SDN: State’s Dating Nanny

Now that SDU has merged with SDS to form SDN, civil servants involved in this amalgamation must form an orderly queue at the edge of the Bukit Timah Quarry and jump to their deaths. Those that survive the fall will be beaten with baseball bats. After 24 years, the best name these civil servants can come up with is SDN? And if they expect single Singaporeans to sign up in droves they must be smoking something pretty illegal. Any advertiser worth his salt will tell you it’s all about branding. Your brand must stand for something. Nike stands for cool, Samsonite for reliability, and Prada for ‘piss off, why are you even looking at me?’.

What does SDN stand for? A rom-com marathon at home on a Saturday night with your best friends Ben & Jerry? The only single folks who would be interested in an outfit like SDN are the aesthetically  and constipationally challenged. But enough about the PAP Youth Wing. The point is, unless some effort is made to make SDN cool, sexy or desirable – all alien concepts to the civil service – you’re going to end up with the same problems SDU and SDS faced – graduate women won’t look at non-graduate men, non-graduate men will chase Vietnamese farm girls, while everyone only joins to get a piece of the great discounts on wine-tasting courses.

It’s time SDN re-brands itself. It’s time it makes big promises to its clients. For starters it can re-make itself, Singapore style; that is, change the name and leave the content exactly the same. Some suggestions:  Social Enhancement Xtreme (SEX); or Organisation of Recreation, Games And Social Meets (ORGASM), or Quality Unions, Improved Couplings and Kinky Intimate Exchanges (QUICKIE). Imagine the soaring membership! It’s all about promises.  

SDN is also about broken promises. What happened to the government’s promise to stay out of any business that could be found in the Yellow Pages? There are scores of dating agencies in the Yellow Pages so what’s the point of SDN?

But if the government is serious about getting singles hitched it has to stop acting like damn nanny. The single biggest obstacle to getting the SDN right is the fact that it’s conceived and implemented by a civil servant whose idea of an exciting night would be dimming the lights to watch Drag Me to Hell…. on mute….naked…eagle spread….with the fore-mentioned Ben & Jerry’s smeared all over his body. Would you be able to resist stabbing him for the sake of the local gene pool? Would the government ever grow the balls needed tackle real-life challenges? It can begin by granting a tax incentive to graduate women who marry non-graduate men, giving subsidies to men in the market for Vietnamese, PRC, Myanmar or Cambodian brides, cordoning off nightspots for SPGs and Caucasian men, legalizing porn and civil unions (married gays and lesbians will bring down the singles figures), and introducing doubles pole-dancing and making naked belly-dancing a national sport.

Times have changed and as usual the government is huffing and puffing behind like Moses Lim chasing a doughnut. Coupling in the 21^st century has undergone a democratization process. People below 30 hardly ever begin relationships in institutional spaces like work, church or government-sponsored cattle auctions anymore. They begin with chance meetings in bookshops, spas, clubs, cyberspace and darken toilets in East Coast Park at car park ‘C’. The SDN is as relevant to young singles as P65 MPs are to hip-hop.   

But the state will never learn. It’s in its nature to coerce, regulate and implement. And it’s in our nature to ignore it.

I need my abibas

It was reported that the Singapore police busted two local syndicates involved in the sale of counterfeit goods. According to the Assistant Director of the Specialised Crime Division: “Police take a serious view of intellectual property rights violations, and will continue to take strict enforcement action, leveraging on intelligence and other capabilities, to clamp down hard on the sales and distribution of counterfeit goods in Singapore.”

I hope with all my heart he was joking. I mean if the police really took a serious view of intellectual property rights and counterfeit goods, what will we be left with?

The first to be arrested will be NTUC for the crime of imitating a labour movement. The next to go will be The Straits Times for being a counterfeit newspaper. In no time the police will be coming for Chinatown for imitating a vibrant authentic slice of immigrant history. What next? GRC PAP MPs for being counterfeit MPs because they were not voted in? Singapore politics for being an imitation democracy? Once you start, where do you end? Please Mr Policeman, for the love of god, stop your insanity!

