Is being gay a problem?

It’s not being gay that makes some young people unhappy. It’s the negative reaction of other people that they fear, coming to terms with being ‘different’ and coping with it that’s difficult. It is even harder if this has to be done in secrecy from family, friends and teachers.

Lesbian and gay people of all ages can find themselves emotionally exhausted by having to reconcile how they are feeling inside with the problems others have in coming to terms with their sexuality.

LGBT and HIV/STD/AIDS

The truth is being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender does not give you AIDS. Certain sexual practices, certain drug use behaviors and other factors can put you at risk for catching HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

HIV is spread by sexual contact with an infected person, by sharing needles and/or syringes (for drug injection) with someone who is infected, or, less commonly through transfusions of infected blood or blood clotting factors. Babies born to HIV-infected women may become infected during birth or through breast-feeding after birth.

There is a lot of false or misleading information, often fueled by homophobia, that continues to be shared widely. Do seek out reliable sources when educating yourself about HIV/AIDS.

If your loved one is presently HIV-positive or has AIDS, they now need support more than ever. There are several local organizations that can help you with medical, psychological and physical care. Action for AIDs is a good resource for further information.

A Mother's love for her 2 gay sons

"I have two sons. They’re 24 and 21 years old. Yes, you can print their names: Shin Ming and Shin En.

When did I find out?

It was when Shin Ming was 15. He walked into my room one night. One of his good friends from ACS had come over for the evening, my husband was out of town, and I was lying in bed, taking a rest. And Ming walked in and said to me, “Mama, I’m gay.”

And so –

I was just so –

I guess before that I had my suspicions. I sort of knew, and yet at the same time it’s not something you ask. You don’t go to your son and say, “So, are you gay?” after all.

And yet when he actually announced it to me, I was still so stunned. My first thought was, “He’s going to have a really tough life.” It wasn’t me I was worried about, I was worried for him. He was still my son.

My second thought was, “How is his father going to take this?” Because my husband had had a gay friend in his university days at MIT, and I had heard him pass some remarks before like, “Such a pity, he was such a brilliant guy, unfortunately he was gay and he threw his life away working on gay causes, and then he died of AIDS.” So those were the two overriding concerns for me.

But of course at the same time there was a part of me that was trying to deny reality, thinking, “Hmm, well maybe this is just one of the weird projects he’s doing for his GEP.” Ming had always been a precocious kid: he had learned to read and speak very early, he would put on acts and plays using the sofas as a stage, even organising his cousins to act. Maybe he and his classmate had cooked this up to decipher the reactions of parents when they go and declare something like this.

But another part of me realised, “No, it can’t be, this is too serious.” Then I thought about how he’d had the courage to come and basically out himself to me. What should my reaction be to him, anyway?

So after that, I went to his room and I started talking to him. Basically, I gave him the usual mother’s reaction. “Are you sure? You know, you really don’t need to make any decisions right now. You’re still young. You should just continue to make friends with everyone. And maybe we shouldn’t tell your father yet.”

Anyway, that was my reaction to Ming. It made for some difficult situations, and looking back maybe I shouldn’t have said the last part, maybe I should have just said to him just be open with his father, although that was a very big worry for me. But Ming listened to me, and he didn’t talk to his father about it until two years later, while we were having dinner. By then, I think he felt confident enough to explain.

In the meantime, of course, it was very difficult for me to handle this by myself. All along I had this gut feeling that said, “Yes, he’s still my son and I love him.” I had been trying to see if I could find information on being a parent to gay children. At that time, the Internet was not so easy for you to navigate, so I tried to find some books in the NUS library on how to handle this. Eventually I bought one in Northampton, Massachusetts, one of the most accepting places in the world for GLBT people. It was called “Always My Child” by Kevin Jennings and Pat Shapiro, and it touched me a lot. But I was still very worried about what Ming’s future was going to be like, knowing the extent of homophobia in Singapore, as well as in Malaysia, where he’s still a citizen.

