[Gay News] Singapore's Gay History (compiled)

[SGRainbow]

Check-In V2 brings you through the past, present and future of the GLBT landscape in Singapore and we begin with the first installation this year by travelling back to the past with Check-In XI.

Learn all about the GLBT history of Singapore, something that is not covered in your school textbooks. Find out how it was like to be a gay or bi youth just a couple of decades ago. Where were the clubs (or were there even any?) and places to hangout? How did people make friends and hook up when there were no smartphones, grindr or jack'd? 

Details of the programme

Date: 29 March 2014
Time: 12.30 p.m. to 5 p.m. (TBC)
Venue: To be disclosed to registered participants only

Register here now: http://bit.ly/1htgAUA 
(Limited spaces so sign up early!)

[Please note that this event is open to gay and bi men between 18 and 25 only.]

Edited March 2, 2014 by SGRainbow

[groyn88]

https://the-singapore-lgbt-encyclopaedia.wikia.com/wiki/Fort_Road_beach:_gay_aspects

Fort Road beach: gay aspects

Cruising ground

A new experience in open-air cruising afforded itself in the 1980s when a huge stretch of the East Coast was reclaimed by land filling. The minimum period for the earth to settle and compact before the virgin ground could be developed or have structures built upon it was 10 years. Therefore, during this time gays would venture there, despite having to brave a long trek through secondary forest, to be able to cruise at the beach in splendid seclusion.

This cruising ground became popularly known as Fort Road beach by the cognoscenti although there existed no official name for this stretch of beach. There were two main portions. The moiety on the left, facing the sea, became closed off to the public in the mid-1990s and thus could no longer be used for romping around. This area became overgrown with undergrowth in due course. Gay cruisers had to be content with the right half which was had a slightly different character because of different geographical features.

Fort Road beach became so popular with gay men using it for skinny dipping and sex, either in the more interior forested area, or for the more daring ones right on the open beach or in the sea, that it attracted several tabloid articles which emblazoned titles such as "Homosexuals pollute East Coast". The New Paper and the Chinese-language evening tabloids on several occasions carried blurred pictures of men apparently having sex or walking naked along the beach. Some gay men nicknamed the beach and the area directly inland, which was also very cruisy at night and appealed those who did not want to trudge all the way to the seaside, Paradise.

The right half of the beach eventually also became closed to the public in early 2010 as development of the area was ramped up full swing.

Unofficial nude beach

The remoteness and seclusion of Fort Road beach made it very conducive to naturism even though public nudity is illegal in Singapore (see main article: Nudism in Singapore). However, the official stance is that if one were to walk around naked in an isolated place or late at night where no one can observe the act, police action is not taken if no complaints are made. Fort Road beach gained a reputation as Singapore's unofficial nude beach for both homosexual and heterosexual naturists alike. Its fame spread internationally and many foreign nudists also visited the area.

Most people indulged in nudity in the inland secondary forested area or in the more barren sandy patches further in. They would lie down on ponchos or just walk around. The more daring ones would stroll along the beach or swim in the sea. Some would engage in sex in all these areas, although it must be emphasised that this activity is not regarded as naturism by purists. As this happened not infrequently, one could detect evidence of it after the fact by the presence of condoms strewn sporadically over the sand or grass.

Police entrapment

See also: Archive of "Three in S’pore found with Aids-linked virus", The Straits Times, 10 April 1985

See also: Archive of "Aids claims first victim here", The Straits Times, 8 April 1987

The increasing incidence of HIV in the gay community, mounting deaths from AIDS, complaints from the public and sensationalism in the tabloid press led to sting operations in which young, handsome plainclothes police decoys would act in an enticing manner at Fort Road beach to attract the homosexual men wandering around. When the cruisers touched the decoys sexually, they were immediately arrested.

In March 1992, the afternoon tabloid The New Paper headlined its front page with a single dominant scream: “AMBUSH ON GAY BEACH.” Inside, the articles described an isolated, overgrown piece of land along Singapore’s East Coast Parkway at the end of Fort Road. The beach there, the newspaper said, had become “a homosexual haunt.”

