every ten years, does not keep track of this demographic. The situation is not surprising since even a country where LGBT rights are much more advanced like the United States does not include this category in its published census statistics, although sociological polls are periodically conducted (see LGBT demographics of the United States). An estimate for Singapore based on people who identify as LGBT in developed countries would range from 3 to 5% (see Demographics of sexual orientation). A study done by market research firm Ipsos in 2022 which polled 500 Singaporeans showed that 12% identified as LGBTQ+[2].
In recent decades, the concern of the Singapore government has been to arrest the declining the birth rate, to maintain the proportional racial composition of the country and to increase the material well-being of its citizens. As such, the population census statistics have focused mainly on race, marriage, offspring and educational qualification, amongst more conventional demographic indices.
The status quo is obviously detrimental to the rights of LGBT Singaporeans as it renders them "invisible" in population planning geared towards meeting citizens' needs. It also implies that they are not officially recognised as a valid minority the way minority races and adherents of religions are.
It is unfortunate that the only government-backed survey done so far, in 2019, to estimate the number of gay men in Singapore was undertaken in the context of HIV epidemiology. Others have focused mainly on attitudes towards homosexuality and used the findings to affirm the conservative nature of Singaporeans which justifies the retention of Section 377A of the Penal Code.
The LGBT community has tried to redress the situation by conducting its own surveys dealing with the public's attitudes towards LGBT people, especially gay men, and other pertinent issues such as bullying, violence and support services.
Introducing LGBT history into the educational curriculum[]
Singapore's LGBT history is currently not taught in schools. Students generally know a bit about the history of the various racial groups but are totally clueless about the development of this significant minority. Introducing LGBT history into the school curriculum or at the tertiary level is important because:
- It helps students understand and respect the diversity and complexity of human sexuality and gender identity across time and culture. It also helps them appreciate the contributions and perspectives of LGBT individuals and communities to various fields and disciplines.
- It can foster a more inclusive and safe school environment for LGBT students, who often face discrimination, bullying, and harassment from their peers and teachers. It can also reduce the stigma and prejudice that often marginalize LGBT people in society.
- It can empower LGBT students to develop a positive sense of self and identity, and to cope better with the challenges they may face in their families, schools, and society. It can also provide them with role models and inspiration from LGBT history, and show them that they are not alone.
- It can enrich the curriculum and enhance the critical thinking skills of all students, by exposing them to different sources of information, perspectives, and experiences that are often left out or distorted in traditional textbooks and narratives. It can also help them recognize the historical roots of homophobia and transphobia, and the need for ongoing activism and education to promote equality and justice for all.
See also[]
References[]
- A 2005 Fridae article by Alex Au on the importance of documenting Singapore's LGBT history entitled, "Remembering our histories":[3].
- Liew Kai Khiun, "Old “cowboy towns”: enduring democratic enclaves as Singapore’s alternative digital histories, 1994–2011", Digital Technology, Culture and Society, Internet Histories, Taylor & Francis Online:[4].
Acknowledgements[]
This article was written by Roy Tan.