I was still a closeted parent back then, and talking about him was very tricky with other people. After a couple of years, friends would keep asking me, “So does he have a girlfriend yet?” I didn’t know what to say, so I had to reply, “Ohhh, not that I know of.” That was believable, luckily, since we’d sent him to Winchester, England to do his A-levels.

En’s case was very different. He’s a very charming young man, and in contrast to Shin Ming, who had hardly any female friends, he had a whole long list of them. When he was five or six, we would visit family friends with daughters around his age, and on two separate occasions, the sisters would literally fight each other for the privilege of sitting next to him. So even from a very young age, girls tended to be very attracted to him.

In ACS he was also very much involved in drama, so you would have all these girls who would come for drama productions who’d be interested in him. They would call him up and talk to him on the phone, even late at night. So he would tell me about these girls calling him, and how one of them, also a very attractive young girl, had wanted him to be her “special boyfriend”. So he would discuss with me at the dinner-table whether he should be her boyfriend, and at that time I just gave him similar advice – that there’s no necessity to be a special friend until later on, and that right now he should just be friends with everybody. Later on he admitted he had been trying to throw me off.

It might have been when he was 15, while we were traveling in Vancouver, that I noticed how Ming was buying these books for young people about being gay, and passing them on to En. So when we came home, I saw En reading these books. I assumed that since his brother was gay, he was just reading up on the issue, so I didn’t think too hard about it. But one day, his father caught him reading these books, and confronted him, saying, something like “Is your brother trying to convert you?”

I know there’s no way you can convert someone, but that was what my husband said to him.

So that evening I went and talked to him. I said, “En, is there something you want to tell me?” And then he told me that he was also gay, and that it was hard, because as he said, “I know gor-gor’s gay, and it must be difficult for parents to have both sons gay.” I can understand now how difficult it must have been for him too. And so then after that I gave him the same spiel all over again – the one about continuing to be friends with everyone – and then I told him how I felt: that is, that I wasn’t worried about myself, but for them.

My husband didn’t react well. When he first found out about Ming, what he said was that he had sort of guessed already. But now when he found out about En, his reaction to me was like, “We seem to have hit the jackpot - what are the chances of both sons being gay? One in a few million?” He obviously had to voice what he felt, but I’m sure he was horribly, horribly disappointed. To his credit he has been supportive: he’s continued to love and support both of our sons, and I don’t think he treats them any differently, or loves them any less. Of course, being his wife, I have heard him say a thousand little things to me that I have to interpret as coming short of full acceptance.

The most telling moment was when we separated, about two and a half years ago. While we were going through the process of breaking up, the first thing he said to me was, “Good. Now that I have the chance to marry another woman, maybe my future children will not be gay.”

Of all the nasty and hurtful things my husband said and did to me during that troubled time, I would deem that one of the worst. It still rankles with me today. My reaction, once I began to think about it more rationally, was, “How can you say that about our children? What’s wrong with our children? Why would you even think that?” And later, “First of all, what’s wrong with being gay? Secondly, is he trying to imply that it was my fault that the two boys are gay? So if he marries his girlfriend and has some other children, he can be sure they will not be gay?” I have to understand that it’s all very difficult for men, especially misogynistic men who believe in the importance of a family line in “traditional Chinese” culture. My response to that kind of statement now would be “You should be so lucky if your future children, whether gay or not, are half as wonderful and loving human beings as the two sons we have.”

The important thing, however, is that he does support the children. When we visited their uncles and aunts in Australia, he and I both explained to the relatives the fact that our sons are gay. And when Ming went to Stanford and became involved with the GLBT groups, he agreed to appear in one of their publicity flyers as a parent who had accepted his gay child. I also visited Ming in university, and went along with him to the talks that he had organised to raise awareness amongst the other students about gay rights and culture. I think it really made a difference to Ming that I was willing to be there. I think it also made an impression on other students, showing them that a parent can be so fully accepting and loving of her gay child.