Counterfeit goods are good. They make capitalism democratic. Everyone can now own a LV bag all for $20. We moan and groan about the widening wage gap, the gulf between the working class and the middle class, between the middle class and the rich, between the rich and the super rich, between the super rich and Singapore ministers, and yet we deny ordinary folks the vanity reserved for the well-heeled. Counterfeit goods are the laxative for a discontented people, they are the prosaic for teeth gnashers and if you think intellectual property needs to be protected you’re living in la-la land. Hollywood has been ripping off ideas from Hong Kong cinema for years, Oasis rips-off the Beatles for a living, Sumiko Tan rips-off the personality vanilla ice-cream for her columns; the fact is, ideas are in constant circulation whether you like it or not.

The police should do the right thing. Lay off the counterfeit syndicates. They are more than just grubby fingers pushing Prada bags in dingy alleyways. They are merchants of the Singapore dream, a dream that is no longer attainable for the majority of us. And so these syndicates fill our veins with the opiate of designer brands and fantasies of luxury so that we may feel whole again. And what better place for the celebration of counterfeit goods than in an imitation nation?

Heartlanders: Singapore’s Progressives

Aunty Lucy deserves more respect. The Chinese-speaking heartlander has long been a poster child for moral conservatism. Every time anything morally controversial crops up, whether its censorship regulations, topless shows, or 377A, the debate is always lazily poised between the more liberal cosmopolitan and the conservative heartlander. The “liberal cosmopolitans” being the convenient label for the English-speaking well educated middle class and “heartlanders” for the uncles and aunties who live in Toa Payoh. This is class politics at its most deceitful. 

Labelling the heartlander ‘conservative’ has been very useful in demonising the Chinese-speaking working class as the socio-cultural laggard in a progressive global city. Painted as unsophisticated, uncouth and resistant to change, the heartlander is the cosmopolitan’s country bumpkin cousin who needs to be patronised and shielded from the decadent forces of globalisation. 

However, even a quick glance at how the Chinese working class views “morally controversial” issues will force many to reconsider its reputation for conservatism. When it comes to issues of sex and sexuality, it’s clear the heartlanders have a far more enlightened attitude towards homosexuality and cross-dressing. Channel 8 is filled with cross-dressers from Liang Po Po to Aunty Lucy. Homosexuality is not a big deal when drama serials and comedies have their fair share of effeminate characters. Do we have their equivalent on Channel 5? Can you imagine Kumar in full drag with his own show on Channel 5 at primetime? The English-speaking moralists will have a collective heart-attack (right after penning a million outraged letters to the Straits Times and Mediacorp). 

It also seems as though the heartlanders have a far healthier attitude towards sex. Pick up any issue of the Lianhe Wan Pao and there’ll be sensational sex scandals, racy celebrity gossip and titillating pictures to send any puritan into a full-blown epileptic shock. 

Even euthanasia is not taboo subject for the Chinese-speaking community. When Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan broached the topic of euthanasia late last year as a topic of debate in the context of an aging society, he was citing an on-going debate that was already taking place in the Chinese press. Such a debate would not have been possible in the English-language press because of the high levels of moralising that would invariably overwhelm the discussion. [http://www.asiaone.com/Health/News/Story/A1Story20081020-94922.html]

Over a variety of issues, the heartlander holds more enlightened and progressive views than the English-speaking middle class. There are two possible reasons for this. Firstly, the Chinese-speaking heartlanders are predominantly Buddhists (still the biggest religion in Singapore) and Taoists. Both religions are generally very tolerant of contrary morals, and often possess a more pragmatic syncretic streak, thus allowing them to adapt to liberal values and lifestyles. Secondly, as more economically marginal they do not presume a great stake over the political and moral character of the country or state, and are thus more ambivalent to trends in liberalisation or liberalism.  

So who are the ones patronising our heartlanders? There are two groups who do this. The first are segments of the English-speaking pseudo-nationalist middle class who view the heartlander as some sort of house pet who needs protection. They are the ones vocal about saving Singlish in the name of preserving the Singapore identity but then turn around and exaggerate the way heartlanders speak it to make fun of them. Think Gurmit Singh’s Phua Chu Kang. The mole, the perm, the yellow boots, the unreal accent – Singh’s portrayal of Phua Chu Kang was not an attempt to find comic elements in the nouveau riche but a straightforward caricature of the working class by the English-educated. Phua Chu Kang is a cartoon figure to poke fun at and to make people who speak good English feel better about themselves. 

