Becoming Queer and Religious in Malaysia and Singapore

Sharon A. Bong

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350132757
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

What does it mean to become religiously queer or queerly religious in one's everyday life? What narratives of becoming 'person' emerge from these lived realities? Sharon A. Bong addresses these questions by exploring the personal journeys of several GLBTIQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer) persons negotiating the tensions between living out their sexuality and religiosity in the context of Malaysia and Singapore. By sharing their stories, Bong presents a broad spectrum of queer strategies emerging from participants' narratives of 'becoming', which encompass becoming Asian, becoming postcolonial, becoming sexually religious and religiously sexual, and becoming 'persons'. These strategies are used in the book as counterpoints to nationhood narratives of becoming Asian or postcolonial, which are still mired in religious-sponsored and colonial-inherited sexual regulations. Finally, Bong shows how the insistence of identifying as both queer and religious is critical in challenging the conservative social-political milieu surrounding issues of gender diversity and inclusion within these south-east Asian states.

1

Introduction: The journey into the interior

What does it mean to become religiously or spiritually sexual and sexually religious or spiritual in one’s everyday practice as a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer or questioning (GLBTIQ) person living in Malaysia and Singapore? How does one make sense of these everyday practices at individual, familial, interpersonal and institutional levels? What kinds of strategies are afforded by these practices? To what extent are these strategies transformative of mindsets and ways of becoming beginning with GLBTIQ persons’ own? The book offers important insights to these research questions based on in-depth interviews conducted with sixteen GLBTIQ persons: twelve in Malaysia and four in Singapore.

I use GLBTIQ in cognizance that sexuality studies scholars find it problematic, notwithstanding the intent to be inclusive, as it seemingly orders hierarchically gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer identities in descending order with ‘T’, ‘I’ and ‘Q’ perhaps accorded with diminishing value. This is preferred to the term ‘non-heterosexual’ which simultaneously invests GLBTIQ persons as ‘dissident [identities]’ yet hardens the binary of heterosexual/non-heterosexual and in doing so, ‘[reinforces] heteronormativity’ (Yip 2005: 61–2). Through the textual analysis of narratives of GLBTIQ persons interviewed in this study, I would contend that heterosexuality and non-heterosexuality are mutually constitutive not mutually exclusive categories. In this study, in line with problematizing narratives of the closet (Sedgwick 1990) and deconstructing the binary of coming out/closeted, I remain sceptical of privileging or overvaluing dissidence or resistance over plural strategies which at times, for certain individuals, in certain contexts, is practised as not coming out.

I begin with a mapping of how these everyday practices are framed. In the context of Malaysia and Singapore as postcolonial Southeast Asian nation-states, the body of their citizenry is marked by diverse ethnicities, religious affiliations, class, genders and sexualities. The postcolonial time and space are notable in this study as it calls to question how the liberated-from-colonization states (as former colonies of the British Empire) are managing not only ethnic and religious diversity but also gender and sexual diversity of the populace. The ‘post’ in postcolonialism, in signifying the progress of a nation, is contested by the lack of legitimacy accorded not only to ethnic and religious minorities but also to gender and sexual minorities in these nation-states. I borrow from Peletz to contend that there is ethnic, religious, sexual and gender diversity but not ethnic, religious, sexual and gender pluralism as pluralism is contingent on legitimacy (Peletz 2007: 44). So the prefix ‘post’ is prematurely celebratory (Ahmed 2000: 10) for gender and sexual minorities as quasi citizens where equality and equity as full citizens is, at best, a work-in-progress and, at worst, a nonissue or foregone conclusion. This is because ‘colonizing’ discourses, in the state of ‘post’-coloniality, prevail in visible and invisible ways in which bodies and sexualities are produced by nation-building rhetoric and practices that are not only heteronormative (in normalizing and legitimizing heterosexuality for the majority of the populace) but also heterosexist (in discriminating against sexualities in all its plurality). In short, all is not well for gender and sexual minorities in these ‘post’-colonial nation-states beset by internal neocolonialism where some are not only born more equal but made more equal than others.

These hegemonic discourses of a nation in which the individual and the family are its organic principles construct the citizenry as a heterosexual thus stable subject. A heterosexualized person and family that are made natural are consonant with the drive towards modernization that Michel Foucault, in his seminal text The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (1978), had exposed. According to Foucault, in the section ‘Right of death and power over life’ (1978: paragraph 139), a sovereign’s power over death of its subordinates has since modernity evolved (or morphed) to the state’s power over life of its citizenry; this ‘biopower’ is two-pronged:

One of these poles – the first to be formed, it seems – centered on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls, all this was ensured by the procedures of power that characterized the disciplines: an anatomo-politics of the human body. The second, formed somewhat later, focused on the species body, the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls: a biopolitics of the population.

