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Why most victims of sexual assault do not report their abuse

This letter was originally published in TODAY on 15 January 2021. 

Last week, Law Minister K Shanmugam released important data pertaining to sexual assault in Singapore.

From 2017 to 2019, there were 6,988 reports of sexual assault, including rape, sexual assault by penetration, outrage of modesty, and sexual offences involving children and vulnerable victims. (“Parliament in brief: School sexual misconduct cases on the rise? More complaints about noisy HDB neighbours? Ministers answer”; Jan 5)

In making sense of this data, it is important to keep in mind that most sexual violence survivors do not report their abuse to the authorities.

This observation is borne out by international research and, in Singapore’s context, the experience of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) at our Sexual Assault Care Centre (SACC), where seven out of 10 clients do not end up making a formal report.

Thus, the government data is just the tip of the iceberg.Sexual assault is likely much more prevalent than the reported numbers suggest.

Survivors do not speak up about sexual harassment (even to friends and family) for various reasons, let alone report it to the authorities.

SACC’s data shows that many survivors are afraid they won’t be believed or that they do not have enough hard evidence for a report.

Unhelpful societal attitudes that “blame the victim” cause survivors to feel guilty and blame themselves for their own victimisation, for example, “I won’t report because it’s my fault for being drunk”.

Well-intentioned friends and family may trigger these thoughts by asking seemingly innocent questions such as “What were you wearing?” or “Why did you go out so late?”

In a society where many forms of violence are normalised, some survivors do not recognise that they have been abused in the first place.

In cases where the perpetrator is a family member or a close friend, for instance, the victims may be discouraged from reporting because they do not wish to see the perpetrator punished or their family unit broken.

Other survivors may dread being traumatised again when dealing with a police officer or a judge who is not sensitive.

These barriers are all very real and difficult to overcome.

Ultimately, individuals may decide that reporting the abuse is not the right decision for them.

Of course, not everyone who does so has a negative experience. Those who report may find catharsis and healing, or get access to support and therapeutic resources previously unknown or unavailable to them.

Over the past few years, the Ministry of Home Affairs has announced a series of initiatives to make the process of reporting sex crimes, as well as court procedures, less intimidating.

The Government’s review of issues affecting women that was announced last year, called “Conversations on Women Development”, will deepen public conversations on sexual violence and reporting of such cases.

Even then, there is much more work to be done to make reporting sexual violence easier and preventing sexual violence from taking place.

We still need to mainstream age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education, teach more people how to sensitively respond to disclosures of sexual assault, and go further to ensure that all parts of our criminal justice system are gender-sensitive and trauma-informed.

Shailey Hingorani, Head of Research and Advocacy, AWARE

 

Position Filled: Catalyse Trainer/Facilitator

We are no longer accepting applicants for this role.

Catalyse is the corporate advisory, consulting and training arm of AWARE, Singapore’s leading gender-equality advocacy group. We partner with organisations to build Respectful, Inclusive, Safe and Empathic (RISE) cultures where people can truly maximise their potential.

Our expertise is focused on workplace harassment and bullying, diversity and inclusion, unconscious bias, inclusive leadership and empathetic communication in an Asian context.

We are seeking a values-aligned trainer with demonstrable instructional design and facilitation experience to join us in advancing our mission of building RISE cultures. Our clients include large multinationals with a strong Asia-Pacific footprint, Institutes of Higher Learning and government-linked companies.

Position: Trainer/Facilitator
Commitment: Part-time OR full-time contract
Salary range: SGD$4,800 – 5,800
Starting date: Immediate

Job Description

Your responsibilities will mainly be those outlined below, and over the course of your time with Catalyse, your role may evolve to ensure that your strengths, interests and challenges are appropriately attended to.

Instructional design

  • Work closely with subject matter experts on content and instructional design
  • Design or oversee the production of instructional materials, aids and manuals
  • Ensure clients’ requests and feedback are incorporated as per internal documentation and/or in-person meetings with client

During training

  • Model safe and respectful behaviour
  • Create an inclusive learning environment
  • Facilitate learning through a variety of delivery methods
  • Ensure feedback forms are completed and collected

Post-training

  • Debrief with sales and/or client-management team
  • Track and record training outcomes
  • Ensure key learnings are shared with the team during weekly team meetings

General

  • Periodically evaluate programs to ensure that they reflect relevant changes on content and delivery methodology
  • Stay abreast of the latest development in Asia on topics Catalyse trains on
  • Keep current on training design and methodology

Requirements

Professional Experience

  1. Demonstrable corporate training/facilitator experience, preferably in an Asian context
  2. At least 3-5 years experience in creating corporate training content
  3. Understand management and leadership climate and nuances in Asia
  4. Comfortable working in a multicultural and diverse team
  5. Proven functional experience in consulting, business development and/or marketing

Skills

  1. Excellent English, verbal and written, and communication skills
  2. Strong presentation and facilitation skills
  3. Adept at respectfully communicating professional boundaries
  4. High level of client and stakeholder management skills
  5. Professional fluency in one other Asiatic language (desirable)

Attitude

  1. Dependable and accountable team player
  2. Ability to thrive in a fast-moving environment
  3. Regards challenges as opportunities to explore alternatives
  4. Demonstrable ability to reconcile client expectations with Catalyse’s fundamental values of inclusion
  5. Proven track record of effectively navigating conflict

As you will be joining a small team of high-performers, with freedom to work from any physical location, it is critical that extra effort is made to:

  1. Work closely with colleagues from functions such as sales and client management, in order to stay on top of what is happening at all times
  2. Be consistently disciplined in the usage of shared online organisational and communication tools
  3. Attend, and come prepared, for the weekly update meeting

Read our privacy policy here.

Please note that due to the large number of applications, only shortlisted applicants will be contacted for an interview. If you have any questions about this position, please email careers@aware.org.sg.

AWARE-Ipsos survey reveals high prevalence of workplace sexual harassment in Singapore, low rates of reporting over past five years

This post was originally published as a press release on 14 January 2021

Two in five workers in Singapore have been sexually harassed at the workplace in the past five years. This is the sobering key finding from a survey by market research company Ipsos in collaboration with gender-equality organisation AWARE—the first-ever nationally representative survey on workplace sexual harassment in Singapore.

The survey was conducted in November 2020. Respondents comprised 1,000 Singapore citizens and Permanent Residents who had been engaged in paid work (full-time, part-time, self-employed and freelance) in the previous five years. 

Importantly, when respondents were asked “Have you been sexually harassed in the workplace within the last five years?”, only 1 in 5 responded in the affirmative. However, when specific harassment situations were described to them, 2 in 5 reported that they had indeed experienced such behaviours—indicating a major gap in understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment.

The harassment situations illustrated in the survey included:

  • Pictures, jokes, texts or gestures of a sexual or sexist nature (approximately 1 in 5 reported experiencing this; approximately 1 in 10 experienced this behaviour on seven separate occasions in the past five years)
  • Alarming or offensive remarks or questions about their appearances, bodies or sexual activities (approximately 1 in 5 reported experiencing this; approximately 1 in 10 experienced this behaviour on eight separate occasions in the past five years)
  • Crude and distressing remarks, jokes or gestures of a sexual or sexist nature (approximately 1 in 5 reported experiencing this; approximately 1 in 10 experienced this behaviour on five separate occasions in the past five years) 
  • Unwanted physical contact, attempts to initiate romantic or sexual relationships, implications that career prospects were tied to sexual favours, and more. 

Harassment was most often perpetrated by the victim’s peer or senior in the office. Disappointingly, the survey found that few (only 3 in 10) survivors of workplace sexual harassment made official reports about their experiences. Those who did not often cited a desire to forget about the incidents, a belief that what they experienced was not severe enough, or a perceived lack of evidence. In 2 in 5 cases where reports were made, the harasser was reassigned or dismissed; however, in another 1 in 5 of such cases, the harasser faced no consequences despite evidence of harassment. 

“We have known for years that workplace sexual harassment is a problem in Singapore, as many clients at AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre have experienced it,” said Ms Shailey Hingorani, Head of Research and Advocacy at AWARE. “However, up until now we have not had national data available on its prevalence. This survey changes that. It affirms that workplace sexual harassment is a pervasive and urgent problem; it also affirms that we cannot rely on official cases as our only measure of prevalence, due to frequent under-reporting. Lastly, it underscores the importance of identifying sexual harassment with clear illustrations—seeing that generalised definitions may be inadvertently perpetuating misconceptions.”

In making sense of these findings, AWARE pointed to a few inadequacies in Singapore’s current policy approach to tackling workplace sexual harassment. For one, the Protection from Harassment Act does not inform employers of the protective and preventive measures with which they must comply; neither does it educate employees about their employment rights. Furthermore, the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Workplace Harassment does not explicitly place a legal obligation on employers to prevent workplace harassment.

AWARE therefore recommends that the Government introduce national legislation against workplace harassment, as well as regular anti-harassment trainings across industries and the universal adoption of grievance handling policies. 

Ms Hingorani noted, “We recognise that Singapore is, in some regards, ahead of many countries in addressing the scourge of sexual violence. However, when it comes to workplace sexual harassment in particular, we appear to lag behind countries that have specific legislations on the matter. Giving employers an explicit statutory obligation to prevent and address sexual harassment, and educating workers on the remedies available to them against their employers, would provide a firm foundation from which to eradicate this very insidious and damaging behaviour.” 

Ms Melanie Ng, Director of Public Affairs at Ipsos in Singapore, said, “This research identifies a worrying prevalence of sexual harassment in the Singapore workplace today, and that it is the case for both women and men. While more education around the subject needs to happen, employers need to ensure that the reporting channels in their workplaces are accessible, safe and effective for employees to get the help that they need.”

Read AWARE and Ipsos’s Work and Gender report here.