Not one, but two reporters had been assigned to tell the story of the hidden male geography. “Homosexuals,” the reporters wrote, “meet there daily to pick up partners and even have intercourse under the canopy of casuarina trees.” The reporters had discovered “makeshift beds - sheets of newspaper laid snugly on the grass beneath trees." They had also deciphered what they considered to be the homosexuals’ code for communicating: Men would sling backpacks over their shoulders and carry a bottle of mineral water in their right hands so they could be recognized as cruising for sex. The reporters had found “the area strewn with empty mineral water bottles” - apparently a sure sign not just of littering but also of rampant sex.

An accompanying photograph showed a man wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. His face had been darkened so that he could not be recognized. He was carrying the requisite backpack and water bottle.

A second headline read: “I was caressed, says cop.” In it, Detective Cpl Stephen Lim, 24, explained how he had gone to the beach to be a magnet. “His job: To hang around the area until he was approached by homosexuals.” The journalists described Lim as “clean-cut” and he was quoted as saying, “I suppose I look the part.” Just to make sure, he and three other police officers had worn shorts and had carried backpacks and bottles of mineral water. Lim admitted, “It does feel uncomfortable to be caressed by another man, but I see it as part of the job.”

He described how one man, a 39-year-old army officer, had approached him and the two had walked into the bushes, the young, attractive detective voluntarily placing himself in a situation in which he knew he might be touched. The older man had begun with a stroke and a slight kiss. Lim made no protest. The army officer slid his hand toward Lim's groin. At that point - but only at that point - “I identified myself as a police officer and placed him under arrest.” Lim also signaled another police officer, a twenty-two-year-old, who had been watching nearby. Six additional officers waited nearby to take suspects into custody as Lim and his partner continued to work the bushes.

The New Paper accompanied the articles with a photograph of four men who had been arrested - all in the requisite T-shirts and shorts. The men sat cross-legged on the ground, looking down, peering at their feet, towered over by six detectives. And, again, no voice. The second-day operation involved even more police than the first. Twelve officers plunged into the bushes, while three others provided backup. The New Paper also published small mug shots of the four who had been previously arrested and who had already pleaded guilty. Each had been fined 1,000 Singaporean dollars for violating Section 354 of Singapore’s criminal code, “outraging modesty.”

The most publicised entrapment operation occurred in September 1993 when 12 men were apprehended using decoys from Geylang Police Division Headquarters. They were all charged in court with outrage of modesty under Section 354 of the Penal Code. 6 pleaded guilty. They were sentenced to 3 strokes of the cane each and imprisonment ranging from 2 to 6 months. The names, ages and occupations of all 12 men were published in all major Singaporean newspapers. It is rumoured that one of the arrested men committed suicide.

Then, as quickly as they had appeared, the stories and the raids stopped. It was not constant enforcement or publicity that made Singapore’s criminal prohibitions against male desires scary. It was the randomness.

 

Straits Times report

Main article: Archive of The Straits Times article, "12 men nabbed in anti-gay operation at Tanjong Rhu", 23 Nov 1993

The following article reporting on the entrapment operation in September 1993 and its aftermath was published in The Straits Times on 23 November 1993. Even though the mainstream media referred to the location as "Tanjong Rhu", gay men who cruised there always used the name Fort Road beach or just Fort Road. This event is therefore sometimes referred to as the Fort Road incident. Tanjong Rhu is generally understood by most Singaporeans to be the residential area inland of Fort Road.

Straits Times article, page 19, 23 November 1993.

 

One of the accused, hawker Tan Boon Hock, then 43, told the court in late November 1993 that he had approached and struck up a conversation with a constable decoy, but no explicit agreement was made. Nonetheless, given the circumstances and location, Tan assumed that the other party was willing. However, as soon as Tan unzipped the undercover policeman's fly and touched his penis, the decoy identified himself and Tan was arrested.

Tan was charged under Section 354 of the Penal Code (outrage of modesty). It was quite odd that Tan and the other accused were not charged under Section 377A (gross indecency between males). It was perhaps because Section 354 permitted caning, and the Government wanted caning as part of the penalty to serve as a strong deterrent.

Tan pleaded guilty, probably hoping to be let off lightly, but was shocked to receive a sentence of 4 month's imprisonment and 3 strokes of the cane. He appealed against the sentence. The outcome of his appeal is described in a section further below.