Back home, En was also keeping busy. In Sec 3, he left ACS for United World College, which was a really good move for him, because I think he had been very unhappy due to the very strong sense of homophobia amongst the students. When he went to UWC, he found a lot more acceptance there, and he really just blossomed. He decided to set up a support group for gay people, the equivalent of what in America they call a GSA, a Gay Straight Alliance. He first talked about it with his tutors and they were all very encouraging, and when he proposed it to the principal the only issue was that she felt the name sounded too provocative in Singapore, so they called it the Gay Straight Forum instead. So he was able to organise talks, raising consciousness about what it was like being gay, and he actually found members for his group among the school body, gay people and straight people too. So that was a big step for him in his development, and a very positive experience for him.

I’m volunteering right now with Action For AIDS, and I’ve always been a life member of AWARE. This year I’m involved in their campaign on HIV and women, which is a big issue, because it’s very easy for a woman to get infected and in fact two thirds of the women who tested positive in Singapore appear to have got it from their husbands. HIV is always a major concern as well for parents of gay sons, anyway, even though the heterosexual transmission rate is still higher in Singapore. I did talk to my sons, and they both assured me that they knew about protecting themselves, which is a relief of course, because there are so many people in Singapore who should know better but who still take risks anyway. En even manned the Action For AIDS information booth alone when he was a first-time volunteer, when the executive director had to take urgent leave because of his mother’s death. The director only told me about this two years ago at the AIDS candlelight memorial, and he said that En had done the job like a professional. I couldn’t stop myself from crying, I felt so proud.

Volunteering has definitely widened my circle of friends and acquaintances in Singapore. I think my social world was quite limited before I got involved, since I’m from Penang, and so aside from my contacts at work there were really just my husband’s family and married couple friends. Two years ago, I met Alex Au from www.yawningbread.com, at the book launch of “People Like Us: Sexual Minorities in Singapore”. I started talking to him, and I said how I thought we should have some kind of support system for parents and friends of gay people who come out. And then he started telling me stories about how some people, young people that he knew, had told their parents and literally gotten kicked out of the house and then had nowhere to live. So then we started talking about how we could maybe get friends and parents together as a group, to see what we could do in terms of supporting gay people and the people close to them. He gave me the contact of another mother of a gay child, but she was too busy at the time, and I was going through very emotional times with my breakup, so we couldn’t pursue it that much. But now I’m starting to talk with Reverend Yap Kim Hao, so maybe we can try and start something like the support group I would have wanted back when my sons first came out to me.

Right now, both my sons are abroad. We e-mail, I call once a week, and they both blog so I just check their blogsites – this is the modern version of how parents keep in touch with their kids’ lives. It’s so much better than when I was at Smith College in the US in the 70’s, and a letter would take a week to ten days to go back and forth. Shin Ming’s finished his Bachelors in Philosophy from Stanford, but now he’s decided to go to Hastings Law School in the University of California, something practical. He’s been working for a nonprofit over the summer, doing legal work in the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco. En has finished his IB and has gone to Dartmouth; currently I think his major is going to be Gender Studies, since it’s what he’s interested in. I’ve talked to his boyfriends a couple of times, over the phone and via the Net, through yahoo messenger.

I’m not sure where the two of them will end up – it’s not just a case of their wants and desires but whether they can get a job, and the fact that they hold Malaysian passports. But as I’ve told them already, what I really wish for their future is that they become productive members of society, and that they’ll contribute in whatever way they can using their skills, to the best of their ability.

I still wonder about the future. There seems to be too much reactionary religious influence that’s accepted by the policy-makers when they come up with policies. I believe that if gay couples have a commitment to each other, why shouldn’t we celebrate their love? Why not let them set up a family? Ming loves children, and he’s very good with his younger cousins, it would be a shame if he didn’t have kids – but the laws here wouldn’t let him adopt a child. People say, “Oh, we’re a very conservative society, and therefore we cannot do this or that openly.” But have we gone out and actually done a proper survey? Have we walked down the streets and actually asked people, “Would you react differently if you found out that someone’s gay?” I don’t think that people would worry too much. Gay people are people, just like gay children are still your children.