About AWARE

AWARE is Singapore’s leading women’s rights and gender-equality advocacy group. It works to identify and eliminate gender-based barriers through research, advocacy, education, training and support services. AWARE embraces diversity, respects the individual and the choices she makes in life, and supports her when needed. AWARE’s corporate consultancy and training arm, Catalyse, trains employees and employers in preventing and managing workplace harassment. aware.org.sg

About Ipsos

Ipsos is the world’s third largest market research company, present in 90 markets and employing more than 18,000 people. Its passionately curious research professionals, analysts and scientists have built unique multi-specialist capabilities that provide true understanding and powerful insights into the actions, opinions and motivations of citizens, consumers, patients, customers or employees. Ipsos serves more than 5,000 clients across the world with 75 business solutions. Founded in France in 1975, Ipsos has been listed on the Euronext Paris since 1 July, 1999. ipsos.com.sg

Annex – Case studies from AWARE’s Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory (*not their real names)

  • Maria* was groped at a company social gathering, with several colleagues bearing witness to the act. The perpetrator claims that he does not recall the incident. A police report was filed and an internal investigation was launched. Some months later, Maria was informed that the company would only take definitive action if the perpetrator was found guilty by the authorities. The harasser continued to make her feel uncomfortable at work. Eventually, Maria decided to quit as a result of the unsafe work environment.
  • While on an overseas work trip, Nadia* was sexually harassed by a colleague, who repeatedly asked her to come to his room, telling her that he was lonely. Nadia filed a report with her manager, but the manager decided not to take any action because the perpetrator was scheduled to depart the company anyway.
  • Jonathan* was sexually harassed by his male supervisor. The supervisor made comments about Jonathan’s private parts and repeatedly required him to stay late in the office. Although Jonathan reported the incidents internally, his case was dismissed because HR found it hard to believe that a man could be subject to sexual harassment.
  • Priya* was encouraged by her boss to go out for late-night drinks with clients, and instructed to wear “sexy” clothing both in the office and when she was out with clients. She was also told to get physically close to clients. When a client hit on Priya and invited her to his hotel room, she reported it internally. However, the company did not take any actions.

Saga Podcast Further Reading: Conversation with Alex Au

Saga is a limited-series podcast about the 2009 AWARE Saga, hosted by Bharati Jagdish and written and produced by Jasmine Ng and Kelly Leow. For Saga, the creative team interviewed 50 individuals about their role in the AWARE Saga and their observations about its legacy in Singapore.

One of those individuals was Alex Au, the activist (current vice-president of migrant rights organisation TWC2) and writer behind the long-running LGBT blog Yawning Bread. Alex’s involvement in the AWARE Saga back in 2009 was fairly marginal: His involvement as a speaker at an AWARE event on HIV, held shortly before the Saga, was cited by the New Guard as an example of AWARE’s supposed insidious “gay agenda”. Beyond that, however, Alex was diligently writing about the events of the Saga on Yawning Bread (though, sadly, we have been unable to retrieve his writing from 2009).

Kelly and Jasmine spoke with Alex in mid-2019. Though we were unable to find a way to include his interview in the main podcast, we wanted to post it, in a condensed version, here.

Listen to Saga and read more about the podcast here.

Kelly Leow (KL): Can you introduce yourself and give a brief background of how you came to publish your blog, Yawning Bread? 

Alex Au (AA): Around 1993, ’94, I was involved with a very nascent gay rights group called People Like Us. The internet was just about coming into play. People Like Us wanted to put out a newsletter. And you needed a license from the state to publish a newsletter. We put in an application, but it was denied. Were we surprised? No, we were not. But that put us in a quandary: Were we going to publish one in defiance of the refusal? Because we couldn’t claim ignorance anymore, right? My colleagues and I looked around for a solution and we came across then this newfangled idea called a website. Well, that could be where we could put our newsletter. It would have been one of the earliest online newsletters if we’d ever got to it, but we never got to it because it was, I think, technologically too far out for some of our peers.

So what the hell, I decided, OK, if we can’t do it collectively, I shall do it personally. And that’s how it began. Yawning Bread began as a kind of a personal web project for myself. Why Yawning Bread? Precisely because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sound. It started on 30th of November, 1996. And at that time, my chief interest was LGBT issues. And many of the early articles—extremely naive, extremely embarrassing—were not so much about the issues, but were a testimony to my learning curve. Saying all the stupid, silly things, but maybe getting better, getting deeper into the issues as the years went by. Within five, six years, I guess I’d exhausted all the nooks and corners of the subject and began to branch out into more general social political commentary. And that’s probably how you found us by the time the AWARE Saga rolled in.

KL: Do you remember how and when you first heard about the takeover at AWARE?

AA: I must have heard about it from like, what, 32 different sources all at the same time. So it’s really difficult to recall when exactly it hit you. It was not like the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I felt I had to write about it because it was very obvious that it was a significant event, and I had already, by that time, known some of the women who were in the Old Guard, and they were very affected by it. And so indirectly, I was very affected by it, too, because it was personal.

I do remember—definitely after the first Straits Times article came out—I actually took Constance Singam out for lunch. I knew she was very, very down. And I thought she needed a change of scene, and needed somebody to talk it over. So we went out to Great World City. Cedele. We had bread and soup. It was important to just give her two hours or so to unburden herself to some extent. For me to offer whatever little encouragement and fortitude or whatever one might call it, to her. That conversation was also when I had the opportunity to hear about the specific details of what actually happened, was not so much from the newspaper, but from Constance.

KL: And do remember your feelings after learning about the incident? Was it shocking to you?

AA: Was I shocked? This might happen in some other countries, but it was, I think, very new in the Singapore context. So yes, it was a shock.

The emergence of the background information, that there was a religious faction that motivated the takeover of AWARE, resonated very strongly with me and my peers in the LGBT movement, because for some 10 years prior, the major resistance to progress on LGBT issues had come from people identified with the American church. There was a certain strain of Christianity—so-called Christianity—that emerged in the 1990s, as the LGBT movement grew strength in the United States. And as soon as we in Singapore began to bring the LGBT issue into the public agenda, they too piped up and from that point on, I’m talking like 1998, they became the major locus of resistance. So when it, it emerged, that the perpetrators of the takeover of AWARE were similarly connected, well, it resonated very, very strongly. And then when it further emerged that part of their rationale for the takeover was the Old Guard’s, really, minor efforts at opening some space for the discussion of sexuality… then all the more we were appalled that things had gone so far. So yeah, it became important to express oneself, to link it to the broader issues and not leave it merely as a set of events that were naturally confined to just one civil society organisation.

We put two and two together very, very quickly. Remember that in 2007, two years earlier, when an attempt was made to repeal Section 377A in Parliament, there was one Nominated Member of Parliament [Thio Li-ann] who stood up and spoke very strongly, very disparagingly, about gay people, particularly gay men. And as soon as the connection was made that the mentor, leader of the takeover faction was none other than the mother of the same Nominated Member of Parliament, I think all of us in the LGBT community knew where they were coming from. The speed at which things clicked, fell into place, was astounding.

KL: What kinds of points were you making on your blog about the takeover? 

AA: I thought it was important to situate the issue in the larger issue of pushback from extremely illiberal waters. And to make the point that such things are going to be very, very damaging to Singapore as a whole. Because, ultimately, the takeover was a power trip. And that’s why I try also not to cast it purely in religious terms. Because Christianity is a wonderful religion in its own way. And, of course, there are many shades of Christianity. And we can too easily get carried away, merely referring to “the Christian group” or “the church group”, and by that means tar lots of others who have a very different view of their faith.

The thing about power trips throughout human history is that people on a power trip need followers, they need foot soldiers, they need combatants, they need people who would look up to them, worship them and basically do their bidding. It requires a suspension of rationality, it requires a suspension of skepticism, of questioning, for a power trip leader to succeed in what he or she is doing. And it so happens that a fundamental requirement of a lot of religions is that suspension of rationality. You have to ultimately believe in something that cannot be explained by logical, empirical means. Consequently, there is always that ripe body of adherence among those who are inclined to be religious, because fundamentally already they have suspended rationality. And that is why too often in this world, power trippers draw their strength from those who are already religious. Now, I’m not only talking about the takeover of AWARE. By all measures of power-tripping, the takeover of AWARE is a peaceful, small event. There is a power-tripper right in the White House even as we speak. There are much bigger examples of this. The Saga really was a power trip by somebody who totally believed in the righteousness of that cause, but who also really was unaware of their own personal motivations for what they were doing.

KL: You believe that on the part of the feminist mentor, there was actually some kind of cognitive dissonance, with perhaps subconscious reasons for her actions that she was not aware of herself?

AA: Exactly.

KL: And that there is a herd mentality, almost, in her followers?  

AA: Oh, no. Surrounding the key power tripper are often people who would draw affirmation, draw their own power-trip experience, by being close to the center of the endeavor. “Herd mentality” would excuse them from responsibility a bit too much.

KL: Oh, so everyone is going through their own little power-trip experience, at different tiers?

AA: Yeah, exactly. That’s right. And that gave them strength. The AWARE Saga was kind of a group effort. It gave them further reach into an already minimal community for support.

It’s not something that we should dismiss, because it’s going to happen again at some point. Power-tripping, as I said, is part of the human psyche. I’m not talking about a takeover of AWARE again. It’s a known thing that niche groups need to a, distinguish themselves and b, acquire justification for their existence and their programme by clearly delineating themselves from the other. And we know, obviously, that they like to pick on the more vulnerable “other” to buff their own ego and to give themselves moral justification for whatever campaign they want to embark on. Nothing unusual in that. You see that again and again.

KL: Thio Su Mien’s theory at the time was that AWARE was being used as a front for gay men and foreign gay people to spread the “gay agenda” via AWARE’s comprehensive sexuality education programme, and other various means. What do you make of this rather elaborate theory?

AA: If you know that the word “gay” is a kind of a push-button issue, and it immediately elicits a certain response from your audience, then anything can be put as a “gay agenda”, because you just use that word, “gay”, in order to elicit a response. Right? It could well be, like, “walking a dog is a gay agenda too”, if you really want to do something about walking dogs. So that’s how language can be used, yeah? But of course, it’s convenient if, of course, there is some rational connection with being gay, like inviting myself to speak [on a panel about HIV]. Or screening the [lesbian Taiwanese] film Spider Lillies. It’s close enough, convenient enough, for them to use words like “gay agenda”. And it has effect.