The ‘biopolitics of the population’ find expression in state rhetoric and practice that effect the reproduction of sexuality (rather than the repression of sex) through legal, political, medical, literary, psychoanalytical and religious discourses, that constitutes normal as opposed to deviant, even perverse bodies and sexualities. The discipline of bodies and sexualities – ‘an anatomo-politics of the human body’ – which includes the management of desire, in turn, effects the production of labour for the propagation of the human species, advancement of economic stability of a nation, even the hardening of boundaries between man/woman, privileged/underprivileged and young/old. In applying his thesis on the history of sexuality of Europe to the Malaysian and Singaporean contexts, notwithstanding the time-space compression, what is resonant are the competing demands exacted by competing discourses that are ‘directed toward the performances of the body, with attention to the processes of life … to invest life through and through’ (Foucault 1978: paragraph 139). These investments include religions (particularly the fundamentalist variant), the culture of ‘Asian values’ (Stivens 2006: 356), that among other value systems, privilege Communitarian good above individual rights, deeply rooted conservatism and globalizing sexuality rights (to be elaborated in the next section), and the naturalization of the heterosexual family and procreative sexuality between heterosexuals.

In the interest of mapping the terrain, a cursory survey of media texts as popular discourse provides a quick-take on how bodies and sexualities of gender and sexual minorities in particular (as the discipline of sexuality is firstly extended to heterosexuals as they can and should procreate)¹ become sites of contestation for these competing discourses. The ontological ‘perversion’ of GLBTIQ persons is entrenched in Malaysia (then Malaya) and Singapore’s shared British legacy, the sodomy law, Section 377 of the Penal Code that criminalizes ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’, and more ambiguously, ‘any act of gross indecency’ (Shah 2009). Local and global news commentators point to the notoriety of the sodomy law as an antiquated legislation in violating sexuality rights of GLBTIQ persons in particular and as a contemporised ‘tool of political repression’ when Anwar Ibrahim, the then Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, now political leader, was twice prosecuted for sodomy (Amnesty International 2012).

Two groundbreaking episodes punctuate this ontological ‘perversion’ of GBTIQ persons. In 2007, Singapore ‘struck colonial-era penal code Section 377 from its books’ (Mosbergen 2015). In 2001, Malaysia amended Article 8(2) of the Federal Constitution by adding ‘gender’ as grounds for non-discrimination: ‘there shall be no discrimination against citizens on the ground only of religion, race, descent, place of birth or gender’ (Commissioner of Law Revision, Malaysia 2010: 23). However, the limits of legislative breakthroughs remain. In Singapore, there is no explicit law that protects the GLBTIQ community ‘against discrimination on the grounds of gender expression or sexual orientation’ (Mosbergen 2015). Marriage equality, e.g. gay marriage, remains illegal in Singapore, as it is in Malaysia. In Malaysia whilst amending Article 8(2) is lauded as a ‘step forward’, the Bar Council of Malaysia counsels that the amendment needs to be extended to ‘other existing laws, policies and appointments in the future’ as a ‘laudable and bold attempt to empower each gender to achieve their full potential generally’ (Mah 2001). Essentially Malaysia – and Singapore by extension – ‘has yet to introduce legislation on gender equality’ that is aligned with UN instruments such as CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Aziz 2008).

So on the one hand, the marginalization of gender and sexual minorities is apparent as this is largely state driven. The Malaysian government openly endorses gay conversion therapy as its Islamic Development Department produced a video likening ‘sexual orientation to horse riding’ and exhorted homosexuals to repent by fulfilling their desires ‘through marriage’ or suppressing ‘their appetite’ through fasting (Roberts 2017). Its Ministry of Health (MOH) organized a video competition with a category on ‘gender identity disorder’ aimed at preventing homosexuality and transgenderism where submitted entries need to show the ‘“consequences” of being LGBT, as well as ‘how to “prevent, control and seek help” for them’ (Shurentheran 2017b). The Malaysian citizenry, deemed a heterosexual stable subject, is further constructed in positioning the GLBTIQ community as other; ‘not suited to our culture and customs’ and therefore ineligible to join the country’s armed forces, states Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi during a Transformasi Nasional 2050 forum which is a national initiative to plan for the future of Malaysia, from 2020 to 2050 (Anand 2017).

