Tag: change maker

by Alex Tan, Change Maker

During our brief two-week stint at AWARE, my friends and I were tasked to produce a short video on the societal construct of masculinity and the pressures it exerts on youths. We went around to different places to collect responses from male students of various secondary schools. One of our questions was “Have you ever called any of your friends ‘gay’?” Overwhelmingly, all the people surveyed said yes. We then asked what actions provoked or warranted the use of the word ‘gay’. I divided the public’s answers into three large categories.                                                 

Firstly, there were students who used the word ‘gay’ on friends whose behaviour and mannerisms were considered effeminate and unmanly. There were also students who would use the word to mean ‘homosexual’ upon seeing displays of affection or intimacy between two male friends. Then there were those who did not seem to have reflected on the true significance of the word at all, or the potential implications it might have on the people around them; they used it casually, unthinkingly.

This range of reactions simultaneously worried and angered me, stirring reflection about the deeper causes behind our careless use of the word. I realized that it had become so commonplace in my life that I had never spared it a moment’s thought. Even though I never felt the inclination myself to label other people as ‘gay’, I rarely called my friends out on it. My silence, therefore, made me equally culpable and complicit in the oppression.

The way the word ‘gay’ is hurled tactlessly as an insult at others is indicative of continuing homophobic attitudes. Nowadays, it almost seems to be interchangeable with ‘bad’ when people criticize things as being “so gay”. Its negative connotations imply that homosexuality is incorrect, somehow less valid than the norm of heterosexuality.

Also, when people use the word ‘gay’ against actions that are deemed unbecoming of a man or uncharacteristic of how a man should behave, it reveals a flawed assumption that being gay is equivalent to being un-masculine. Such a conflation of sexual orientation with gender identity is a sweeping generalisation, uninformed by logic or science.

It is even more problematic because it suggests that society’s conception of what a man “should” be is fixed and immutable, and that deviating from that standard is wrong. We end up policing our own gender identities, and stifling our diversity. It is sad that society’s gendered expectations have become so normalized that we never take a step back to see the bigger picture or think of how we have been consumed by the system.

Recently I saw a scribbling that read: “Argue less about the language of oppression / argue more about the material basis of oppression / or just do something about it.” Peppering our speech with such words may seem inconsequential in comparison to the material struggles against oppression, but our world views are arguably influenced by linguistics.

In my opinion, being more aware of how our remarks could victimize others – whether intentionally or not – increases the likelihood of a shift in our thoughts and actions, which could pave the way for greater social change. Altering how we speak and, by logical extension, how we think does constitute “doing something” about oppression. A project founded on a similar basis is the “Spread the Word to End the Word” movement, which aims to end people’s use of the word “retarded”.

 I write about homophobia and gay rights because it is closely linked to gender equality, which adopts inclusiveness and intersectionality. These are issues marginalised groups struggle with in the face of discrimination and oppression. As Leow Hui Min writes in her recent blog post, the support for the LGBTQIA+ movement “emerges from the recognition that it is not only cisgender and heterosexual women affected by anti-woman sexism, from the understanding that many oppressions overlap, and from the principle of solidarity that should be at work in all progressive movements.”

More relevantly, I feel that it is a crisis of masculinity and the struggle to conform to what it means to “be a man” that leads to the power imbalance and gender inequality in our society. Partly it is through establishing dominance over women – traditionally regarded as the “weaker sex” – that enables men to gain an inflated sense of identity. Violence against women, sexism and misogyny can therefore all be said to be encouraged and perpetuated by the crisis of masculinity in our society.

We often feel inadequate and paralyzed after reading about sexism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of oppression. We imagine that our efforts will be limited and therefore ineffective. But our actions need not be measured by how wide an impact they produce, as long as we are sincere in our intentions and tactful in our execution. To quote the closing line of David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’, one of my favourite books: “What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

About the Author: Alex likes many things, like Virginia Woolf, Welcome to Night Vale, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Arcade Fire, blogs that criticize what’s problematic in pop culture, articles about the tensions of postcoloniality, any form of media that subverts narrative tropes and long words (e.g. omphaloskepsis) that he probably will only ever use once in a pretentious poem that he has yet to write. Oh, and he is also a feminist.