“Gay agenda” is one of those irritating terms that has been around since the earliest days of People Like Us, which we fought against. It’s never meant anything to us, except that it’s a label that’s often been thrown at us. And we’ve had to grapple with it—I don’t think very successfully. You see, it’s like this. There used to be a time when the word “queer” and “homosexual” were loaded terms. And the progressive movement managed to turn those two terms around in their favour. People could wear the terms “queer”, “lesbian”, “homosexual”, “gay” with some pride. But “gay agenda” was one we couldn’t turn around. We never invested it with new meaning. Instead, we found ourselves constantly struggling against the meaning imputed into it by the other side. On the defensive all the time, as opposed to being on the offensive. And that was the one front, I think, that the LGBT movement never made much progress on. Of course it doesn’t mean anything except what meaning the other side wanted to put in it for its own purposes. And the AWARE saga was once again another instance where it was used liberally. But the Old Guard had no argument against it. No comprehensible, digestible, in-a-nutshell argument against it. It was just so debilitating.

KL: Right—just putting the word “agenda” behind anything makes it seem sinister. 

AA: Something like that. I would say that you need to define a term, you need to come up with a term to throw back at them. You might say “the power hungry agenda” or “the power trip agenda” or something like that, and then put them on the defensive on that term, so that you take the pressure off on the term “gay agenda”. Really, there are plenty of clever marketing and advertising people around. We really should be tapping on their knowledge for this. But our technique should not be to play defense on “the gay agenda”.

KL: Terms like “gay agenda” and “promote homosexuality” caught fire, and were used very effectively at the time by the New Guard and its supporters to spread this kind of moral panic around Singapore. One other idea they had was that girls become lesbians because they have abusive fathers—that all lesbians come from broken families and they need protection. Why are these ideas so persuasive?

AA: Because they resonate with the already existent notion that to be healthy, to be normal, implies a certain sexual orientation, sexual behaviour, sexual presentation. Yeah, we all know these are all different things. It’s very complex. That complexity, however, makes it very difficult for it to get into the general consciousness. People prefer a simple narrative and a simple structure of this is how society is. Everything else is just outside normal. And anybody on a power trip would want to reinforce that abnormality by making exactly these empirically unsupported statements. The general community, that’s not very aware of these empirical facts of scientific knowledge, are easy prey to these tropes. So if you’re on a power trip, you just want to reinforce it, in order to win the people sitting on the fence over to your side, by making the other side as dirty as possible, as dangerous as possible. At the same time, you can position yourself as some kind of a saviour, some kind of messiah. Which, of course, at the very least, boosts one’s ego.

Jasmine Ng (JN): Connie mentioned when she spoke to us that she had been afraid that the LGBT community was very disappointed in AWARE’s Old Guard, and felt that AWARE had failed the LGBT community [by not standing up more strongly for LGBT rights prior to 2009].

AA: I  think one danger we may fall into, is to speak of the “LGBT community”. I tend to speak of the LGBT communities. In many respects, the so-called “LGBT movement” is a marriage of convenience. [laughs] The lesbian communities—I am not in any position to speak on behalf of them, nor do I even claim to know very much what goes on in their minds—may have felt a lot more let down by the Old Guard than gay men. And I think there would be a significant number of gay men who might have shrugged their shoulders and said, “What’s the AWARE Saga got to do with me?”

I’ve long known from speaking to Sayoni and the other offshoots of Sayoni that there was some expectation that AWARE should be speaking up more for the rights of lesbians. I can put on record here that I’ve been not been particularly supportive of that expectation. I saw it partly as disenfranchised lesbians latching on to an established organisation and hoping that the established organisation could do what they, as the disenfranchised, cannot do. Nothing wrong with that. In our migrant worker work, a similar dynamic is at play: The migrant workers are disenfranchised, and the organisation that’s run by Singaporeans is then expected to carry that burden for them. And sometimes, we may be a lot more moderate or conscious of the limitations and therefore we may act in ways that may not fully satisfy the disenfranchised. So that dynamic was probably happening at that time, and may still happen because lesbians continue to be unable to establish and register their own organisations.

Here’s a little bit of irony too: Pink Dot has becomes analogous to AWARE, vis-à-vis a particular gay agenda. A lot of people have criticised Pink Dot for it’s very middle-class, Chinese-elite aura, you know, and that it doesn’t speak for the working-class gay man, gay woman, working in a coffee shop. It doesn’t speak for the ethnic minorities dealing with the particularities of their communities and being gay at the same time. It seems to only address queerness within that Western framework. They’re valid criticisms, but at the same time, no organisation can be all things to everybody. You gotta choose what you want to be, make progress on that front, without foreclosing what your parallel organisations might want to do on their agenda. So this is again something to be very careful about.

It’s a message also for AWARE, that we ourselves should not be on our own power trip. Too many established organizations, after a while, begin to see that they have some kind of monopolistic rights to that particular issue in which they are situated. And they begin to say, “Our definition of the issues is the definition of the issues and we begin to foreclose opportunities for parallel organisations with a different take on the issues, serving slightly different agendas, albeit in the same general direction, to grow and have a voice of their own.” It’s a real danger that established organizations—and we can think of one called the People’s Action Party—tend not to be aware of.

Sometimes, the established organisation has privileges that others don’t have. I mean, it’s very easy to say, “Well, you just go out, and you start your own organisation”, but they can’t, you see, and they look to you to serve their interest. Because they don’t have the same privilege of experience or establishment, of acceptability, that you have. There’s a constant need to be humble and to question yourself and to try to see it from their point of view. It’s very, very difficult. It’s very exhausting. But I think it’s important. And I think that’s what this history should be. That’s how it’s going to be of value to those who are looking back when they didn’t live through the same times.

KL: People have told us that they were concerned about the emotional and psychological well-being of LGBT individuals during the Saga. Was that something that you were worried about as well?

AA: Don’t forget that the bigger trauma for the gay men was 2007, when the repeal [Section 377A] attempt failed, and you had really nasty speeches being made in Parliament, and the government took a position publicly that was very unsatisfactory. At least in 2009, when the AWARE saga was happening, it was one private party against another private party. It wasn’t a situation where the government was taking a position. So in the larger scheme of things, at least for the male side of the LGBT movement, the AWARE saga wasn’t all that central to their self-image and their own ideas of where they belong.

JN: How did you read how the government was responding, or rather not responding, to the events as it was happening?

AA: My guess, and it can only remain a guess, was that they were as flummoxed as everybody else. I don’t think they saw it coming. I mean, it would have been ridiculous to think that they ever saw it coming themselves. They were disciplined enough to keep quiet at the start. But eventually, they had to take a position. And I think my guess, again, is that at the end of the day, they saw what it really meant: not so much about the gay issue but as an example of a religiously motivated group flexing its muscles into a secular space. And therefore, and as a result, their statements were to say, “Let’s leave it to the private parties to fight it out.” But they also laid on the subtext that “we prefer that everything remain secular”. I think we all read it that way. I think they meant to communicate it that way. And to that small extent, it might have been helpful to the Old Guard.

KL: You mentioned that in 2009, the government was caught off guard by the AWARE Saga. But since then, we have seen a few scandals relating to conservative Christian groups, such as the NLB incident over the book And Tango Makes Three, and more recently, the controversy about the Swedish metal band Watain. Has the government acted differently during those compared to how they acted in 2009? 

AA: On one hand, you could say that the state has no further excuse anymore to be all at sea, when new attempts are being made by Christian-affiliated groups to further their oppression of gay-related expression. But unfortunately, I believe the government has never really worked out a coherent position; instead, it’s neither here nor there. But it’s part of a larger trope. I mean, I have an ongoing criticism that in so many ways, our government has become too comfortable in being reactive as opposed to proactive. In terms of economics, demography, Singapore’s foreign policy. We’re very good at reacting, but not very good at thinking of a path forward. So you have reactions, responses from the government that tend to be more conservative than they need to be.

Sooner or later, we’re going to be dealing with a very changed world. It’s very hard to know exactly what the changed world will be. We’re going to be dealing with massive technological changes, environmental changes, political realignments, and the over-valuation of preservation, of stability, is in fact going to be a recipe for the inability to respond to changes. Let’s not put blame on anybody—not AWARE, not any other civil society organisation. If I have to put blame, it would be on whoever it is who created the limitations for civil society in Singapore. There’s so little room to grow, to flourish, and to put down deep roots that would anchor the shifting sands when the sands shift, which they will. I think all histories have that element of Shakespearean tragedy.

KL: You were one of the more prominent bloggers covering the saga in 2009. What did you make of some of the other bloggers at the time? Specifically, there was one blogger, akikonomu, that called on people to boycott the New Guards’ businesses and that kind of thing.

AA: I don’t remember specifically what you cited about other blogs calling for boycotts, but I definitely think there is value in boycotts, I think it is actually a very powerful tool, for not just civil society, but for individuals, the empowered individual, to do something. In its aggregate, it has tremendous power, boycotts. And I think people, businesses or whatever, have to be accountable for what their leaders get up to. So even though there may be other shareholders in the business who had nothing to do with one prominent shareholders’ activities, that doesn’t absolve the business from watching out for itself. So if others mobilised, good on them, you know.

And that multiplicity of voices and a multiplicity of ideas and directions is something that I would not diss. It was good that people were proposing different approaches. I remember seeing some posts on the internet that were pretty critical of the Old Guard as well. I think there has to be space for that.

KL: At one point, some of the individuals in the New Guard started to receive death threats. This affected them greatly. They talked about this a lot during their press conference, and later on during the EGM.

AA: I think it’s very frightening for people who have never encountered these things before. If we want to be a vibrant society, I think we’re going to have to live with [the possibility of threats], though that is not very comforting. People go overboard. They make threats. Again, and again, again, and again, I think we need to make a distinction between verbalisations and actual acts. I think it is important to have a robust investigative body that can get to the root of these threats, and is distinct from trying to police speech. Maybe it’s just easier to police speech. But in societies that want to take shortcuts, we prefer to deal with the symptoms, not with the roots.