The second group consists of middle class moral and religious conservatives. This group has long sought to forge a morally conservative society. It is very uneasy with increasing liberal trends such as the casinos, ‘R’ rated movies, topless shows and so on. Sometimes it campaigns against these trends on moral grounds. However, most of the time, it campaigns on the behalf of the poor helpless heartlander for whom society is moving too fast. This group of moral conservatives use the heartlander as its proxy to construct a conservative society. And by doing so, issues of religion and morality are magically disguised as class issues, where uncompromising religion-influenced doctrines are hidden behind the ignorant working class.

Anybody who says Singapore doesn’t have class politics doesn’t know Singapore. The politics may not be pronounced or manifested in violent clashes but they are there nonetheless.

Top ten reasons for flying the flag

Hey you! Yes, you… don’t look away. Why so shy? Top ten reasons why you’re flying the national flag:

 10. You’re a new citizen!

9. You played Truth or Dare, and damn if you’re going to talk about your sex life.

8. You’re feeling sorry for the Lions not getting any love when they played Liverpool FC.

7. If LKY can rise from his grave should Singapore falter, imagine what he’d do to you if you didn’t put up the flag.

6. You’re living in Hougang or Potong Pasir, and you’re making a political point that voting opposition and loving Singapore are not contradictory.

5. You’re living in Hougang or Potong Pasir, and you’re making a political point to the PAP to come save your estate.

4. It’s hung upside down so it doesn’t count.

3. We’re Singaporeans, hanging is what we do best.

2. The #@%& Resident Committee nazis covered your entire block overnight without warning.

1. Your name is Lionel de Souza.

Happy National Day!

National Gay Parades

For a country that believes that it isn’t ready for legalizing homosexuality, Singapore is pretty gay. Every year we put up the campiest, kitschiest, most gay event this side of the Mardi Gras called the National Day Parade. And to ensure the very highest levels of gay quotient we appoint drama queens like Dick Lee, Glen Goei and Ivan Heng as ‘creative directors’. We then get thousands of people dressed in a colourful assortment of chicken feathers, tin foil and body-hugging sequined tops to frolic with each other as fireworks light the night sky. Every performer has enough make-up to fit right at home in Changi Village on a Saturday night while the SAF parachuters demonstrate that it is literally “raining men”. And to complete the wet dream, men dressed in uniform march in and out of the stadium waving their big oily guns at everyone. NDP is gay. It is as gay as Elton John dancing in black leather thongs in San Francisco. Its time the NDP planning committee comes out of its closet.

And that is what I love about this goddamn country; the contradictions. Ask any conservative Singaporean about whether we should change the way NDP is celebrated to, say a mega concert and a big BBQ, and you’ll get a chorus of protests. These folks, so resistant to change, prefer to cling on to the gayest possible mode of celebration.

The latest media hoo-ha (the local media likes to create fake controversies to fill up its pages in the absence of investigative journalism) is the howls of protests against the new NDP song What do you see? by local rock band Electrico. It’s not the greatest song in the world but it marks a progressive change from the rest of the kitschy nonsense like Count on Me Singapore or Stand Up for Singapore. People who tear up when singing the latter two songs most probably also own The Sound of Music DVD (director’s cut), ABBA’s Greatest Hits, and know the words to every Barry Manilow song…ever. Nothing makes me more agitated, more unpatriotic than the strains of “there was a time when people said that Singapore won’t make it…but we did”. And when its sung by 60,000 flag-waving Singaporeans who queued overnight for their tickets all dressed in their red $9.90 Giordano T-shirts, well it’s just like a sweet natured version of the Nuremberg Rally isn’t it?

NDPs are depressing. They remind me of everything that is orchestrated, superficial, rehearsed, practiced, and devised from top-down in Singapore. They are artificial cauldrons of whipped up frenzy and heightened emotions where quick spasms of ecstasy are mistaken for patriotism. Not too dissimilar from how churches use music to stir up mass feelings of elated bliss. At the end of the day NDPs are pure theatre.