I want every parent to know that it really does get easier. The more you read and think and talk about it, the more readily you can accept it. It helps so much to be open about it, to speak honestly, just as they were honest and trusting enough to tell you about themselves in the first place.

Why be afraid of them? They really are still the same children that you loved the day before they outed themselves. And we will always love our children. That day, the day after, and every day after that."

Does the Gay Community really exist? Does the local community lack an effective gay symbol?

The Gay Community. One hears this phrase thrown about a lot – it’s often used to refer to us as the collective group, with a whole secret political agenda to take over the world and threaten the institution of marriage and family.

But flippant ironies aside, what does it really mean? Let’s start with the dictionary definition – that’s always a good place to start.

Community (plural communities )
1. Group of people sharing a common understanding who reveal themselves by using the same language, manners, tradition and law.
2. The condition of having certain attitudes and interests in common.

So then comes the question - is there a gay community?

Going by the first definition, the answer would likely be yes. The gay community does share a common understanding – that we are interested in men, of course.

Do we reveal ourselves using the same language, manners, tradition and law? Most definitely. The laws of fashion and aesthetics govern us all. Be it wearing tailored bermudas, sashaying down Tanjong Pagar, or spending small fortunes on personal grooming, any gay man worth his salt is definitely able to identify another.

However, while we do live in a common fashion, the second definition does not seem to hold. As a whole, the condition of having certain attitudes and interests in common does not seem to be true.

The gay community seems to be fractured into many sub communities, each pursuing their own individual aims and interests. From the profit motive of saunas and clubs, to the personal sexual escapade that one pursues through various channels, there seems to be little concern for a motive outside of one's personal realm.

Very rarely do we see the entire community moving together towards one purposeful aim, in one coordinated direction. Be it setting up a business, climbing the corporate ladder in our careers, or pursuing our next relationship, these seem to be our main, private concerns.

Greater social issues, such as HIV and AIDS, minority discrimination within our own community, and even gay rights itself, often take a backseat. While there have been commendable efforts in each of these areas, to say that the entire community made a concerted, unified stand is far from the truth.

The question is, why?

It's easy to throw the usual rhetoric of how human beings are selfish, and that gay men are especially selfish things, concerned only with themselves. But if this were so, any greater cause would be doomed to fail under the pressure of petty human selfishness.

Such a generalization does not hold up, when one takes a broader perspective. Gay rights movements show a communal sense of purpose not present in the Singaporean context. The problem does not lie with our sexuality, or our innate human selfishness.

Perhaps this might be due to the lack of a truly unifying symbol or theme.

Symbols are powerful things. The West has pride parades, Stonewall, days of silence for GLBT victims and Ian McKellen. These act as rallying points, symbols that foster a sense of community that supports each other in times of need.

However, these symbols have not proven themselves to be as effective in an Asian context..

The Rainbow Flag, for example, is a wholesale import from Western movements, and many that I've spoken to find that they do not relate to this symbol.

It's hardly surprising. After all, the rainbow flag also hails from the very same culture that stereotypes Asian gay men as being weak, timid, unassertive, and effeminate. The rallying points that the Western culture use are not necessarily translatable into an Asian context.

Undeed, how many of us know the history behind the Rainbow Flag, and what each colour of the Rainbow Flag stands for?

(For those of you who would like to know, the Flag was first flown in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25th 1978. The eight colours, Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Blue, and Violet represented Sexuality, Life, Healing, Sunlight, Nature, Magic, Serenity and Spirit respectively.)

So what symbol does Singapore have? 377A?

Much has been talked about the debate against 377A being a milestone in the advancement of gay rights. Serving as a rallying point for gay rights, Singapore was propelled on to the world map of gay rights advancements.

Everyone knows about it. But how many people do staunchly support its repeal? I've come across a large number of people who are simply content with the government's placatory statement of not actively prosecuting.