KL: Some have pointed out to us that the LGBT community itself receives death threats often.

AA: But where does that argument get you? Do I wash away the other side’s death threats by saying “I’ve also received death threats”? That conversation is not gonna go anywhere. I would much rather say, look, there will always be crazy people who will make death threats. Some mean it, some don’t mean it. The danger will be those who mean it and we need to do something then.

JN: Have you ever received death threats, or a lot of hate mail? 

AA: No. That’s a good question. Maybe my dismissiveness, if you wish to call it that, is simply because of the peculiarity of my personal experience, being lucky enough not to receive death threats. Hate mail maybe. Death threats, no. People respond very differently. I don’t dismiss the fact that your life could be temporarily disrupted [by a threat].

KL: Did you attend the Extraordinary General Meeting on 2 May 2009?

AA: No. I remember strongly that at a time of the EGM, the policy in place was that men could only be associate members. And that meant no right to vote. As a matter of principle, I didn’t like the discriminatory flavor of that. That meant that I couldn’t attend. But that was fine. I didn’t have to attend. There were enough friends involved in the whole saga to wallop me with all the details. I kind of got a blow by blow account of it. Yeah.

KL: Did you expect the result?

AA: The reason it was so important was that it was sewn on a knife edge. I had no right to expect one result or another. So it was a huge relief that it turned out the way it did. It wouldn’t be the end of the story, because I think the grumbling continued after that, especially from the lesbians.

JN: You mentioned that many people presented their own narratives, right? One example is that the New Guard themselves tried to spin the Saga as a victory for them. Because they got AWARE removed as a vendor for MOE’s sexuality education programmes. So depending on where you stood, many people read the aftermath of the Saga very differently.

AA: Is it any surprise that there are different narratives? It’s in the nature of things that people might genuinely have seen it in different lights. And also that, for their own purposes, subsequent to the event, people would prefer a certain spin to be perpetuated. So yeah, that’s par for the course. That’s the beauty of history, you keep recording different takes on it. Are the New Guard wrong to say that they achieved what they wanted? No, they’re not wrong. So as much as there’s reason to celebrate what happened at EGM, as much as there’s reason to be grateful for all the efforts that people put in to support the retaking of AWARE, I think one must not forget that at the end of the day, it’s not very clear what that really achieved. There can be different takes on what was achieved, many of them quite valid. Being in constant communication with a lot of lesbians, I was acutely aware that there was a lot of dissatisfaction. They felt they had a right to receive greater support from AWARE going forward after the Saga. They felt disappointed they didn’t get it. Was that expectation valid? Again, you can dispute that. I must say that what has resulted in 10 years is a certain stasis. Nothing seems to have moved very much. So if stopping change was on the agenda of the New Guard, maybe you could say that’s partly achieved as well.

KL: Stasis on the part of the LGBT movement?

AA: Yeah, in terms of the state’s position, as opposed to social change. It is terribly disappointing. I think there was a period in the first 10 years of the century, from 2003 maybe until 2010, 2011, in which you could see a certain effervescence on the subject of the place of LGBT persons in Singapore society, and the rights and equality and so forth. But there have been a number of setbacks ever since. There was a high court case and the Supreme Court case where there was a challenge to the constitutionality of Section 377A. And it failed. So everybody got very discouraged by that. And it’s been a lot of treading water ever since. What has been important is that at a personal level, social level, the trend of LGBT people being out has continued. A trend that I would say kind of started with People Like Us in the 1990s.

JN: Do you think this kind of power grab could happen again, perhaps in subtler ways?

AA: Well, don’t imagine that history repeats itself precisely. It never does. But can you imagine a power grab by some group of some otherwise liberal voice in order to stop its liberalism? Maybe a media organisation—a takeover of a media organisation in order to change its editorial stance? Yes! It is one of the constants of human history that there are going to be egotistical, power hungry people, who will use what means they can—and quite often religious identity is a very useful lever—to get adherents and supporters and allies to go on their power trips. It may not be AWARE; it could be some other organisation that used to be a pillar of the liberal establishment.

JN: Does it then tie back to what you said about being resilient, that society needs to also allow for fractures and not be so brittle—that you need discord to some extent in order to be able to build up some other kind of nimbleness?

AA: Yes. And the risk mitigation that we need to put in place is to try to somehow create a society that can cope with, adapt to, the changes. We must seize the initiative. If the state can’t carry out all its responsibilities, then the rest of us have to do it. We have to agitate for that right to experiment, to adapt, to argue it out. Who’s holding us back? Why is civil society so handicapped? Why don’t we even have our own data? You can only go so far by being hippie flower people. Ultimately, you need organisation, you need mobilisation, you need resources, you need money, you need dedicated people working full time at it, to make change.

I have a very complicated reading of what really happened in the AWARE Saga. I think that what was ultimately fatal—if not fatal then, it would have been fatal later—for the New Guard was that its message could not really travel. They were trying to sell a product that inherently cannot travel. You can have the most fantastic brand campaign, really slick, you can push it out to all sorts of distribution outlets, but that’s still not going to guarantee your market share or a sale, because there’s something inherently wrong with your product. And so in the short term, you can create a lot of buzz, you can make an impact, especially when people are not expecting this product to be launched. But there is a flaw in the product. And the flaw of the New Guard’s product was that it was a very ungenerous in spirit. And in this world, I think people want to be generous in spirit. There’s as a certain human aspiration throughout history and throughout all societies and cultures: People want to be good. And it just cuts against the grain of a lot of people’s nature to be so angry, so exclusionary.

On the other side, of course, it was an absolute wonder that despite all the shambles, that loose coalition that was the Old Guard and their new allies somehow managed to come together. It was really wonderful to see. You could say that it was almost accidental that at the end of the day, they prevailed. But that’s how it is. We cannot explain everything. Sometimes just things just happen. Let’s never forget that sometimes accidents, good accidents, happen.

Listen to Saga on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or aware.org.sg/saga.

Saga Podcast Further Reading: Conversation with Tong Yee

Saga is a limited-series podcast about the 2009 AWARE Saga, hosted by Bharati Jagdish and written and produced by Jasmine Ng and Kelly Leow. For Saga, the creative team interviewed 50 individuals about their role in the AWARE Saga and their observations about its legacy in Singapore.

One of those individuals was Tong Yee—a staunch Christian, influential educator and public speaker who runs social enterprise the Thought Collective and sits on various national committees. Tong Yee has known AWARE Executive Director Corinna Lim for a while, and he generously agreed to have a discussion with her for the podcast (with a small crew of Jasmine, Kelly and intern Allysa de Silva present). Due to restrictions on runtime, we were only able to include short excerpts of his interview in the main podcast; however, we are here presenting the full transcript of Corinna’s conversation with him, which took place in September 2020.

Listen to Saga and read more about the podcast here.

Tong Yee (TY): Hi Corinna. 

Corinna Lim (CL): Hi. You can just introduce yourself, your name and a short description of yourself. That would be great.

TY: Sure. My name is Tong Yee. I am currently 46 years old. I think I consider myself a social entrepreneur. I started off as a teacher. I’ve been doing civil society work, maybe for the past about 20 years or so. And well, I guess if I’m here, I’m here. I don’t know… I don’t know if I’m a representative, but I’m Christian. Right. I think that’s about it. 

CL: OK, so we’re here to talk about the AWARE Saga. Where were you in 2009 when the AWARE Saga took place? What are your memories from that time about this episode?

TY: Yeah. Where was I? 2009. Uh, my first child was born. So I think I remember—at that point in time, actually, I was more distracted with being an early father than actually paying attention to what was going on with the AWARE Saga. I remember seeing it, feeling it was very dramatic. Feeling a bit of a “tsk tsk. Like why the church like that,” then sigh and then just move on with changing nappies [laughs]. Yeah so it was really off the cuff… it was really out of my peripheral vision.

CL: OK, so you weren’t following the news reports? The daily news reports that were happening?

TY: Only the headlines and being judge-y on the side. Yeah, but really digging in? No, I wasn’t digging.

CL: And were you familiar with AWARE’s work then?

TY: Yes. Um, so actually it was interesting because, before the AWARE Saga, my own impression of AWARE was largely that, uh, it was a feminist group, but it never really showed up that particular way. I saw that it was present within schools and I knew it was doing basic sex ed programs then and that’s all. I don’t think itself that point in time there was any real conversation that AWARE is, like, you know… like a strong feminist group or things like that. Yeah.

CL: So did the Saga change your view? Or the reports change your view of what AWARE was?

TY: The Saga didn’t change my view, but what had happened over here was that shortly after that particular incident, the narrative began to change. I began to hear a lot more other people in the course of my work talk about AWARE, or suddenly there’s this unsaid silence. That when I mention AWARE, there would be this dead silence, and then suddenly change topic. It just moves and you’re like, “Whoa, what’s going on here?” And there was something around that… I didn’t really get a sense of what was going on at that point in time.

CL: OK. And are you familiar with AWARE’s work—the women’s rights movement in Singapore in general—now?

TY: I’m far more aware. Uh, I’m sorry. [laughs] Yeah. So now, uh, maybe because of actually the different positions that you’ve been putting out, primarily within Parliament, and actually getting a lot more representative voices within the space… I’ve been following most actively itself around the single mothers issue. Right. So, that one has actually got my attention quite a bit. So yeah, I’m far more aware itself of that particular work.

CL: Do you consider yourself a feminist?

TY: Yikes. [laughs] Oh, trap question. OK. So, uh, let’s try this: Honestly, I don’t know what it means. Yeah. My sense of it over here is that the word “feminism” or “feminist” has had such broad definitions across different spectrums, right, that no one can really identify… even if you’re asking me a question on whether or not I’m Christian, I don’t even know what you’re associating with that particular term. Right? So, I would just say over here that as far as my life is concerned, I’m still deeply grateful to the women who have impacted it. Even my own work around the social sector. Thought Collective itself is about 80-85% women. Um, so I think primarily because of the virtue of actually the kind of work we’re doing in the past two decades, um, I am more “culturalised”, maybe, to where the standards or the position, or even, I guess, the experience of women are. Whether that makes me feminist, I’m not so sure. I’m quite sure there are also invisible, horrible assumptions that I make itself that I’m not aware of at all. Uh, but I’m open to be educated on that lah. Yeah I do support and I stand for the equality of women. I believe there is actually, there is definitely maybe because of patriarchy or whatever history we’ve had, some level of subjugation there, so I am for that as much as possible. So if you call that a feminist then OK, can.

