Longing and belonging in queer Singapore: navigating outness through pragmatic acceptance
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Abstract
This dissertation examines how queer women in Singapore navigate an oppressive environment in order to live relatively safe and open queer lives. The post-gay model suggests that with the increased acceptance of queer identities and experiences in a society, the concept of the closet will carry less significance, and queer people therefore no longer need to make their sexuality a core pillar of their identity. The case of Singapore challenges the causal relationship between the catalyst of societal acceptance and the outcome of the decreased importance of sexuality to queer people. Based on 70 in-depth interviews with queer women and ethnographic observation over a year, I extend academic scholarship on understanding the ways that queer people navigate being out, or not being out. I argue that in no way can Singapore be seen as a post-gay society – same-sex relations between men is still criminalized, which trickles down to discriminatory housing, legal, and media structures, as well as the continued status quo of the conservative moral stance against queerness. Despite this, queer women – mostly non-activist – have a deeply pragmatic acceptance of the forced segmentalisation of their lives. They acknowledge and accept that they cannot be out to certain audiences, such as the family or at work, but can be freely out to themselves, and can live relatively open lives among queer friends, or in queer spaces; yet, many women also did not think queer audiences were necessary or important. However, even for women for whom queer audiences were important, most women did not consider their sexuality to be the focal point of their lives. Contradictorily, Singapore has none of the causes of a post-gay society, but manifests the results: sexuality is only a small aspect of their overall identity, and queer audiences and spaces are not always considered necessary.
As cultural discourses and understandings of identity are very much rooted in place, it is the geographical, symbolic, and structural aspects of Singapore that create this specific cultural schema of pragmatic acceptance. This study demonstrates how queer women, though heavily influenced by transnational flows of queer information and experience, still shape their understanding of their everyday life through a heavily Singaporean lens – thus emphasizing the importance of the active role of place in how people know themselves, the people around them, and how to live. Only by examining place-specific cultural schemas, while acknowledging how they are impacted by comparison to external places, can we understand such seemingly contradictory and unexpected empirical situations as found in Singapore.