Which is rather dismal, considering that there are also a fair amount of straight men and women who support the repeal.

A symbol needs to be created by the people, for the people, to have a rallying effect. The intricate web of traditions and representations needs to be understood by the people, in order for the symbol to be effective.

And maybe, with such a symbol flying high, we too can have the sense of pride and communal acceptance when we say that we are, indeed, part of the gay community of Singapore

BITCH!

Bitch.

Such a strong word. Even the way you say it, almost spitting it out like a wad of curdled yoghurt, and its sound, is vehemently unforgiving. The word itself has a host of meanings, most of them unpleasant, including: a female dog; a malicious, unpleasant or selfish person; or a complaint. Used as a verb, it means to complain or to gripe.

Gay people, be they campy and loose-wristed or macho and straight acting, love to bitch. Even the most discreet of us can sometimes unwittingly launch into a bitch session with all the enthusiasm of a true-blue Bitcherina.

Some of us even take the title as a compliment – I have a friend who likes to call himself 'Queen Bitch of the Universe'. When we meet after a hard day of work for a drink, he would stalk up, briefcase in hand, plonk into an empty seat, light a cigarette and repeat his usual line, “I'm in a bitchy mood today.” This often amuses me, because the bitchier he gets, the more he walks like Naomi Campbell, although he probably doesn't realise it and we never tell him.

It seems that this is almost a natural ability with gay boys, and we make sure everyone knows it. It is sometimes whispered in certain awe (I exaggerate a little) that no man, woman or creature can out-bitch a gay guy on the warpath.

Why are gay people so bitchy? Is it simply yet another undeserved stereotype, or is there a reason to explain why we turn into Lady Deathstrikes whenever we want to? I am no Sigmund Freud, but I figure it could simply be a defense mechanism – or a cry for attention.

Those of us who were teased mercilessly when we were young for being faggots or sissies simply had to find a way to deal with all the ridicule. If they called you 'sissy', you retorted with 'slut'. If they sneered and called you a lady-boy, you gave them the finger and insulted their vocabulary.

One day, they told you that you were a bitch, and you said, “Whatever, it's better than being an ugly orang-utan.” and you had the last word. You discovered you could deal with being a bitch, even liked it because you usually had the last word, and so from that day on, you decided that being bitchy was a good way of dealing with unpleasant people.

So what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, a.k.a. when Bitcherina clashes with Bitchzilla?

In physics, they would say such a paradox would result in an outpouring of energy that would eventually destroy the universe. However, in the gay world, we know better. What is generated is mainly a lot of unpleasant squabbling over increasingly ridiculous and trivial issues.

This is often apparent on the Trevvy forums. When two parties have differing points of view that they feel very strongly about, they sometimes tend to get into hissy fits that can continue past the point of no return.

While I am all for a spot of bitching now and then – it does wonders for one's self-esteem and is quite a lot of fun once in a while – I also know that it can affect others around us.

For that reason, I tend to temper myself and proceed with caution. Bitching is an activity reserved for days out with the sisters, impolite hawker centre aunties and homophobic bigots. It is not, no matter how it seems, about proving who can have the last word and thus reign as Queen of Hell.

Next time, when you start to bitch consider the people around you (like just before sex, you think 'condoms!'), and try not to let any of it spill over.

Thinking out loud - the invisible gay olympic medalist.

If you are wondering about the recent furore surrounding Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham, here is the summary:

Matthew Mitcham was an up-and-coming Olympic hopeful when he dropped out of the sport two years before the Beijing Games due to anxiety and depression. One year before the actual Olympics, the young diver resumed training after much persuasion from his coach. He made the national team, which was not expected to fare well against China's famous powerhouse diving team.

True to expectations, the athlete performed poorly in his first event, not even making it to the semifinals. On his final attempt in his final event, however, he raised shockwaves that rippled across the sports community in an upset win that not only denied China the gold medal, but prevented China from taking a gold medal sweep in all eight of that sports category.