Jasmine Ng (JN): Congratulations! You are a feminist! You just ticked all the boxes.

CL: There’s one more box. The last box is whether you feel like you want to play a role in actually pushing the needle towards gender equality.

TY: I would want to. That’s the one that I’m not so certain about whether or not this makes me a feminist, because I’m more concerned about pushing the box on guaranteed equality for all different groups that are somehow disenfranchised. So not championing women per se, but rather a much more equal society.

CL: Feminism also has moved towards that, right? So we now think there won’t be gender equality unless there is equality of all. So that’s why you see us in many different spaces as well because you can’t just fight for gender equality.

TY: Precisely. Yeah.

CL: OK, tell us about your work with Thought Collective over the years.

TY: Thought Collective’s work… Honestly as a founder, it began first with personal pain. So I don’t think I would have necessarily championed, in the beginning, the whole plight of repeat students in Singapore if I wasn’t a repeat student myself. Right? And I believe that actually much of NGO work is founded upon some level of personal pain that somebody has experienced and would like to actually do better for others.

So at least within the first, maybe seven to nine years of my work, right, it was borne from that particular space. Then I began to realise later on, in my second phase of the work, that there’s actually a lot of complexity in pain. I used to think itself that’s there’s very clearly a perpetrator and very clearly a victim. Now I’m not so sure about that anymore. I think everybody is a perpetrator and everybody is a victim. I’ve started to begin to just say that, actually, I’m more in support of trying to find some level of safe space so that we can talk about each other’s pain. I’m moving towards the idea of restoring, I guess, society to be as healthy as possible. 

The most recent stage over here: I realise that not everybody wants to come in touch with this type of work. It is extremely complex, very nasty to be part of it over here. And it does take quite a bit of personal health and personal leadership to be able to hold this space well. So at least when it comes down to many people within our own organisation, we’ve realised over here that the work is really about standing in the gap—being able to just create enough space so that people can have the conversations they need to have. Yeah. And not keep talking over one another to  go, “No, ma’am, no you shouldn’t say that,” you know? Yeah. That’s where it is right now. And we’ve realised that this kind of work is necessary: anything from gender equality to race, to, wow, class, is a huge thing. Hearing each other’s pain is quite critical.

CL: Tell us about your personal journey with Christianity. What role does faith play in your life and in the work that you do?

TY: Hmm, OK. That’s another challenging question. This is a really personal take, right? I’ll respond actually to my own journey of Christianity, as a personal description of the experience. Then the second question itself, I think it’s easier to respond that way.

CL: OK. Great.

TY: My personal journey with Christianity really began… I became Christian when I was the age of 11. I was one of those where the neighbour was bringing pamphlets to our house and going, “Hi. Hi. Would you like to hear about Christ?” [laughs] Don’t knock on the door. Open door. And then my neighbour would therefore bring me down to church. And my mother itself was really quite open to it. Yeah. She was just very happy that I wasn’t sleeping in on Sunday morning. I was never truly understanding, I think, the Christian message or the Christian journey until maybe I was in my early 30s, honestly. Yeah so from 11 to 30, I think—like most of the people—although I heard the messages, I didn’t get it. That it’s not about the rituals or the practices or going to church and taking communion or whatever the case was over there. It’s really about a personal relationship that I have together with God. And honestly, I did not explore my personal relationship with God until I started to experience some genuine pain in my life. Yeah. So, throughout the period itself of 25, all the way itself to my mid-30s or so, I experienced I think what people might call mental health issues. Yeah. So, I suffered from severe depression, constant [thoughts of] suicide and during that period of time, I think God was, I guess, the main entity that carried me through the whole period. I had met multiple people who would support me and minister to me at the time. Some of them were Christian, some of them were not. During that particular journey, I think, I began to have a much more personal relationship with God. And I began to maybe take a bit a step away from looking at organised religion per se. Yeah. And looking at what, essentially, the Bible is talking about or what their faith is about. Yeah. So that’s where I am right now.

As far as my Christian walk is concerned, I would firmly identify myself as Christian. Although I do have some reservations about how human systems and the way they organise and what they do to one another. And that’s another story altogether. But that’s, that’s my personal journey.

What role does my faith play in my work or my life?

CL: Both.

TY: Both ah? OK. Um, I hope this is not too clunky a response. Within the Christian, I guess, theology, a lot of the times, we call it salt and light in the world. Right? Salt being the preserver of everyday society and light being that which brings the gospel. Or to live a life such that we shine. Yeah. So a lot of my work within civil society is less about the “light” work. I try to leave that itself to the organisations that set themselves up primarily to spread the message. In my work in society, I try to do a lot more of the “salt” work, which means the preservation of society, making sure that the conditions are as healthy as possible for, um, I guess all the people to have opportunity. Yeah. So I do a lot more of the preserving work: Make sure we don’t self-combust. Look at fragmentation itself, right, within society. And I think that positioning allows me to be more moderate? Because we don’t actually put out very strong, like, Christian messages per se. Uh, we tend to be more collaborative in that particular sense, because we are talking about the context of the soil as opposed to the seed. Yeah. So people get very upset with what seeds you’re planting, but no one has a problem with you tilling the soil. Yeah. So in doing that particular work, that’s how we, or at least I, position my own work in light with my own faith.

In my own life… I think the biggest role that God has in my life is in purpose and mission. If I put this in no uncertain terms, I think social development is shit lah. It’s not the most… I don’t why anyone would do it. Honestly speaking, just sitting with and listening to the complexities of what people are going through on a daily basis is not easy. And even looking at systemic solutions, where we can start on anything from poverty to LGBT issues, to mental health issues… these particular issues, they are challenging to deal with. And I think without that sense of purpose and mission, um, I wouldn’t hang in there. I was earning much, much more as a tuition teacher—honestly, I should just go back to teaching tuition! But by doing this, I think, that’s what plugs me in. It’s purpose and mission in my life.

CL: OK, thank you for that. Wow.

JN: Actually, how do you do this work? What work is actually being done? You are talking about the objective, the goal, the motivations, but how do you actually do it?

TY: Sure. Yeah, the way we begin to see the work is… OK, I’m going to use a bit of jargon. I’ll try to be as clear as possible. As far as human systems are concerned, actually, there are many ways by which to take a look at what is going on within human systems. So, we begin with what we call “work with ourselves” and we know that a lot of shit starts with ourselves now, ’cause we’re not doing our own self work, right? And, uh, another layer of work happens interpersonally. Right? All of the interpersonal dynamics that go on, there’s also self-work that happens on a group level where we start to play politics, power, things like that. And, of course, all the systems issues, right? How we organise ourselves, the hierarchies. All the work processes that we’re looking at. Yeah. So, one way of beginning to describe it is that the field of organisational development, or OD, begins to see humans as parts of larger systems, right? Every time, whether we’re looking at healthcare or education or any form of movements, we always want to study: How do we help these systems become as healthy as possible to do the work that they want to do? So, I can’t describe the work because it really depends upon what it really is, I guess, firing up at that point in time. Sometimes people just need a personal conversation and a listening ear. Sometimes people need to have a mediation around the interpersonal dynamics and yes, there are times where entire systems are in some level of dysfunction and they have no freaking idea what exactly is going on. So the work that we do is to step into human systems, get a time to learn about the system, what’s going on, where the power structures are, where the resistance is and how do we help these systems unlock what is unsaid to flash the conversations that needed to be had?

We know that unsaid conversations have great ability to sabotage any one given work. Yeah. Sometimes you just want to tell the boss that, “Wow, you’re really difficult to work with,” but no one says it and they’re on tiptoes around the boss. Right? And creates so much pain in the system. So our work really is to go in and make the conversations that are typically unsaid—make them possible. Yeah. And that frees up human beings to do the kind of work they need to be to do. That’s, in gist, what we do.

CL: And can you describe or give us an illustration at a group level?

TY: One of the conversations, and I want to describe this as an emerging conversation that I think, as Singaporeans, we have no real sense of. I think for decades, we’ve been talking about how racial harmony day is very token. It’s a bit of a tokenistic ritual that we go through, right? And just teach children that, OK as long as you eat your ketupat and you wear your sarong kebaya, you are somehow a lot more aware of racial dynamics. Honestly speaking, I find that to be grossly… not enough to handle the complexity there. And right now, actually, I’m starting to start to convene the groups to start listening to what really is the pain of minority groups in Singapore. And being a male and being Chinese and being, you know, from maybe a higher socio-economic class, gives me a place of privilege where I’m not able to see these particular conversations at all. The work right now that I’m most interested in is trying to understand racial dynamics within the country, um, and let these conversations that always been under the carpet to start to flash. Yeah. But in a safe space that doesn’t trigger institutions. That doesn’t [make people] go, “Oh my god, why are you saying this?” You know? To have those conversations and to, I guess, translate the conversations in a way that other people are therefore more ready to listen and to pay attention to. Sometimes the raw pain is too difficult for people to take. Yeah. So our aim is not to euphemise it but rather to frame it in a way that allows it to land for different groups, including policyholders, trade associations, company policies, company HR, and so on and so forth. That translation work actually is quite something. 

CL: So with this OD lens, looking at 2009 and what happened during the AWARE Saga, what observations do you have about that?

TY: It’s quite dangerous to speak off the cuff but I’m going to try. The first thing that jumps out at me is power dynamics. If this were really 2009 and I had the lens that I have right now, uh, taking it from the OD perspective, I think the main thing that jumps out at me right now would be the power dynamics that was happening at that point in time. Singapore in 2009 was actually a very different Singapore from what it is right now. Right? The societal conversation around power or power dynamics, or actually who gets to speak, who doesn’t get to speak over here. Actually, we are looking, and I hate to use the term, a lot… a lot more “woke” as a generation. Yeah. And, uh, I appreciate actually what you guys are doing right now with this particular podcast because it’s much more timely. At that point in time, I think Singapore society was more willing to watch and see the drama of what was happening with the AWARE Saga more as a TV serial, as opposed to, “This is actually a precursor of what is happening down the road”.

