| After the flood |
[May. 7th, 2009|01:07 am] |
Thoughts post-AWARE EGM:
1. People are still seeking to trivialise the concerns of those who were unhappy with the Josie Lau (henceforth abbreviated JL[1]) group's takeover of Aware. During the EGM, about two or three men supporting the JL group wasted their time at the microphone spouting essentialist crap about how women are by nature nurturing, motherly and 'nice', so why couldn't we all stop shouting and arguing and be more lady-like? Many comments on the WWW characterised the incident as a 'catfight', which Braema Mathi pointed out on Channel NewsAsia Talking Point is a patriarchal term that dismisses and trivialises disagreement between two groups of women.[2]
I assume many of such commenters didn't understand or care about the issues being debated, nor were actually at the EGM (and, as Siew Kum Hong wrote, did not apprehend the context in which the exchanges took place), so perhaps their flippant comments were indifference masquerading as something to say (the Singapore blogosphere does that a lot! I hate the word blogosphere!). In which case, plain indifference would be less offensive than flippant comments.
I can't work out whether the impulse to trivialise is because these commenters support the JL group, hence would use it as a rhetorical device to attack the original members' supporters; or whether it springs from underlying attitudes towards how women should behave (cf. essentialist crap). I can't work out which is more insidious: the former implies they were actively canvassing to turn opinion against the original members' supporters, a new and worrying development; the latter, while a more entrenched attitude, is just par for the course and nothing we haven't already been dealing with.
2. Another sentiment was: 'There are more important things to worry about, like the economy.' My mother's reaction in the early stages of the post-AGM events was, 'I don't see the big fuss – why is it taking up so much space in my newspaper?' I read this as a desire to be perceived as pragmatic, no-nonsense and not idealistic, a very typical attitude of a certain generation of Singaporeans. I can understand weighing the costs and benefits of devoting time and effort to any particular cause or activity, but in situations where the actual costs of being 'idealistic' (i.e., acting on an ideal or for a social objective, rather than material gain or personal pleasure) are minimal, why continue with the pragmatic posturing? Anyway, obscure ministers on other continents make motherhood statements and are reported in our local newspapers, so why not real, fast-moving local news? It's a good story, which is not a lesser part of good journalism than facts and figures.
3. It was really interesting to witness a media event while it was occurring (continuous tense operative). There are so many things the media never report: tone of voice, body language, timing and tense pauses in speech. None of the mainstream media reported how the JL group spoke in very condescending tones of voice, especially Thio Su Mien during her bizarre 'I am charmed to be on page 73 of your book' speech, when she also patronisingly said, 'You need to respect your elders' – this directed to an audience in which sat Constance Singam, Braema Mathi and Margaret Thomas, who are from the same generation, and who nominally come from the same academic milieu as her. There were also a lot of factual inaccuracies and confusion in early reports that came out of blogs and Twitter, and many of them will propagate on the WWW and never be corrected.
4. There was a great deal of confusion over the electoral process, especially after Braema Mathi's declaration that the JL exco were deemed to have resigned 'by their conduct' (i.e., leaving the hall to deliberate whether or not to resign after losing the no-confidence vote, and not returning after the stipulated time). It wasn't clear whether the motion to remove the JL exco in absentia and elect a new exco was constitutionally valid. The election of the new exco (basically re-instating the old guard stalwarts) was very rushed, with only one nomination per post, which meant that each nominee automatically received her post without contest or being voted for. This was really the only way it could have been done, given the time constraint and the original members' feeling that they had to seize the imperative and present a new exco as a fait accompli should the JL group return and refuse to resign. But with the increased scrutiny that will follow, I think the new (non-JL) exco needs to ensure high standards of accountability and transparency. Dana Lam, the new president, mentioned on Channel NewsAsia post-EGM that suggestions that AWARE had lapsed in record-keeping were unfounded in her opinion, and while there were resource constraints in a volunteer-run organisation, eventually 'everything gets done.'
We new members have to put our money where our mouths are and step up to the plate to help, not just with alleviating manpower shortage, but also by continuing to engage with both the 'real' issues of aid and advocacy as well as the organisational issues, such as threshing out and voting on the constitutional amendments at the next AGM. Democracy doesn't always send your pulse racing; often it's working through what seem like dry, legalistic points. Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage also raised a fresh point in Wednesday's Straits Times that AWARE did not have a clear leadership succession plan, a problem common to many civil society groups in Singapore, with a result that civil society 'is always nascent in Singapore as it keeps being reborn due to it being short-lived.' And, as a Livejournal friend has posted, fearing that your children will be 'influenced' and turn gay is a completely imaginary problem; there are so many real problems to tackle.
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[1] Despite the evidence of a steeplejack orchestrated by Thio Su Mien, the group still refuses to acknowledge that their takeover of Aware was a premeditated effort, nor that their church affiliation had anything to do with it. Hence we are left having to continue unwieldily calling this group 'the ousted exco' (while earlier news reports pre-EGM would have called them 'the new exco', which is confusing because now the 'old guard' is the 'new exco'...), or 'the Josie Lau group', not because of any personal vendetta, but because she was the PR face of it and because calling it the 'Church of Our Saviour group' implies a formal connection with the church that is still denied.
[2]Apart from the dismissive or disapproving tenor of comments on the boisterous supporters of the original members, I feel the substance of the argument really lies in the power dynamic at work during the EGM. The JL group were elevated upon the stage, they had their microphones on, they had the security guards ranged behind them – and they'd had the prerogative to speak to the media as the exco of AWARE for four weeks between the AGM and the EGM. They were well placed to put forward their case, and had the material advantage in making themselves heard over the original members, but even with the trappings of power, they were shown to be incapable and inarticulate.
There were many times when the booing and jeering from the original members' supporters made me cringe, partly because I tend to value caution and detachment in public expression, partly because it was slowing down the process. In the context, I understood that it's impossible for such a big crowd to gather and debate such polarising issues without emotions running high. It reminds me of an incident during the run-up to the Repeal Section 377A campaign, when local playwright Alfian Sa'at wrote an email to Thio Li-Ann containing the words: 'I think you are absolutely fucked up.' I still think that this was uncalled-for and more harmful to the s377A debate than whatever offsetting cathartic value it had. An email is a one-to-one interaction where the power dynamic within the exchange itself is equally balanced – you don't have to shout to make yourself heard, you can't be talked over by the other party simultaneously. You have time to review it, master your emotions and delete expletives. I don't think there is a limit to civility in written communication. |
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