 I would like to put out a suggestion to readers. Celebrate National Day differently this year. Think back to your childhood. Go to a location, a space or a building that first springs to mind. It could be an old estate, a torn down building, an empty parking lot where your old school used to stand, the beach or even a lonely road you used to take to primary school. Ponder for a while how far you have come since, how far this country has come, and what sacrifices it has made to achieve what it has. Ask yourself if these sacrifices have been worthwhile, both for yourself and the country. Get to know yourself a bit. I promise you, it’ll be more meaningful than watching grown men jiggling in tights and foundation.

Exploring Backyards

Many years ago, in her seminal essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, film theorist Laura Mulvey described two main ways in which women were portrayed on screen – “voyeuristically” and “fetishistically”. The former portrayed women as the archetypal ‘whore”, while the later saw them portrayed as “madonnas”.

 Feminist studies have developed since. We have learnt about the “male gaze”, that is, the way things or bodies are arranged for men to look at, and how the female body is often used as a vehicle for a variety of purposes such as sex, violence, beauty, suppression and marginalisation. And in this post-feminist, post-AWARE age, it is always surprising to see good old fashion sexism.

The advertisement above is for Malaysia’s new budget airlines Firefly. It’s not an obscure advertisement and can be found in the 6 Jul 2009 issue of TODAY. It exhorts us to explore Malaysia’s ‘backyard’ but instead of stereotypical visuals of sleepy idyllic kampongs, we have an array of air hostesses’ bums to choose from. More than merely sexually suggestive, it is an indication of how the female body has also come to signify Asian culture and how heterosexual ideas of sex still remain.

Ever since the late 1970s, scholars have observed how colonial perspectives have always cast Asian or Eastern culture as a feminine one. Docile, submissive and subservient, the mild mannered natives often served the needs of white men. Such perspectives have, of course, not died but have been reincarnated as neo-colonial mindsets that present Asian culture and women as objects of fun and delight for white men, most effectively illustrated by the famous Singapore Girl in pictures such as this:

 

But while such overt displays of sexism are not uncommon, the Firefly advert seems to hint at something more. The bum that is the object of sexual desire must belong to a woman, and not a man. Malaysia has several sites of tradition from religiosity to patriarchal sentiments, and they continue to impress upon everyone, both in law and in advert, that anal sex is only permissible between man and woman. The woman’s body has become a signpost for a society’s conservative fantasies.

It is too easy to observe that sex sells or that one must capitalise on one’s selling points. These types of arguments are fine for big soul-less corporations that only care for the bottomline. But as communities made up of women, children and other vulnerable people, it is important to reflect on how we are portraying ourselves to others. It is a delicious irony that capitalism and mass consumerism have succeeded where liberalism has failed - displaying sex and sexuality in public spaces.

But as the global financial crisis has shown, while market logic and capitalism may still be the best methods for the distribution of wealth and advancement of societies, they need to be regulated and checked. And if this is true for financial instruments, it is also true for advertisments. Especially airline ones.

Citizen Shoppers

Singapore is a nation trapped in a shopping mall.

If new malls like ION and Orchard Central are not spouting out like fresh H1N1 cases, then old ones like Wisma Atria and Tanglin Mall are constantly going under the knife for a new lease of life. As a people, we are obsessed not with buying lots of things, but with the shopping experience. Sure, we enjoy the act of purchasing, but buying alone does not drive Singaporeans to malls. It’s the long-drawn foreplay of purchase that we crave.

We crave the experience of being in a crowd, of being mesmerized by bright coloured lights, of being entranced but uncommitted to fresh shinny shoes, clothes, belts, bags and the lot. We love to play the role of the urban butterfly, flitting from one cold mannequin to another, absorbing the sensory experience of loud bad music, reveling in the masochistic joy of the dull ache in our feet while secretly enjoying the annoyance from blank sales assistants. It’s the ultimate non-confrontational, passive activism. It is so Singaporean.

 Arguments from nurture are always tricky. Do dog owners grow to look like their Chihuahuas, or do they choose Chihuahuas that look like them? Similarly, do we love shopping because we’re so damn politically neutered or does shopping divert our energy from politics and civil society? It is not a completely pedantic question because while the joys of mass consumption have indeed spawned generations of mindless consumers everywhere in the world, it has also produced an anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation, anti-establishment backlash we don’t get here.

From groups like The Third Position, Peoples Global Action, or publications like Adbusters magazine and No Logo, it is clear that the consumer experience has its fair share of heretics. But why not in Singapore?