A lot of what was happening with the AWARE Saga over here was actually ahead of its time. It was a very early, I guess, a case study of where really are the boundaries between church, state, NGO. You know? And who is are. So at that point in time, I don’t think Singapore was as diverse as it is right now, but [we are] coming into a space where every generation sees it completely differently. Complete penetration of porousness of media within the country. We are clearly looking at a much more diverse society at this point in time. Right? And when you look at diversity, boundaries immediately come in play.

One thing I think that Singaporeans were not processing at the point in time was, “Oh my God, so many boundaries were being crossed,” right? These were unsaid boundaries that we have lived with for decades over here, invisible to us. Right? And I’m quite sure that the people who were involved in the particular saga at that point in time were experiencing unimaginable hurt. There’s quite a lot of pain that was going on there. I was quite guilty of watching by the sidelines and taking up popcorn and going, “Oh, these crazy feminists”, as opposed to understanding that actually, no, if we truly study it, many of the issues that were being raised at that point in time actually are relevant to us right now in this day and age. Yeah. So I’ll be happy to unpack that with you, but I think those are my immediate thoughts that jump out at me.  

CL: Can you say a bit more about the power dynamics? Where was power?

TY: Sure. Can I talk about power dynamics in the light of a metaphor? Because I think it’s helpful for me to unpack it. In reflection and preparing for this particular interview, I began to reflect on what was it that—despite the fact of I’m being Christian myself—that I found something incredibly unfair in this entire thing when I was watching. I think the first thing that jumped out at me was, as part of a secular civil society… the game, or at least the context, is that we live in a society that actually gives everyone equal opportunity to put out the messages they want to put, and in these particular messages over here, as long as they’re not illegal, they don’t cross physically state boundaries or laws, actually is a fair game. What I did not understand over here is why the Christian church would choose to enter into a secular organisation, take it over and use the platform, which they never built in the first place, to suddenly propagate the message. I mean, if you want to begin to propagate a message or alternative message, just set up your own freaking NGO, right? One thing I didn’t understand over here is the sheer size of numbers. Church as an organisation, because of how well-established it is, obviously, it has huge numbers. Um, Church of Our Saviour, at the point in time, I’m not sure what the numbers were. It could’ve been 4,000 or so in terms of their congregation. And NGOs being NGOs will typically be the size of 200-300, right? So it’s like having two basketball teams, right? Coming in, one with infinite reserves and one itself with a team of five and they are going up against one another and playing. Obviously in those power dynamics over here, I think it is very difficult for any one given NGO to begin to contend with those kinds of numbers.

The tricky thing over here was that they worked within the constitution of AWARE. So technically nothing was being done that was wrong right, per se. But in entering in over here through that constitution—I don’t know whether you’ve revised the constitution by now—but in doing so over here, it felt as if everything done was right but not, I don’t know, ethical or safe.

If in 2020, we were looking at this, many Christians would be up in arms. Yeah. In the short game, you win some, I don’t know, token champion over LGBT rights, issues or things like that. But in the long game, where you’re meant to be people within society that demonstrate trust or that create trust among each other? I think you’ve lost the long game. Yeah. In this case over here, um, I think it was not one thing itself that many Christians this day would say that we were proud of. Right? Yeah. In wanting to be associated ourselves with that particular move. 

JN: What were you hearing from other people in 2009? What were you observing? Were you shocked even when it happened?

TY: I truly think that point in time where the AWARE Saga happened, we are not as aware as a society as we are right now. I think many Christians today, if it happened today, OK, we’d be up in arms about this. And will say that this is very unfair or even unethical practice. I wouldn’t be surprised if people stood up today and just said, “Hey, that was wrong.” But in 2009, it was really just seen as a dramatic episode. We were not aware as a society. I don’t think we stood up over here to actually look at the implications of what was going on. We just thought “Oh, OK lor”. If the AWARE Saga happened in 2020, today, with a far more aware society, I’m quite sure there’ll be multiple Christians that’ll be up in arms.

Our role is really to, as much as possible, build trust: The quality of the message really is the messenger. If I don’t trust the messenger, then what do you do with the message? So if our work as Christians is really to spread the gospel, then we have to live the gospel and the gospel is not just one value. It’s not just about, you know, homosexuality—the gospel itself is huge, right, in terms of what exactly it can stand for. And I guess we need to be more discerning and reflective as Christians. We can just say, you know, how do we balance all these particular things? And I think that is complexity in this, right? Yeah. So, uh, and from what I’ve heard over here, multiple different church groups… people are struggling with how to balance all these particular things in the context of today.

So the short answer is that if the AWARE Saga happened today, you would probably get a lot more response even from the Christian community. In 2009, if anything, it was a lot of unnecessary drama, like “why must it be like that”, that kind of thing. You know, you remember Singapore in 2009. It was like, aiyah, nothing we’re looking at now lah. The word “complexity” only really starts to enter the mainframe of everybody maybe around 2015, 2016 or so. Yeah. Most people didn’t talk about it much. We just let it pass. Yeah. You know: “It must be just crazies, you know, doing whatever they’re doing over there.”

CL: So do you feel that society is more empowered now? That they will take stands more than they used to? Is that what has happened?

TY: Definitely. I think society, or these different members of society, today are far more vocal. I’m not so sure this itself is good progress, because now everybody has their own soapbox. Everybody wants to set up their own online episode, podcast, and say something yourself. I’m more concerned in this day and age with whether or not we have a coherent narrative—that we’re so decentralised, right? I’m not so sure where we’re moving as a nation. Yeah. So I’m less concerned about personal voice and more concerned about leadership and being able to find some coalescence as far as our perspectives are concerned.

JN: But could you describe: What were the kind of the range of perspectives you were hearing in 2009, and since? 

TY: Actually, I haven’t heard that much. It‘s not as if people keep talking about [the AWARE Saga]. I think people miss the opportunity to really start to have the conversations that they need to have about it. Yeah. It just came and went. Within the feminist circles, I think it became a deep conversation point. But if you’re out of it, no, no one had these conversations. Yeah.

CL: Did the AWARE Saga contribute to the ability to have these conversations or not? What do you think the impact was on where we are today?

TY: You see, that’s the part that I’m invisible to, I’m sorry… I am truly unclear about it. Whether or not it did penetrate and cause other ripples for deeper conversations or so on and so forth—I think no one has really begin to track. I think if you are at the heart of it, you will probably be able to track what exactly did it lead to, in terms of new policy discussions and so on and so forth, but for the most part over here, um, yeah, I’ve not seen a direct correlation between the two episodes—between this season of 2020 and what was happening 2009. Yeah. But what I’m confident of is that if we take 2009 as a case study and we raise it again today, we will have tons of things to unpack and to listen to. That will give us insight, lah, into the kinds of issues that we’re struggling with right now.

CL: When we first told you we were doing the podcast about the Saga, what was your reaction?

TY: Yikes! [laughs] It was like die, die; another shit to clean up. Basically: “Oh, for God’s sake, do you really need to?” So it was, “Oh, you know, we’ve got enough issues right in Singapore to talk about and deal with and, you know, must we really?” That was my honest response. All quietly in my head. I was just like bitching about you in my head. So that was what was happening there.

Then in deeper reflection, when I began to go back that night and I really did my research. I began to read up on all the stuff that was going online and things like that. And I was going, oh my God, what an amazing case study. Yeah. And I was looking at the richness of what was going on and some genuine questions… even when I sit between the boundary of being a Christian but also basically doing civil society work, right, I know that I had no clear answers for this first particular question. I think that’s where the rich conversation really is. When the boundary is murky, right? That’s how we mature as a society. Right? So we wade into that murkiness to get clearer on what is the game, right? Yeah. So that’s why I got excited about the podcast and I semi-agreed to come to this interview and, you know, subject myself to this very complex torture. That’s why I agreed. We must be willing to wade into the murkiness. Yeah. And not everybody is lah.

CL: You did come across a few naysayers when you said you were participating in this project. What were some of their concerns, their sentiments? How did that impact you?

TY: I think the biggest concerns were whether or not, you know, the people who are producing this documentary would take whatever it is that I was going to say over here and edit it out context and god knows, do whatever, and then I become a meme and I [laughs] basically sit as a gif for the rest of my life, you know? This is what the terror is. Honestly, I don’t even think it’s a response to AWARE per se, but rather the response to actually how fraught our whole information system is right now. Right? Everything is decontextualised and used for whatever our nefarious purposes that we want to use, right. But I think then the balance I have is that, OK, then who are the leaders that will step up and enter into the murkiness of this space? I think we extend trust to the people who are trying to do this particular work, to forward the conversation that needs to be had, and I’m for that. Yeah. So honestly, most of the naysayers were not even talking about, you know, the AWARE Saga or what was going on, but rather “Watch your back and be careful of yourself”. 

CL: During the Saga, some of AWARE’s values, particularly LGBT rights and maybe even feminism in general, seemed to be at odds with Christianity. We were taken over by Christian group over LGBT issues. What is your take on this?

TY: I think the response to the question… My first immediate response to your question is “Abuden”. Of course [these issues are] freaking at odds, right? And that’s why it’s tough, this conflict, in the first place. But how much it is at odds, whether they can coexist… I must have interviewed at least a good eight to 10 Christian leaders—pastors of their own churches or people within Singapore society that hold themselves with a Christian identity. When I interviewed them, the first thing that really stood out was every single one differed, right? In what they’re saying. General lines on whether homosexuality is, you know, wrong or right or things like that—most of them would actually lean towards what the Bible is saying. Right. Yeah. But whether or not they could coexist with other sorts of secular values or progressive values, right, is one where almost every leader had a different take on it. Yeah. One of the things that really struck me as far as a metaphor—and I hope this lands well—is a basketball game, and we have two teams. By right both teams should have a fair play and the referee is therefore needed to come to allow that particular fair play. But if you notice, in the neighbourhoods, they all self-referee themselves and say this is the rules of the game. Right? What happened with the AWARE Saga is that there’s some level of respect that was lost. Right? And one group came in and changed the whole game.