Short film

This episode was immortalised in movie producer Boo Jun Feng's short film, "Tanjong Rhu"[1]:

TANJONG RHU (The Casuarina Cove)

 

Reaction of gay community

The gay community was outraged by what they felt was a gross infringement of their right to consensual adult homosexual sex and the inhumane punishment meted out to the arrested men who had been instigated by agents provocateurs. Heterosexual Singaporeans could continue to have sex in parked cars and in secluded public areas with impunity, whilst homosexuals were being singled out for vilification.

Protest

Main article: Brother Cane

In response to both the entrapment exercise, the punishments and the sensationalist treatment of this and other gay-related news stories by the press, two Singaporean artists, Josef Ng (born in Thailand) and Shannon Tham, created performance pieces that the government clearly found threatening to the dominant order. Ng and Tham’s works were presented in the context of a 12-hour New Year’s Eve event which included numerous other performances, literary readings and live music. Early in the morning on Friday, 31 December 1993 at the 5th Passage Gallery which occupied a service corridor in Parkway Parade, a large suburban shopping center dominated by Isetan and Yaohan department stores, Josef Ng gave a performance entitled "Brother Cane", apparently alluding to the caning sentence meted out to the victims of the entrapment operation.

Immediately after it finished the gallery was raided by the police. The spectators, and there were many, dispersed rapidly. The gallery was closed. Ng and his collaborators were arrested. Ng was charged with committing an obscene act which he pleaded guilty to as a course of least resistance. Iris Tan, the gallery manager, was prosecuted for allowing him to do it.

Tan Boon Hock's appeal

In April 1994, 7 months after his arrest during the police entrapment operation at Fort Road beach and 5 months after he was sentenced in court to 5 month's jail and 3 strokes of the cane, Tan Boon Hock's appeal was heard before Chief Justice Yong Pung How in the High Court.

In his judgment (see Archive of High Court judgment in Tan Boon Hock v Public Prosecutor, 15 April 1994), CJ Yong commented that the appellant had not forced his attentions upon an unsuspecting and vulnerable victim...The complainant in the present case was a young male police officer who had taken an active part in a police operation expressly designed to catch out gay men engaged in homosexual activity in a secluded area.

He added:

"I found it somewhat disquieting that an accused arrested as a result of such police operations should subsequently be charged with having outraged the modesty of the police officer he came into contact with...The accused, who is homosexual, meets another man in an area well known for being a homosexual haunt. He strikes up a conversation with this other man and, on finding him responding in a friendly fashion, assumes him to be a fellow homosexual. He then invites this other man to proceed to a more private spot, the intention being to engage in homosexual activity of some sort; and although this may not be explicitly articulated, it must be plain to both parties having regard to the circumstances of their interaction. It is at least arguable that as far as the accused can discern, there would appear to be little question of consent being forthcoming from this other man.

Yong further added:

"I am somewhat bemused that an accused caught in the manner described above should nevertheless be charged with the offence of outraging another’s modesty.

Indeed, how could the constable have been 'outraged' when he was expecting to be touched in the first place?

CJ Yong allowed Tan's appeal and reduced the sentence to a fine of $2,000. The CJ noted that Tan had pleaded guilty and only appealed against the sentence, suggesting thereby that if Tan had contested the charge in the first instance, he would have been acquitted.

Even though this case concerned someone charged under Section 354 (outrage of modesty) and not Section 377A, the CJ's comments were fundamental enough to make all entrapment cases dubious.

This landmark judgment put a stop to all entrapment cases for almost 2 decades until another instance surfaced in 2010 at Jalan Kubor[2].

Edited July 17, 2018 by groyn88

[GachiMuchi]

Has Tanjong Pagar Always Been SO Gay? Yes, According to History

 

To co-opt the opening lines of The Merchant of Venice, “In sooth, I know not why Tanjong Pagar is SO gay?”

When I throw that question around RICE HQ, only one of the esteemed senior staff writers had any insight into the matter. 

“Oh, all the gay spaces are in Tanjong Pagar because Lee Kuan Yew will protect us.”

Thanks for that insight, [REDACTED].

 

According to a much more credible source, Singapore Infopedia, much of Tanjong Pagar’s modern history seems predictable and ordinary. In the first half of the 19th century, the agricultural commercial ventures of Europeans and wealthy Chinese led people to seek work as plantation labourers, resulting in the proliferation of villages around Tanjong Pagar. 

 

In the second half of the 19th century, the establishment of Keppel Harbour would lay the foundations for Tanjong Pagar to become a hub of economic activity. The harbour would eventually disappear over time, but the economic aspirations wouldn’t. 