Could it be because our entire national survival is predicated on shopping? Here in Singapore, national survival is synonymous with economic survival. Economic survival is only possible with capitalism and globalization. Singapore is the ultimate ‘capital city’ and we have to shop to safeguard our national sovereignty.

And we really do perform as Singapore citizens as we move from mall to mall, sucking in the stale air-con, gazing the endless advertising façade of beautiful people looking out to nowhere in particular. It is pure politics in motion. We hear the PM saying something on TV but don’t quite listen hard enough. We have PAP MPs posing in carefully crafted photos in The Straits Times as they advertise their competence and grassroots connection. We are captivated by the officious droning from Parliament because like elevator music we cannot escape it but cannot quite explain why we want to.

It’s wrong to say that shopping is Singapore’s favourite pastime. A pastime is something you do when you’re free, when you’re released from the chores of life, something you do for pleasure. Here in Singapore, we live a shopper’s existence.

It ain’t easy being Singaporean

It ain’t easy being Singaporean.

Your life is run by a series of acronyms like ERP, COE, CPF, PSLE, NS, PMS; you have to endure the relentless tropical heat; you have nothing to read but The Straits Times; your national culture consists of shopping and whining (I’m nothing if not patriotic); and it’s still considered a crime to strangle Gurmit Singh. You get called names like ‘little red dot’, ‘useless piece of snot’ and even Jacky Chan craps all over you. Let’s face it, when a man who made his living jumping around like a monkey says you have “no self-respect”, well, it ain’t been a good week.

 But still, you try. The great Romantic poet John Keats once wrote:

It matters not what the crowd bays

Or what the angry gods may say

For all that matters is the heart

And the values you cling hard

What beautiful lines. It means that regardless of what people may say or think about you, what matters is what you believe in. Words deserving of colourful embroidery indeed. Ok, I completely made the lines up. Keats never said that. I could have looked him up but I really can’t be bothered. Laziness is one of my many charms. But don’t let that take anything from the message. It’s still pertinent.

And so I try, as a citizen, to narrow the gulf between our national values and what we do as a country. After all, if morality means practicing what you preach, then being a great country means practicing what you teach. Under George Bush, America tore up their Constitution, practiced torture, invaded the wrong country and became the pariah of the international community. Under Barack Obama, America is heeding the call of its ideals and founding principles and, in the process, is becoming great again.  

I think a little red dot can be great too. I think greatness is not limited to the measure of size and might, but the loftiness of one’s ideals and one’s faithfulness to them. By this definition, Singapore can be great.

And so I turn my eyes towards our ‘Shared values’. Phrases like “Nation before community and society above self” ring so sweet. They stir up a sense of pride deep inside. They make me want to do something. Oh shut up, it’s true. They really do make me want to give of myself.

But then I see our ministers’ legendary salaries and their need to “facilitate the recruitment and retention of the quality of talent we need for the government and public sector.” My enthusiasm becomes more flaccid than an 80 year old man in a cold shower.

What about Shared value #3 -“Community support and respect for the individual”? Pretty uncontroversial, we can’t go wrong here. 377A, AWARE new exco, Thio Su Mien – enuff said.

What about Asian values and Confucian ethics ? I think to myself, well, perhaps cynicism aside, the clarion call to be moral, ethical and righteous, regardless of their political intent, is worth heeding. My cynicism is about to slip away when I also recall our on-going manufacture of landmines, their sale to war-torn countries, our economic dealings with the Myanmar junta, our medical offerings to Robert Mugabe, and most recently, our welcome of North Korean President Kim Yong Nam. Ah well, you know what they say, we’re just a little red dot and must look out for our national interests.

Pragmatism is a wonderful device. It allows you to do anything you want, however you want, and then blame it on reality. It’s an excuse for abandoning higher morals and ethics without looking like a dick. It makes you a man because you’re seen to be ‘realistic’ and ’grounded’. It’s the ultimate backstage pass, allowing you to bypass everyone to get straight to the goodies. And being pragmatic also means that you have to pretend to have values, whether shared or of the Asian variety because there are idealistic saps out there who, believe it or not, romanticise principles. It’s just pragmatic to be an ethical Confucianist.

It’s hard being Singaporean. It’s damn hard. Screw it. I’m going shopping.