So if one team wants to win in this contestation of values—which value should get the final say—some teams want to win 51 – 50. As long as basically I win by one point, it’s fine, OK, fair game. Other teams want to freaking dominate. Right? And they say, I will only consider myself a win when it’s 50 – 0, because if we allow them one point, they will gain confidence. And the next game they will win two. Right. And this is something that is very… I have found to be quite personality-dependent. As far as the contestation of values is concerned, I think the Christian Church does want to have final say over where the values are. That’s where the ethos is in terms of value systems, and the hope that they can live within societies that have value systems in line with their own beliefs. But whether or not they are winning 51 – 50 or 51 – 0, right, that I have found differs among leaders. Yeah. So, if it’s a 51 – 50, is that considered coexisting? And if I nudge a bit, let you score a few points? But ultimately I’ve got the final say.

JN: Is the metaphor of the basketball court society or is the basketball court an organisation?

TY: The basketball court is society. Ultimately, in every single society, there are people who will always want to contest over values. Right? Which values work, which values don’t. And I think all teams that come in by right should have fair play. [For example,] America is one of those countries that just says, “It’s really fair play. It’s supposed to be fair play. There shouldn’t be dominance of groups and so on and so forth.” Yes. The basketball court is society. 

JN: So were you surprised [that] no other leader said, “Hey guys, chill chill chill. Relax ah”, you know, in the basketball court?

TY: I wasn’t so much shocked, I was more disappointed. I felt that Church of Our Saviour should not have actually had—I guess I do not know whether the word is “orchestrated”, but—whatever happened should not have happened. But honestly, at the point in time, I did not care enough about AWARE or basically the whole feminist movement to even want to, you know, stick my head out. Yeah. Was I, you know, like flabbergasted? No, I really wasn’t and I let it pass like all other things. Until we come to a space of having been attacked ourselves or being subjugated ourselves, I think very rarely do we step up and say, “Hey, you know, this shouldn’t be happening to other people.” “No personal attack against me.” Yeah. I did not take it personally. I didn’t feel invested in actually supporting AWARE at any one point in time.

CL: Did you see this as a fringe Christian group, “not something that I’m a part of”? Were you just an observer with no alignment with that group?

TY: What was interesting was at that point in time was that I did see it from both sides. So it was interesting because one of my early churches, right, that I had grown up in, actually did teach that the whole idea of feminism is changing the hierarchy or the order of what God had necessarily ordained in the first place. I had actually grown up with that particular narrative from a very early part of my own Christian life. So when I heard that Church of Our Saviour had stepped in to actually do that particular piece, actually, I did in some part resonate with these particular, you know, stories. And maybe that could have contributed in part to why I did not speak up or, you know, move into it. So I sort of took the position of, “I get where they’re coming from.” Yeah. And, uh, I think I just silenced my own voice in the attempt not to disrupt my Christian faith. Yeah. Nowadays I’m a bit more, I guess, discerning and asking myself: “So what really is the Christian faith?” I remember itself as a younger Christian, I would take everything hook, line and sinker. Now I begin to look at it, I understand that human systems are human systems. Right? As some of the current landscape, many religious organisations have gone through all sorts of controversy. It’s not just the Christians, right? I began to be a bit more discerning over what narratives am I really taking in for myself.

CL: So today, is feminism seen still to be at odds with Christianity with the leaders that you’ve spoken to? What is your sense of this in general?

TY: This day and age, when I speak to many Christian leaders, I guess the the wisest response I have is that God has not always propagated war. OK? So if we look at many texts within the Old Testament, God has talked about war. Blessed or ordained war, to either take over Jericho or do whatever the case with it, entering a space. The instruction among God’s people is: Engaging in warfare, take away what is not pleasing to my sight. 

What Christian leaders have said is that there definitely has been a context, but there’s also been context a lot within the New Testament, right? And even parts of Old Testament, where we are called to coexist, we are called for seasons of reconciliation to work. To move among those that are against your own beliefs. Right? And even Christ himself did it, a lot. As the Christian leaders said, at this current juncture, there’s been no instruction at all. No burning bush that says, “engage in warfare”. Yeah. One of the things Christian leaders began to talk about in 2009 was, if war is called and they hear from God, there should be resonance among different churches. They’re not there to question whether or not Church of Our Saviour heard that directly from God. They know that they didn’t hear it. But they’re not there to question therefore whether Church of Our Saviour directly heard that from God.

They say that there is context for both. There’s context for reconciliation. There’s also basically precedence for, uh, for war. Yeah. So at this current juncture, nobody has heard anything about engaging in that particular way. So, the clarity is actually on the sovereignty of God, that God does speak to his people… I think we have not heard anything, which means that by status quo, it should be “reconciliation, peace, coexist” as much as possible. Yeah. And I do believe that that is the desire lah. As much as possible. But when push comes to shove, right, then yeah, then we’ll obey.

CL: Same with LGBT rights? Sometimes it seems like there is a Christian movement against LGBT rights, like a war. Maybe not in all quarters, but certainly in some quarters.

TY: I’m really uncertain about that. So if you ask me whether or not there’s a direct, you know, war against LGBT coming from the Christian front? I think all Christians will understand what the Bible says about homosexuality, but whether or not it’s “engage” or “not engage” war, I don’t know. Sometimes it could be personalities. Sometimes it really could be cultural. Yeah. My personal take is that I don’t necessarily understand why there’s a hierarchy of why certain sins are more, you know, upsetting than others. Yeah. And if you want to take down the LGBT movement, why not take down TikTok? [laughs] At the end of the day itself, there’s so many things… I mean when I look at domestic violence alone, I am appalled at what’s going on over here, but why do we not take a stronger stance itself at domestic violence? Why do we not spend our energy itself going and moving against domestic violence as opposed to moving against LGBT? So I would say, as far as our Christian sensibilities are concerned, actually we should be equally upset by multiple different issues. But there is something itself about LGBT that really riles up some parts of the Christian community and I don’t know whether or not that’s a cultural issue. It’s nothing to do with Christianity but rather a personal upfront, “what I believe to be wrong or right”.

CL: Is this one of the conversations you want to bridge? As a Christian yourself, do you feel particularly well placed to try to bridge this LGBT and Christian divide?

TY: No. [laughs] I don’t know who is insane enough to enter this conversation! Yeah. Put that on the record. Yeah, I have no idea. 

CL: Is this is harder than racial harmony?

TY: Oh yeah. You see, racial harmony sits very well within the culture of how Singapore has branded itself. Nobody is actually really against racial harmony. Yeah. We are still are more or less coherent as a society that we do want to work towards racial harmony. There is enough precedence for us to work towards real cohesion. There’s an equal aspiration for that. But for LGBT issues, there isn’t an equal aspiration. There’s actually a conflicting aspiration. Yeah. And in that conflicting aspiration, we’ll still fundamentally get to decide, have to decide, 51- 50 or 51 – 0, and I’m not sure who is willing to be the referee for this one over here.

JN: Who else could have that discussion? A community leader from a religious organisation or such who would be willing to step up? Or you just think the ideological divide is why people don’t speak up?

TY: I think at the evolution of where Singapore is as a society, we’ve done a freaking good job at building up the infrastructure and the institutions that allow Singapore to be, I guess, in the state of health that it is economically or societally. The next phase of our development is really the question of inclusion, right? In an existential way, any country that reaches the level of success that we have is going to invite diversity. So people are going to come in because they all want to be part of success and as the diversity comes in, I think this is where we have to start building up a whole new capability as a city: to know how to handle the conversations that come about as a result of this bigger diversity. So up to 2010 or so, I think we were at the brink of feeling this diversity. Most people who were coming to Singapore, new ideas coming in, were all willing to be subjugated one way or another, just play a secondary or tertiary role to the primary Singapore narrative. These days, it’s not so clean anymore. So as far as Singapore is concerned, I think the the main work is: Do we have the capability to catch the conversation if we open it up? I’m not sure if [the problem is] that people are unwilling to begin to broach the conversation. I think they are saying, “If we broach the conversation, then what? And can you catch the wildfire that will happen as a result of opening up the can of worms? And do we have the capabilities to be in the catch net?” My understanding is that if AWARE were to come into this bigger space, I don’t know how many facilitators you have. Right? So if, let’s assume, 1 million people want to talk about it, right, out of the 6 million, we don’t have the capabilities.

For myself, when it comes down to LGBTQ conversations, I don’t shirk away from the courage to open up the can of worms. I just don’t know whether there are enough forks to go around for everyone to eat these worms as they go. Yeah. So, that’s where my fear is. We are a very young nation that has not prepared itself right for these deep conversations yet. And I think people don’t really understand what we mean by [the idea that] we don’t have the social infrastructure to catch this.

CL: Well, if it’s a public conversation, if it’s something that’s going on social media, how would you start this? Let’s say we want to try to work towards this, right. To bridging and to greater acceptance and understanding. How to start?

TY: That’s the thing. Social media, by design or by structure—all the horrible stuff that Facebook is doing and things like that—it’s not meant for collaborative conversation. It is not meant for cohesion. It is meant to polarise. Yeah. So, in the design of it, I find that the online space is a horrible space to have these kinds of conversations. But if we’re talking about civic facilities in the country, then how many civic facilities do we have? What do we do? Do we have any community centres in Singapore that have the capabilities to handle conversations like this? You know, it’s not even just our civic spaces… teachers, even, in schools, I think they are worried about these kinds of conversations. When I listen to their anxieties, they’re like, “How? [Kids are] in our classrooms all the time. All we can say is, ‘Don’t talk, don’t talk’, ‘shhh’, these kinds of things.” But teachers in their own private space say, we have to start engaging. They just don’t know—then what?