Fast forward a few decades of development, we end up with the Tanjong Pagar we know and love today—chock full of those affluent Ann Siang types. 

So far, so straight. As far as the annals of Singapore’s history are concerned, Tanjong Pagar’s colonialism-to-capitalism story is as conservative as it gets.

But if you saunter—I mean if you swagger down Neil Road today like the man’s man you are, you’d find that the stretch of road is pretty, for lack of a better word, gay. A quick gander around the road will tell you why: multiple gay bars—Tantric, ebar, and Outbar, to name a few—exist side by side, less than a hundred meters away from each other along a small stretch of the road. Singapore’s only existing gay club, Taboo, sits along the road among its ‘sisters’, completing the set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A patron at Tantric, presumably waiting for the bar to get busier.

 

On any weekend night, unreasonably fashionable men find themselves strewn around the pavement outside the repurposed shophouses. In their small groups, snatches of laughter and cigarette smoke drift together, accompanying their inebriation in a heady mix. Inside the bars themselves, tea is spilt and shade gets thrown, with boisterous cheer in an abundance of alcohol and good company. 

 

As the night drags on, barhopping revellers hold hands while crossing the road, and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple looms over them in the distant background, blessing their safe passage across the road and through the night.

 

 

 

 

Bluespin—a cocktail that’s come to be an iconic staple fueling Tanjong Pagar’s nightlife.

All along the road, in the streets, and in the bars and clubs, sometimes furtive glances are stolen and exchanged, in silent dances of mutual attraction. 

 

Sometimes, friends are made of strangers, and sometimes, they are made into lovers. 

Ostensibly, if you know where to look, Tanjong Pagar is a formidable offering of the proverbial wine, (wo)men, and song.  

In fact, if you have a diverse range of friends, you’d know that broadly speaking, Tanjong Pagar and its vicinity plays host to a range of gay spaces. 

Gay saunas like Cruise Club, 10 Mens Club, and Shogun Club hole up in nondescript buildings, while bars and pubs that broadly cater to a queer clientele are scattered across the locale. The sheer concentration of gay establishments in Tanjong Pagar brands it as a gay nexus—if you will—for Chinatown. 

Cruise Club, one of the gay saunas in the area. Unfortunately, they declined to comment for this article.

The concept of a ‘gay village’ is, by no means, new at all. In greener and gayer pastures overseas, these geographical areas are well-known, from New York City’s Greenwich Village to London’s Soho and San Francisco’s The Castro. Arguably, with its high concentration of gay establishments, Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar belongs on that list as well. 

 

What makes Tanjong Pagar particularly idiosyncratic, however, is the nearby presence of the Police Cantonment Complex and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum. In the broadly conservative landscape of Singapore, the incongruous mix of legal, religious, and gay urban spaces in close proximity has always seemed like an inexplicable mystery to me. 

 

Casual observation of Tanjong Pagar? / Image credit: Photoshop prowess of Rice intern, Ethel.

A gay friend of mine once joked that a good weekend night at Tanjong Pagar was a one-stop-shop of libation, incarceration, and atonement.  

 

Do gay policemen working in the Police Cantonment Complex feel strange about the incongruous intersection of their private and professional lives?

Alas, the workplace thoughts of gay policemen in Singapore is something we’ll never know.   

But the big question remains: of all places, why did Tanjong Pagar become the defacto ‘gay sanctuary’ in Singapore?

To help demystify the gay mysteries of Tanjong Pagar, I reached out to Kent Low, the professed owner of Singapore’s first gay KTV, Inner Circle.

 

The interior of Outbar on a Friday night.

At his request, we meet on a Friday night after work at Outbar—one of the fine establishments along Neil Road. It takes a while before I spot him, dressed in a beige sweater, with a singular shiny ear stud, already seated and already drinking under the dazzling lights. Intermittently, a friend of Kent’s walks by, or there’s someone that he greets—I get gregariously introduced to every single one of them. 

 

Mike, the bar manager and Kent’s friend, jokingly introduces himself as the resident ‘courtesan’ or 舞女 in turn and offers to help with the questions. For the rest of the night, he flits to and fro the rest of the patrons and our table, lubricating the social hinges, with charm and wit. Another friend, more drunk than the rest, introduces himself to me twice over the course of the night and repeatedly asks to try on my earrings. At various points, I’m chided for forgetting to toast the table, when I try to surreptitiously sip my drink in a bid to calm my nerves.

