Spread your legs or be flogged

There are plenty of reports in our daily papers about people being caught or sentenced for various minor to moderately serious crimes. Mostly, we glance at the headline and move on to the next story.

This week however, the Straits Times had a headline over one story that was not only unique, but which sets off a whole train of thought.

As you can see from the Straits Times story, the question facing the court was whether Mongkon Pusuwan was male or female. Her passport indicated she was male, but physically she looked female, and so a medical doctor had to be called in to give an opinion. Finding that she had had a sex-change operation, he confirmed to the court that she was female. The court sentenced her accordingly.

In that sense, Singapore courts can be quite enlightened. 

Here in Singapore, a citizen or permanent resident who has had a sex change operation will have his identity card and passport changed to reflect his new gender. Using the new gender, the person can even enter into a legal opposite-sex marriage.

But in Thailand, despite the ubiquity of gatoeys and the booming business of sex reassignment surgery, the law has not followed suit. There is no way for a sex-changed person to change the notation on his ID card, and consequently, his passport.

The Singapore court could very well have just gone by Mongkon's passport notation (Male) and decided accordingly, but clearly it decided to use its discretion and decide for itself, based on medical advice what the gender should really be. It was prepared to ignore the notation on the passport.

* * * * *

Two months ago, Singaporeans and Malaysians were treated to full-page stories of the marriage of Jessie Chung and Joshua Beh in Kuching, Malaysia. The 12 November marriage was the first ever so publicly celebrated, involving a sex-changed person.

However, their marriage could not be legally registered. The Malaysian newspaper, the Star, quoted the Deputy Home Affairs Minister as saying the marriage was "invalid" under Malaysian law. 

"If they apply (for a marriage certificate), we definitely will ask for their identity cards. I guess they must have realised this and I think that is why they did not apply for it," he added.

I thought the smug tone of that reply was most deplorable.

The situation in Malaysia is similar to that in Thailand -- post-operatives are still not allowed to change the sex notation on their identity documents.

In the weeks following Jessie Chung's wedding, not a few people wondered why she chose to get married in Malaysia. Why didn't the couple come to Singapore, they asked.

I thought I had a ready answer: It makes no difference, I said. Legal marriage here is based on the sex as shown on one's identity documents, and so long as Chung carries Malaysian documents which continue to indicate that she is male, what is the marriage registrar here to do?

But maybe I was wrong. Maybe, like the district judge in Mongkon's case, our officials can use their discretion to ignore identity papers issued by another country and make up their own minds.

Or maybe elephants can fly! For this would be most un-Singaporean behaviour, especially when one is speaking of civil servants. Here, asking a civil servant to exercise sound judgment and intelligent discretion is like... well, asking elephants to fly. So don't bet on it.

* * * * *

A more serious question, coming out of the need to determine whether Mongkon Pusuwan was male or female, is this: why should our law have different penalties for men and women?

If the court had found that Mongkon was male, the sentence would include caning. Since it found that she was female, the sentence omitted this and could be said to be much more lenient. 

Is this equity? 

What if there were two transsexuals facing the court for exactly the same drug offence, with one person being pre-op and the other post-op? Would it mean that one would get jail and caning and the other only a jail term? Is this just?

(I know that lots can be said about the merits and morality of caning, but I'll not get into it here.)

Our laws seem to be based on the archaic notion that men are strong and women are the "weaker sex". That men are capable of agency -- being able to decide, initiate and act -- while women are less so, being merely gullible followers, thus deserving of a bit more mercy even in the same circumstances.

Is this an appropriate notion considering what we now know?

And it's not just laws. This habit of making unnecessary distinctions between males and females can be seen in so many other areas, for example, in our immigration department.

A Yawning Bread reader recently wrote in with this bit of information:

As a foreigner I had to go through a medical before getting my "green card". Chest x-ray.... TB test..... urine sample..... HIV test. But two of my female co-workers who do the same job have since told me that their medicals did not include an HIV test. 

It seems absurdly discriminatory, especially as there are more women in the world with HIV than men. I wonder if this is about ignorance about how this virus is spread, or just plain old fashion discrimination against gay men? 

If indeed we wish to keep HIV and AIDS at bay, we put all of Singapore at risk when our civil service goes about their work in such unthinking ways.

© Yawning Bread 

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