The triple marginalization of economically disadvantaged GLBTIQ persons compounds their stigmatization and discrimination. In AFP (2011), it is noted that transsexuals and transgender people ‘face daily discrimination and harassment in Malaysia and many of them are forced to earn their living as sex workers because they cannot get any other job’. Sayoni, an LGBT-rights group in Singapore, documents how, among trans women and ‘gay women’ in particular, ‘the poor and the under-educated are particularly vulnerable to abuse’, e.g. a trans woman sex worker who was gang-raped and afraid to report the crime to the police (Mosbergen 2015).

This triple marginalization exacerbates the vulnerability of high-risk groups where HIV and AIDS awareness, treatment and prevention are concerned. The Malaysian AIDS Council (MAC) challenged the MOH’s singling out this segment of Malaysian society, as doing so not only ‘violates the core principles of equality, tolerance and compassions upon which the AIDS response was founded’ but also risks jeopardizing the ‘high-impact prevention strategies’ (e.g. community-based testing within a non-judgemental environment) in realizing the national goal of achieving ‘90 per cent reduction in new HIV infections – or ending AIDS – by 2030’ (MAC 2017). Action for AIDS Singapore maintains that it is only reaching ‘10 percent of the community’ where more than 50 per cent of the 6000 people diagnosed with HIV in Singapore are gay men because of media laws that prohibit ‘LGBT-specific campaigns’ (e.g. condom advertisements), as Singapore’s Media Development Authority’s (MDA) guidelines caution against the promotion, justification or glamorization of aberrant ‘lifestyles’, e.g. homosexuality, transsexualism, incest (Mosbergen 2015).

Maintaining the fiction of a heterosexual stable subject thus requires indefatigable effort by multilevel institutions. This is evidenced by examples in Malaysia that follow the extraordinary outcome of the fourteenth General Elections in May 2018 – the toppling of National Front, Barisan National (in power since independence from the British in 1957), by the then Opposition Front, Pakatan Harapan – where hopes for greater respect of gender diversity and inclusion were unmet. These include the caning of two Malay-Muslim lesbian women aimed at educating rather than hurting them, for allegedly attempting to have sex in a public parking lot in Terengganu, a highly conservative eastern state in West Malaysia (Palansamy 2018); the reaction of the nonagenarian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad whose initial concern was that the caning ‘gave a bad impression of Islam and did not reflect the religion’s quality of justice’ (Sreenevasan and Ding 2018) and later maintained that Malaysia will not recognize LGBT culture or same-sex marriage as these are ‘Western values’ (The Star Online 2018a); the removal of two portraits of LGBT activists, Pang Khee Teik and Nisha Ayub, from the state-sponsored photography exhibition celebrating the heritage of Georgetown, Penang, because it is ‘against [Malaysian] values’ (Nambiar 2018); and transphobia that remains unabated with the killing of trans women (The Star Online 2018b).

Other examples include the court’s rejection of Mohd Ashraf’s application to change her gender and name to Aleesha Farhana Abdul Aziz that moved the nation as she, a post-operative male-to-female transgender person, subsequently passed on (Zolkepli and Ramli 2011); the naturalization of effeminate boys through rehabilitation at an ‘anti-gay camp’ organized by government and education officials of the conservative state of Terengganu (BBC 2011); the fatwa (religious edict) issued by the National Fatwa Council to ban pengkid or tomboyism (Kala 2008); guidelines listing ‘symptoms of gays’ and ‘symptoms of lesbians’ for parents to facilitate early detection of homosexuality in their children which the Education Ministry had subsequently denied endorsing (Mosbergen 2012); and the banning of Seksualiti Merdeka, a sexuality rights festival comprising fairs, forums and performances (Ar 2013), by the police in 2011 and upheld by the court (following a failed appeal for judicial review), with a member of parliament interjecting that ‘it involves wild relationships that will damage the country and nation. It is planting the seeds for the emergence of wilder relationships’ (MT Webmaster 2011).

The fiction of a heterosexual stable subject is maintained by the majority of Singaporeans, as a study by the Institute of Policy Studies shows that ‘78.2 percent of Singaporeans felt sexual relations between two adults of the same sex was always or almost always wrong, and 72.9 percent of them were against gay marriage’ (Shen 2014). This collective sentiment finds expression in the MDA’s media guidelines that result in skewered characterization of the LGBT community, where they ‘have to be sad, troubled, or suicidal [and in] Chinese dramas, the gay character is often a serial killer or a comical sidekick’ (Mosbergen 2015); restriction to the right to assemble following a change in the Public Order Act which allows only Singaporean citizens and permanent residents to participate in the annual Pink Dot LGBT rights rally thereby excluding foreigners who comprise 30 per cent of the city-state’s population (BBC 2017); and the genesis of the WearWhite movement as a protest against the Pink Dot movement in particular and the ‘growing normalizations of the LGBT’ community in general that was launched by an ustaz (Muslim teacher) and joined by sympathetic Faith Community Baptist Church and the LoveSingapore network of churches (Shen 2014).