Matthew Mitcham, young, talented and goodlooking, is also the only out gay male athlete at the event, having come out as gay less than six months earlier.

His victory is easily the highest profile win ever by a gay man in an Olympic event, having posted the highest score ever given to a single dive during Olympic competitions.

Both his mother and his partner were in the stands to witness his triumph, their trip having been financed by a grant from Johnson & Johnson, a trip they would never have been able to afford otherwise.

After receiving his gold medal, he climbs into the stands to kiss his partner. One would have expected such a compelling story of victory and human interest to be told. Not according to broadcast giant, NBC.

Matthew's award ceremony and story did not make the NBC telecast, but was shown on their website.

When asked about why NBC had not mentioned that Mitcham was gay or that his partner was in the stands, NBC spokesperson, Greg Hughes said, “In virtually every case, we don't discuss an athlete's sexual orientation.”

It was, however, pointed out that in fact the network does exactly that by telling viewers about Olympic athletes’ various spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and even in one case a heterosexual “love triangle” Hughes responded, “Not in every case. Not every athlete has a personal discussion. I could show you 500 athletes we didn’t show. We don’t show everyone. We don’t show every ceremony.”

But surely, taking into account Mticham’s stunning come-from-behind victory, the historical significance of his achievement as a gay man, and his own personal history, it seems unlikely the vast majority of those other athletes truly have as compelling a story as Mitcham. The human interest element in this story is indeniable, nor is Mitcham's performance in the event. Said Hughes, “How do you know that? How do you know that someone on the rowing team doesn’t have as compelling a story?”

Pressed that it was hard to believe that there truly any other athletes with stories as compelling as Matthew’s, especially ones who single-handedly prevented the Chinese from sweeping all of the gold medals in an entire sport, Hughes would only say, “It’s not possible to cover the entire personal story of every athlete regarding their performance. … It’s just not possible to single out coverage."

In Singapore such aversion towards covering or telecasting any gay-related material is nothing new. Season 4 of Desperate Housewives, for example, was not shown on local TV despite high ratings of past seasons of the hugely popular television series. It is interesting to note that Season 4 of Desperate Housewives features a gay couple moving in to Wisteria Lane.

The authorities have already made their point very clear - local media must not promote an 'alternative' lifestyle. Previously, Singapore's Channel 5 was fined a hefty $15,000 for airing an episode of a home decor series which contained scenes of a gay couple with their baby. The show also featured "the presenter's congratulations and acknowledgement of them as a family unit in a way which normalises their gay lifestyle and unconventional family setup."

While we understand that local media companies have regulations and guidelines imposed by the authorities, we are still hopeful that one day Singapore can look past such peripherals and that eventually the media can judge relevant news and entertainment for what they are - news and entertainment - and not let it be coloured by regulatory concerns. We can only wait to find out.

Gay Sex and the City #3

The most common and most used word. Instead of the usual word 'bf' (boyfriend), the community prefers to use LTR (stands for Long Term Relationship) which I felt was representable of us.

But somehow, I think that the word has been over-used and the meaning is gone.

According to most of the dictionary and acronyms website, LTR is straightforward and self-explanatory in its meaning.

In chatrooms and normal chats among friends, people would tend to use LTR as it is direct, straight to the point and may not be understood by the general public.

So what is LTR?
- LTR is an extended word of bf, which means you are supposed to live for long together.
- LTR is not just an ordinary bf.
- LTR is what hetero people call 'vow that we stay together forever'.

There should be a clear distinction between what is LTR and a bf. It seems that people nowadays are blind enough to point out that difference. Some use the word for 'the sake of using it' and end up being hurt or cause hurt to other party.

Okay, I know I am beating around the bush, but I have to emphasise the importance of using the right word in the right context. If you are not ready to commit, settle down, share your feelings, and etc, please please do not use the word LTR. Or really, don't even think of having a bf for yourself. Find a fun buddy or stick to singlehood.