Terror-rible Experts

If there is one thing worse than terrorists, its terrorist experts. Ever since Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ began, every half-baked academic/analyst has fashioned himself into a media whore ‘terrorist expert’. It’s a highly rewarding job in this post September 11 world. Governments are jittery, people are panicky and all you need to do is go ‘Boo! Terrorists!’ and you’ll get more media attention than Thio Su Mien walking naked down Holland Village. (That may actually qualify as an act of terrorism).

‘Terrorism experts’ today remind me of snake oil sales men of yore. They talk about ailments they know absolutely nothing about, holler in thunderous tones, warn that the itch in your inner thigh marks the return of SARS, and then recommend cheap cooking oil to rub over your body. All for $10 bucks a vial. Fear is what keeps ‘terrorist experts’ in business. Without the fear of IMMINENT ATTACK, where are they going to get their funding?

And it’s all so simple. Everyone can be a ‘terrorist expert’. All you need to do is to speak vaguely and be as ambiguous as possible. Here, let me give it a go.

 “Mas Selamat is a terrorist with a high level of skills, a man with deep resolve. Only a small number of such terrorists have the ability and know-how, and it shows that Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia is under persistent danger. JI is a group that’s always expanding,… always working and he’s been able to connect with some JI members.”

There, how hard was that? I said absolutely nothing that cannot be lifted of any newspaper. I must be a ‘terrorist expert’. So how did I fare in the Basic Terrorist Expert Test? Check with the model answer below.

 “Mas Selamat is a terrorist with a very high degree of experience, and a man with tremendous determination. There are very few terrorists of that competence and capability, and it demonstrates that Singapore and the region faces a continuous threat. JI is a group that’s constantly growing,… constantly active and he’s been able to link up with a number of JI members”

 Dr Rohan Gunaratna [http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/427853/1/.html]

Not bad eh? I’m getting my Anti-terrorism Proficiency Badge in the mail tomorrow. Will sew it next to my crotch. You kids can play this game at home too. Just circle the appropriate word: Mas Selamat/Osama bin Laden/Derek Hong is a very dangerous man. He has bombed an airport/twin towers/gay spas to spread fear and to establish a caliphate/KFC empire/24 hour chapel over the region. He is very skilled and hardened, and is a high ranking member of the very insidious/happy-go-lucky/self-help group called the Jema’ah Islamiyah/al Qaeda/Chingay Parade. He is currently building a network of terror/call girls/terror call girls in order to infiltrate Singapore/Southeast Asia/the universe and beyond. He must be closely watched.

 If these office-dwelling air-con loving pot-belly ‘experts’ are so knowledgeable, how come they could not even pin-point the country Mas Selamat was in? He’s in Java, no he’s in Pattaya; he’s in Surabaya, perhaps Batam. There was more confusion amongst these experts than MOE and the sex education programme!

Intelligence work is boring. It’s about following leads that 90 per cent of the time lead nowhere. It’s about undercover work and monotonous stakeouts, missing your family and wishing you didn’t sign up with the Ministry of Home Affairs as you bake in the hot sun watching innocuous-looking people. The real experts are ISD intelligence officers and grunts who will not be named because they cannot be named, not some well-paid blowhard talking a lot but saying absolutely nothing.

How to win an EOGM and lotsa friends

So Josie and her Pussycats have been slapped down. The Christian community is reeling in half shame, half relief. The liberals are having drunken sex, the conservatives are crossing themselves, and we’re all happy that Singapore civil society is not always about whether or not it’s ok to eat sharks’ fin soup. Oh the excitement, the thrill, the sight of thousands of women screaming and jostling at a non-SALE event.

 The lull after the AWARE EOGM is like the ennui that comes after the end of the EPL season. What do we do now? Who’s going to entertain us? How are we going to fill up the echoing void we call life? Perhaps we can ponder over the invaluable lessons this big catfight has thrown up. After all, retrospection is best done as early as possible, right before hindsight sets in.

 Things could have been very different. If the vote went the other way we would be looking at a very conservative AWARE. So where did Josie and her Pussycats go wrong? Five easy lessons on how not to lose an EOGM and win many many friends.