So I don’t think the conversation should be about the fact that we don’t have enough leaders who have the courage to bring this up. I think we are pre-built to be a society that thinks two steps ahead, if not 12 steps ahead. I’m already thinking about step six, step seven. Yeah. So, I think we’re ready for the time to say, “OK, there’s a can of worms. We’ve got a can opener.” I think people are deciding right now.

CL: The leaders of the country are deciding that right now—is that what you’re saying?

TY: That we have the can opener. We just don’t have enough forks to dish out the worms.

CL: I do have a question but I’m not sure whether Tong Yee is in a position to answer it: how the organised Christian religion has evolved between 2009 and 2020, in relation to issues like this—dealing with these thorny societal issues. Do you have a sense of this?

TY: I have a sense of it but I’m not representative. I’m sure you can ask the archbishop but OK, yeah, let’s give it a shot. I don’t think the broader Christian context, today in 2020, is very dissimilar from actually what you are already talking about. The Christian church itself is as subject to all this disruption and, you know, diversity issues as any other system in the world. So, they are even internally itself starting to just question, “so, you know, is what pastor saying really, really true?” And I think a lot of legitimacy that the pastors used to experience before is starting to not be so rock-solid. Yeah. There’s so much availability of content everywhere itself from churches everywhere across the world, that people are all listening to this and consuming it. And as a consumer, there are different narratives that are being pushed out. So in the same way that political leaders are experiencing a loss of legitimacy, church leaders are also experiencing a loss of legitimacy. They’re also experiencing it across different generations—the younger generation, which wants to hear a much more emotive and maybe conciliatory or even progressive narrative, are rejecting the conservative narrative. Yeah. The whole question is, therefore, how do we still keep congregations? How do we still grow? And should we, therefore, stick to our guns and hold the story? Or should we adapt the story, or adapt what is it we’re preaching to actually, you know, relate to where newer congregations are today? And does that mean that we’re fundamentally changing the gospel? Yeah. And these are deep existential questions that the church itself is struggling with.

CL: So you’re saying the church is becoming more progressive and less conservative?

TY: No, the congregation, by sheer virtue of how much exposure they have to different viewpoints, are becoming more progressive. Yeah. So the church itself now has an “identity vs. relevance” question. Do we stick to the core identity of who we are? Or do we play the game to start staying relevant? What I understand over here is, most religious leaders will try to stay conservative, which means they will stay basically to the core. Yeah. But I don’t know how they’re going to keep that whole relevance game going. Yeah. So it’s a very big challenge. And I don’t think it’s, again, true of just Christianity, but religious organisations all across the world. They are as subject to porousness as most globalised nations are and the troubles that come together with it. So the overall sense over here is that when I’m even speaking to Christian leaders today, I think most of them are in dilemmas over their own systems, their own survival. I think a lot of them in their private moments… they always ask, “Why is God not more clear with the guidebook? How come the burning bush is not here? I want some talking donkey that comes and tell me what to do.” And I don’t know. I think with all this complexity we are as looking for miracles as anybody else, right? Yeah. Everyone is open to obedience. They just don’t know where the guide manual is lah, yeah.

JN: What’s something positive that you can take out of all of this?

TY: I think the one thing I’m certain of, as far as Singapore, the context of concern, is that we have a good a chance as any other nation in the world to address this or fix this. We have an excellent foundation of basically playing a fair game right? Uh, the fact is, we still begin to… I mean the whole City Harvest case, I think, was a clear case of this—that no matter how powerful a church is, if they cross lines, right, the state will step in. The state itself wants to begin to create an environment of having a fair society for all.

But sometimes, this conversation, it cannot be just the state declaring it. Sometimes it has to be a conversation that citizens have. And what we’re seeing yourself with these increasingly woke generations of people is that people are more willing to step up to the plate to have these kinds of conversations. And again, I want to reiterate this: I truly think that we have a better chance than most of the countries to figure this out. Our pain is not as entrenched or as generational itself as many other countries that have gone through this, which means I think that we can begin to overcome this. But the whole question is, we need to do the 10, 20 years of capability-building to get into this. So, I don’t have an immediate hope for 2025, but I have very strong hope for 2035. Yeah. And I do have a sense that the social organisations today are very much more focused on capacity-building, as opposed to awareness-building. We’ve got to do both concurrently. When it comes down to actually handling the much more complex and difficult conversations that society needs to begin to have, awareness is really only the beginning of the game. Yeah. And that the difficulty really comes in the long tail: How do we handle all this complexity and where does it go and what do we do as a society? And I’m grateful to say that I think civil society organisations are concerned with both levels of work—of advocacy work, but also the capacity-building work necessary to carry these difficult conversations all the way through lah. Yeah.

CL: Thank you.

Listen to Saga on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or aware.org.sg/saga.

AWARE recommends universal basic income, extension of benefits to migrant spouses as key components of an inclusive 2021 National Budget

budget

This post was originally published as a press release on 8 January 2021.

As Singapore navigates the consequences of the global coronavirus pandemic, national recovery efforts should be as inclusive as possible to prevent gender inequalities from widening, says gender-equality group AWARE. 

This principle informs the organisation’s 11th annual set of recommendations for the National Budget, which it submitted today to the Government. The recommendations detail how policy-makers in Singapore can address the multifaceted challenges that women and other vulnerable groups are facing as a result of COVID-19. 

“While COVID-19 has changed all of our lives in some form or another, the pandemic’s impact throughout society has not been equal,” said Ms Shailey Hingorani, AWARE’s Head of Research and Advocacy. “Women have disproportionately become more vulnerable to financial insecurity, caregiver burden and other major stressors—the implications of which extend far beyond the immediate threats of the pandemic. We urge policy-makers, therefore, to take an explicitly gendered approach to devising this year’s Budget, recognising that some need more attention and assistance than others.” 

AWARE’s recommendations were based in part on circuit-breaker surveys that the organisation conducted between April and May 2020. These surveys revealed various vulnerabilities brought about by COVID-19: the vulnerability of family caregivers to financial insecurity; the high likelihood of retrenchment for low-income workers due to the nature of their work; the lack of support and protection for self-employed workers; and migrant spouses’ limited access to employment and social support. 

Consequently, some of AWARE’s key recommendations are the introduction of a universal basic income or a Caregiver Support Grant to financially support caregivers, as well as mandatory paid eldercare leave to help working caregivers. The group also recommended the extension of social assistance schemes and benefits to all migrant spouses while allowing them to also be self-employed. This is the first time that AWARE has included a section on migrant spouses, who have been historically overlooked in conversations around the National Budget. 

“Many of these recommendations echo those made in previous years by AWARE and other civil society organisations working with vulnerable populations in Singapore,” noted Ms Hingorani. “While they carried urgency back then—Singapore’s population has been ageing for some time now—these ideas have only come to resonate more in 2021, as we look to turn a page on the disaster of COVID-19. 

“As we prepare to future-proof Singapore citizens against economic disruptions, we must seriously consider providing an income floor for all. There is always a temptation to focus on the short-term during crises, but we must train our eyes on the future, and guarantee that our recovery puts human life and dignity at the centre.” 

Read AWARE’s full submission to the 2021 national Budget here.

Previous recommendations by AWARE for the National Budget can be found here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014.

23 February, 2 March and 9 March 2021: Birds & Bees, A Workshop for Parents About Sex Education

“What should I do if I catch my child watching porn?”

“How do I start talking to my child about romantic relationships?”

“How can I talk to my child about sex without making it sound like a lecture?

“How can I let my child know that I’m on his/her side and care about what he/she feels?

Most parents believe that it is important to talk to their children about sex, but many are uncertain how to do it. But what happens when you keep putting it off until the children are “older”? Where do your children get answers to questions they can’t ask you? (The internet is one such place, and young people say they are most likely to ask peers and romantic partners.)

Birds & Bees is an experiential workshop for parents, developed by parents, to explore what works for you when talking to your child about romantic relationships and sex. A variety of formats will be used, including opportunities for dialogue, discussion and reflection

Most parents want to be an “ask-able” parent: to be the approachable adult who is open to questions and who their child turns to for answers. Attend this workshop to explore how you can work on developing your own strategies to enhance the trust and bond with your child!

All parents would find the content useful and applicable. For this online workshop, we are giving priority to parents of children aged 10-15 so that the discussions can be more age-targeted.

Places are limited so do sign up quickly!

Date: 23 February, 2 March and 9 March (Tuesdays—participants are expected to attend all three sessions and must attend the first session)

Time: 8:00-9.30pm (1.5 hours)

Workshop Fee: $15 (in total, covering all three sessions)

Survey: After you sign up, you will be asked to complete a short pre-workshop survey about the age(s) and number of your children. This is very important so that parents with children of similar ages can be grouped together to that you will get the most out of the workshop.

Special instructions for online workshop: As small-group discussions are a big part of the workshop, participants are expected to switch on their video as well as audio whenever possible, and to join in the discussions for maximum benefit.

Refunds and cancellations: Unfortunately we will not be offering refunds. In exceptional circumstances, if you are unable to attend the subsequent sessions, you will be able to join the next set of workshops if you write in to publiceducation@aware.org.sg in advance giving your reasons.

**If you would like to join the workshop but cannot make it at this time, please fill in the indication of interest form.

Register here.

 

Parents wanted for a study on Minimum Income Standard

In Singapore, the first Minimum Income Standard (MIS) research project, which was published in May 2019, investigated how ordinary Singaporeans think about what constitutes basic needs in Singapore today, and determined the household budgets necessary to meet these needs for older people. Now, a new study aims to work out the minimum budgets for households.

Currently, the team is looking in particular for single parent participants for a focus group on 9 January 2021.

Criteria for focus group participants

We are looking in particular for married parents, especially fathers, to participate at this point in time. You should be:

  • married
  • preferably male (though women are welcome to apply)
  • aged 26 to 54
  • a parent of one or more children up to the age of 25 (preference will be given to parents of young children aged 6 and below)

If this is you, apply now for the 9 January session.

All participants will receive a supermarket voucher as a token of appreciation.

Please visit whatsenoughsg.wordpress.com for more information about MIS and this research project.