Sex and
Singapore: The art of being aggressively cautious
ASIAWEEK Webposted April 7, 2000.
BY ROGER MITTON
DESPITE its new funkiness, the true conservative Singapore character cannot help shining through -- and thank heavens for that. We would all be chagrined if Singaporeans really changed. They don't like to be rash, or even God forbid, wild. I mean, where else but in Singapore, would the nation's flagship newspaper, the Straits Times, praise last month's budget presentation in parliament by Finance Minister Richard Hu for being "aggressively cautious"? Sounds like an oxymoron? A bit like being angrily calm. How does one act aggressive and cautious at the same time? Impossible?
Well, no, not in the Lion City, where the street scenes in places like Holland Park, Orchard Road, Geyland, Bugis and Chinatown are in-your-face aggressively wild and wacky. But where officials are stiffeningly prickly and verbally ultra-cautious when responding to suggestions that Singapore is no longer such a conservative spot but rather is evolving into one of the most liberal in Asia -- if not the world. Even the sophistical rhetorician George Yeo, the trade & industry minister, took a double take on being asked if this were true. He concedes that things are changing, and that there is a dark side to Singapore life, a "penumbra" as he calls it, that co-exists with the bright wholesome center. Says Yeo: "Every Singaporean knows there is a penumbra. But they want a bright wholesome area, which we must maintain. What we do not want is to say that since there's a penumbra, let it all be grey." So the naughty "grey" stuff will be kept low-profile, while the squeaky clean image continues to be pushed.
The balance is shifting as anyone can see from the tabloid press, the wild clothes and hairstyles, raunchy films, kitchen sink theater, gay bars, open red-light areas and indeed everything that Hong Kong, Bangkok or even New York and London has. It's all there, bright and visible, in Singapore. It co-exists with the broader picture -- the bright wholesome image -- that is relentlessly fed to the outside world. Yeo openly acknowledges the dichotomy. Says he: "The two sides are contradictory, but they are really two different aspects of a complex reality."
So while there is a still dominant conservative strain, there is also a growing liberal strain. But getting a Singaporean to admit that the city state is liberal is like getting a Manchester United fan to admit Liverpool have a good team. Take Yeo's aggressively cautious response when told that Singapore is perhaps the most liberal society in East Asia these days. Says he: "It depends what you mean by the word 'liberal.' Because that word carries so much political and ideological baggage, we are not quite sure whether it is a compliment or a criticism to be considered a liberal. If you call me a liberal in the classical sense of being a product of the enlightenment, then yes, we are happy to be liberals. But if you mean in a libertarian, loose sense, then no." Actually, it increasingly means both for most young Singaporeans; but the government prefers that the myth of Singapore being a clean, efficient -- and most importantly -- conservative society be maintained.
It's a losing battle. Yeo and his PAP government can't fight reality and the reality is that Singapore is indeed becoming the most liberal society in Southeast Asia by a country mile. The evidence hits visitors in the face from the morning Starbucks to the post-midnight club scene. A recent front page of the daily Business Times, for God's sake, gobsmacked breakfast readers with 'Sex, sex, sex.' Prominently displayed at every convenience store counter is a display of condoms. Indeed, tony Orchard Road boasts a garishly neon-lit Condomania shop selling all you need to become a safe-sex lothario. Look at the front covers of all the lifestyle magazines and again it's sex, sex, sex. Last month's Cleo ran its famous "50 top bachelors" annual cover, asking the guys such Singaporean questions as where do you keep your condoms, how long should foreplay last and so on. These issues are gobbled up by young Lion City chicks out for a material good time. And check out the clothes these young wannabes wear and make sure you have your libido under control. Look over the movies showing -- classified but uncut versions, less censored than Hong Kong, let alone Bangkok. And don't suggest ladies of the night are confined to Patpong and King Cross, for they are now Singapore's boomingest industry, attracting clients and workers from the region and farther afield.
Says Yeo: "We don't advertise prostitution. But every Singaporean knows there's a Geylang and things going on there. We would demean ourselves on our tourist brochures if we advertise the seamier aspects. It is beneath us."
But nothing is done to stop it as long as it's all done in an aggressively cautious Singaporean way. As in the newly gentrified streets of Chinatown, for instance, where boutique hotels and brothels openly tout for local custom. Houses of pleasure have the trademark big neon-lit number over the doorway, dozens of them, catering mainly to local Chinese. Over in the Malay district of Geylang the same set-up prevails, as it does in the down-market Desker Road of Little India. For expats, the top end of Orchard Road is the place, with Orchard Tower full of bars in which working girls from all over ASEAN ply their trade as the Singapore cops stroll by -- and do nothing. As they do when, in front of the Hilton Hotel on Orchard Road, working girls and transvestites openly ply their trade -- aggressively aggressive might better define them.
Yet this is Singapore. What is going on? What is going on is that anything goes. It is a far less conservative place these days than Stockholm, Paris or Bangkok. Just don't tell ministers that -- they don't deny but it makes them feel uncomfortable and they become aggressively cautious in replying. But then that's the Singapore way and thank heavens for that.