Leave your teddy bear at home

Religious beliefs and private morality are like worn-out urine-stained teddy bears from your childhood. It provides comfort and assurance. It gives you that warm feeling that can only be replicated when a Catholic priest touches your bum. But you don’t go about carrying your old teddy bears to the office or dinner parties. Like teddy bears, religious morality should be kept at home or the church, and not paraded like you’re a 5 year old child all over again. By all means, play with your teddy bear at home. Feed it, talk to it, stroke it, hug it, pray with it, but don’t wave its arm at me and ask me to say ‘hi’ to it.

Be open about your girlfriends

Having six members of your exco coming from the same church is not a tactical takeover. It’s a classical psychoanalytical explanation for lesbianism. Look, you share the same background, come from the same ethnic group, you glance furtively at each other, you all dress alike, you deny you know each other, you protect each other, you yell at others who yell at one of you… let’s face it, Freud will tell you to get off his couch and stop wasting his time. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having girl cliques. The ‘old guard’ is a well known girl clique. But be open about it.

Don’t sell fear  

The key galvanizing point in this whole saga was that AWARE was promoting lesbianism and homosexuality in schools. The fear was that there would be “an entire generation of lesbians”. It’s a bit like saying teaching mathematics in school will lead to an entire generation of mathematicians. But that’s the Christian right for you, small on reason, big on fear. Religion is basically the selling of two valuable commodities – fear and guilt. If you can launder these two emotions in tandem, people gladly do anything you ask.

In truth, the sex education programme by AWARE was devised with the consultation of teachers and religious leaders. But this fact was an inconvenient truth for the Christian right. Furthermore, the quoted passages about keeping the term ‘homosexuality’, ‘sexy’ and ‘lesbianism’ neutral were not even in the actual syllabus but from the instructor’s guide which students had no access to. Finally, as one sex educator observed, teachers spent 30 minutes talking about abstinence and only about 2 minutes on homosexuality, but guess which whips the Christian right into a frenzy?

Your Pastor must not be living in La-la Land

Church of our Saviour Pastor Derek Hong was quoted as saying “It’s not a crusade against the people but there’s a line that God has drawn for us, and we don’t want our nation crossing that line.” Well, Pastor Numbnuts, Christians in Singapore only make up 14.9 per cent of the population, so your God is hardly in the majority. To believe that your Christian God has drawn a line in the sand for Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims and atheists is nothing short of arrogant. Our friend was this close to having the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act shoved up where the sun don’t shine. 

Your puppet master must not, preferably, be a psycho

I think God has a Thio Su Mien complex. Is there anyone quite as breathtakingly egoistic and self-centred as the Nutty Professor? I mean calling yourself ‘Feminist Mentor’ should be a crime against imagination. Pretty soon everyone’s going to use the term to denote authority, even ministers! Oh, ok scratch that.

But the lesson here is simple. If you want to orchestrate a takeover, make sure your puppet master is not completely psycho. She believed she could not ‘surface’ in the early stages and she believes this battle is nothing less than a spiritual warfare between Good and Evil, and that the Devil is behind Constance Singham, Braema Mathi, Dana Lam and the rest of the ‘old guard’. But worse of all, she actually believes that her successful career makes her a feminist.

Illusions of grandeur are nothing new. Napoleon, Hitler, Moses, parking wardens, they all suffer from it. It’s a personality defect that’s all too common. But when it’s coupled to another equally common defect – the belief that one is absolutely 100 per cent unrelentingly morally right, it becomes a very dangerous combination. Dr Thio is not uncommon in believing she is great. She is not uncommon in believing she is on the right side of morality; all Christians feel that way. She only became such a public caricature when she exhibited both defects simultaneously.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Josie and her Pussycats lost public sympathy because of two personalities – Derek Hong and Thio Su Mien. The emergence of these two people effectively swung public opinion against the ‘new exco’. Dr John Chew, head of the National Council of Churches, was forced come out and distance the Christian faith from Hong, while thanks to Thio’s “respect your elders” outburst, Khaw Boon Wan’s silly suggestion to ship our parents to JB actually sounds reasonable.

At the end of the day, when Josie and Kittycats look back, they would do well to realise that they’ve been arrogant, misguided and utterly intolerant. But unfortunately, as with all folks who believe they are doing God’s work on earth, they’ll think that the sinners of Singapore are hardened of heart and just aren’t ready to embrace the word of God. Amen.