| Yawning
Bread. 29 April 2009 Identity mobilisation - a threat to society
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He asked me if I had any article that could rebut the points. I told him in reply that it would not be worth the trouble. People who adopt a strongly anti-gay opinion are generally not interested in facts. You can feed them with as much information and logic as you have the time for, but they are just not receptive to it. It is important to bear this in mind in order to grasp the big picture as the AWARE controversy comes to a head this weekend.
It will also be interesting to dissect the tactics of the Thio-guard -- the anti-gay side led by Thio Su Mien -– to more clearly see the threat they and their ilk pose to social stability. It is wrong to assume that controversies such as this will be resolved through facts and reason. They will not. The anti-gay side is using a playbook that harks back to a more atavistic time. Before I recount the key stages in the battle, it is important to be clear what their motive was: to strip AWARE's work of anything that is even remotely gay-tolerant or gay-affirmative. By now, it should be obvious that this impulse springs from the religious aims of Thio Su Mien and her sidekicks to eradicate homosexuality from Singapore society. They began with stealth. They launched a dawn raid to capture the organisation without saying a thing about what they stood for and why they sought office. For the first two weeks, they avoided the media and any questions about what they're about. When calls for them to declare their intentions became too loud to ignore, they tried Plan B: give evasive answers. Interviewed on Channel NewsAsia, Josie Lau, the new president, denied there had been any conspiracy, claiming they were individually, coincidentally interested in getting involved only because the old AWARE had "lost its focus" without much elaboration what they meant by that. Asked what AWARE would now do should a lesbian facing discrimination approached them for help, she answered,
Public reaction to that television interview was almost uniformly negative. People could see that they were not being forthright, so within less than a week, Plan B was abandoned in favour of Plan C: attack.
Big Bertha [1] was rolled out in the form of Thio Su Mien at a press conference held by the new guard on 23 April 2009. She unashamedly revealed that it had been a conspiracy after all, orchestrated by her. She also demonstrated that indeed, the aim had all along been to purge AWARE of any gay-tolerant content and use AWARE as a vehicle to push her fundamentalist Christian views on homosexuality onto Singapore society.
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The Straits Times reported of the press conference:
New exco leaders at the same press conference echoed her allegations:
The problem with mounting an attack is
that one would need enough force to achieve success. Even booming Big
Bertha cannot do it alone without infantry. So the same sentences served
two purposes: to cast aspersions on their opponent, and to rally the
faithful. From
the above alone, you can spot them pressing these emotional buttons
wherever marked by this little symbol
It does not matter if these allegations are patently untrue, as the old guard pointed out in their press conference the following evening. Truth is not material. Effect is. These wild claims are proven bogeymen that can serve to alarm those who might otherwise only be moderately sympathetic to their anti-gay agenda. The hope is that others would be horrified enough to cast in their lot with Thio and company. On Tuesday, 28 April 2009, a letter by Josie Lau was published in the Straits Times [2]. It was written in response to Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan's comment that religion should be kept out of petty politics, and that a rainbow coalition is vital for any group here to make meaningful change [3].
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Whitewashing the issue by saying that "Aware is a secular organisation and we welcome women of all races and religions to be members," Lau added,
Psychology professor George Bishop pointed out, in a comment posted on the LGBT email list SiGNeL, that even though the letter comes across as very reasonable, civil and inclusive, it nevertheless employs the same scare tactics.
Besides stoking fear to rally like-minded people to one's frontlines, there is also the use of religious affiliation to build solidarity for the political cause. At multiple sermons on Saturday and Sunday, 25 – 26 April 2009, the Church of Our Saviour lent support to the Thio cause and called upon the faithful to support them. (I have also heard that some other churches did likewise, but have not yet received corroborating reports).
The tactic was one of getting his flock to participate in a public, demonstrative act of pledging. Done in an environment of community, which a place of worship is, it makes it hard for other members of the congregation to stand back and disassociate themselves from the program. There is the subliminal fear of estrangement from deity and social community should they demur. Social pressure therefore is applied on the whole congregation to stand as one behind the church-endorsed cause. * * * * * This is the politics of identity mobilisation. There is no need for facts or reason. Appeals to fear and group belonging are what count. The more exaggerated the threat, the more effective. The more authoritative the calls to group solidarity (e.g. by religious leaders) the better.
A danger to society is posed when identity mobilisation becomes the primary means to settle disputes. In that case, it's really no more than street brawls. Once begun by one side, there is a tendency to become mutually escalating if the other side finds that reason doesn't work and so must resort too to the same tactics. Eventually, the stronger side wins, not the better arguments. How does one combat this? By reason? By laying out facts? Don't be naïve. If people are of a mind to think through issues, there won't be the spectre of identity mobilisation and mass street brawls in the first place. That this strategy works in cause after cause, tells us that most humans respond to the emotive more than the rational. If a society wants to be rid of the risk of being torn asunder by identity mobilisation, it has to do something about identity and mobilisation in the first place. Let me take mobilisation first. It reminds us of a perennial dilemma of free societies. How much freedom do we give to people who would use that freedom to deny others' freedom? How much say do we give to those who would disenfranchise others? At what point should the state step in and say: You cannot say this; you cannot mobilise thus; your ends are incompatible with social peace, freedom and equality?I think most people will accept that somewhere a line has to be drawn. This AWARE saga should set us thinking long and hard where that line ought to be.
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We should also do something about
identity, for identity
mobilisation is only effective when identity boundaries are clear. That is
why perhaps the best antidote to ethnic tension is simply to get people to
mix with others of a different ethnic group at school, at work and in the
same neighbourhoods. When fear is understood to be baseless and stereotypes
proven to be lies,
shrill calls to communal defence by extremists fall on deaf ears.
Ditto with the fear of homosexuality. As more and more straight people get to know gay people, as more and more it is considered just and correct to treat everybody fairly regardless of sexual orientation, the "threat" of homosexuality will be seen as so much fanatical imaginings. Hence, for the extremist rightwing, the message of tolerance itself is intolerable. Tolerance and neutrality renders impotent the strategy of identity mobilisation. And that's why you see Thio and gang on the offensive against AWARE's programs. Speaking of homosexual orientation in a neutral, non-judgemental way is considered the same as "promoting homosexuality". If you're not with us, you're against us.
What this means is that, if we don't want to see this kind of identity
mobilisation tear society apart over the question of homosexuality, the
solution is not to freeze, stand still and move no further forward on the
question of gay equality, but the opposite: To move faster. To blur the
distinction and value differential between gay and straight. So that scary
bogeymen conjured by fanatical minds are not believed but laughed away.
And fanatics seen for what they are: the real threat. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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This morning, I received an email from a friend who told me that
supporters of the new executive committee (exco) of AWARE are circulating
an article that justifies an anti-gay position.