On the other hand, the heterosexual stable subject is inadvertently destabilized by the insistent bracketing off of these plural sexualities. It not only makes visible but also exposes what Foucault terms as the ‘biopower’ (1978: paragraph 139): the work invested in legitimizing the heterosexual subject and heterosexual union with the potential for and realization of procreation for the sake of the nation’s sustainability and progress. In these nation-states where sexuality remains a taboo subject, media attention inadvertently gives rise to the visibility of GLBTIQ persons and the support and, in some cases, societal outrage at the violation of their rights. These episodes in Singapore encompass the landmark High Court ruling that allowed a Singaporean Chinese gay couple who have lived together since 2005 to adopt their five-year-old son conceived through a surrogate mother in the United States on the premise of single-parent adoption and in the interest of the child’s well-being (Kok 2018); the ongoing debate to repeal Section 377A that states that ‘any two consenting men who commit “gross indecency” shall be punished with imprisonment for up to two years’ despite the circular stalemate and the government’s assurance that it will not be enforced (Aw 2012); the exhortation for the cessation of the ‘culture war’ between liberals (pro-LGBT) and conservatives (pro-family) by Pritam Singh, the party chief of the Workers’ Party, to focus instead on widening the definition of family as an ‘enlightened and inclusive one’ to support those who come out and ‘might face prejudice and depression’ (Au-Yong 2019); the first Pink Dot LGBT rights rally held in 2009 with the organizers’ assurance that it did not touch on taboo ‘topics of race or religion’ and it ‘was not a protest or a political rally’ (Leyl 2009); the government’s ‘quietly’ lifting the ban to hire homosexuals for the sake of the economy (i.e. in a bid to not repel foreign gay talent) tempered by the admission of the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong who, in the early 1990s, stated, ‘We are born this way and they are born that way but they are like you and me’ (Arnold 2003); and twenty years later, a similar cautionary advice given to GLBTIQ persons to employ ‘pragmatic resistance’ that is ‘non-confrontational’ which complements the social-political conservatism of the state (Gjorgievska 2012); the founding of the Inter-University LGBT Network which supports LGBT students across campuses such as the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological Society by millennial activist Daryl Yang who is also canvassing for political literacy among youth (Zhuo 2019).

In Malaysia, these episodic disruptions to the stability of a heterosexual subject include the much publicized wedding reception of an openly gay pastor Ou Yang Wen Feng that provoked the reaction by the then Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom, that ‘Malaysians of all races should protest en masse the practice of same-sex marriages as it will erode the family institution’ (Leach 2012); the union of a lesbian couple signified by the tea ceremony which is regarded to be a quintessential Chinese wedding tradition (Tay 2011); a landmark ruling by the Court of Appeal which ‘struck down a Negri Sembilan state law forbidding Muslim men from dressing up as women as being unconstitutional’ following the appeal made by four Muslim transsexuals who challenged Section 66 of the Syariah Criminal (Negri Sembilan) Enactment 1992 but lost the case in 2012 (New Straits Times 2014). Within the transgender community, these episodic disruptions include netizens grieving over the brutal murder of Shameera Krishnan and appealing for the end of ‘hate crimes against the transgender community’ (Shurentheran 2017a); the ordination of a new leader for a local Indian transgender community that spans seven generations, Thirunangai Association of Malaysia and Singapore (Muthiah 2012); the ‘colourful send-off’ for her iconic predecessor, M. Asha Devi, Asha Amma (Mother Asha), ‘the oldest transgender woman in Malaysia’ who is reverently remembered as helping many transgender persons ‘acquire new identification cards as women...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: The journey into the interior
• 2 Managing incompatibility and exclusivity
• 3 Adopting celibacy
• 4 Facing condemnation and taboo
• 5 Dealing with guilt, shame and pain
• 6 Negotiating ambivalence
• 7 Queering time
• 8 Managing compatibility and inclusivity
• 9 Finding reconciliation and affirmation
• 10 Conclusion: Becoming and belonging
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Imprint