Between the entertaining and the booming music, Kent tells me about Inner Circle.

When it opened in 1991 along Tanjong Pagar Road, it was during a time when overt advertising of a gay establishment was unacceptable and would have drawn unnecessary attention from the public or perhaps authorities. In its early days, the nascent KTV relied on word-of-mouth in order to flourish. 

But as the “PR person” of the venture, Kent had other tricks up his sleeve.

“My singer friends from Hong Kong flew in to support us,” he says. 

“People would excitedly ask me if they were coming, sometimes weeks before in anticipation.”

And in this way, the hype was sustained by word-of-mouth and got business to boom, with the KTV fully packed. In its heyday, the crowd was “three times the size of what you see”, Kent says, gesturing at the crowd around us. 

His business partner, on the other hand, was a “shrewd negotiator”; when the KTV underwent renovation, the bar top was constructed for free. 

“We didn’t stop operations either—patrons were invited to come in and see the transformation for themselves.” 

It sounds slightly amusing at first, but on second thought, it sounds like the kind of entrepreneurial grit and spirit that would have been needed to open and maintain a gay KTV under less than friendly public attitudes.

Business was so good that it would eventually attract other competing gay clubs and bars to the area, helping to seed Tanjong Pagar’s gay reputation.

 

 

So why set up shop in Tanjong Pagar? 

“KTV has to be somewhere where nobody goes to normally, and rental was cheap,” Kent says.

It’s a surprisingly simple but reasonable answer. 

Elvin Poh, the 46-year-old current owner of Outbar, explains, “It all started in the 1990s when gay bars start to run business at Tanjong Pagar Road. Later, maybe because of rental, all started to shift over to Neil Road. Other reasons, maybe rental here, during those days are much cheaper than those in Orchard or Mohammad Sultan or Boat Quay. It is also quite centralised. During those days, being gay is a taboo. Therefore, bosses those days need to find a place that is cheap, centralised and away from the main straight clubs.”

Their answers make sense. 30 years ago, Singapore would have only been in her 20s, with only a cursory understanding, much less acceptance of queerness. Setting up a queer space or, for that matter, a queer nightlife establishment would have required a location away from the prying eyes of a prudish public.

In this way, the story of Tanjong Pagar’s gay history is also a story of economics. 

Indeed, as Chris K.K. Tan suggests in Rainbow Belt: Singapore’s Gay Chinatown as a Lefebvrian Space, the proliferation of gay establishments in Chinatown, and by extension, Tanjong Pagar is—in a stroke of irony—the result of state-intervention. 

In his account, colonial-era Chinatown was a locale of “gaudy temples, brothels, gambling houses, and opium dens,” and ultimately gained for itself a reputation as a “virulent cesspool of diseases and moral depravity”. 

But in a newly-independent Singapore, this would no longer fly; the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) sought to turn Chinatown into a “modern city informed by rationality and efficiency”. To this end, the terraced shophouses and tenement blocks, with their iconic ‘five-foot ways’, were “targeted” for demolition. In the 1970s, calls for the area’s heritage preservation would, however, prompt the URA to make a U-turn and instead initiate a restoration of Chinatown. While the state would plan the conservation project, “private investors executed the actual restoration”.

The lifting of rent controls to encourage the conservation project would eventually set the stage for conservation companies to offer “competitive rents to attract tenants to their newly refurbished properties” in the area. 

Savvy queer entrepreneurs like Kent would seize upon this and Chinatown’s centralised location, carving out queer spaces in the form of bars, clubs, saunas and other commercial ventures, with Tanjong Pagar at the heart of it all.

As the initial gay establishments took residence in the area, others would follow suit and sink roots into the area. 

 

The queue to get in quickly starts to snake on busy nights.

Addie Low, the 59-year-old co-founder of Taboo, shares that the club first opened in 1997 at Tanjong Pagar Road “purely due to the bars that were already operating there”. 

 

“So thinking of the conveniences for clubbers to bar hop in the same area. I believe everyone would have thought of the same way,” he adds. 

But history is more than just the broad strokes of capitalistic forces; it’s also about the man—or more accurately, the gay man on the street and how he lived. 

At its core, sexuality is about sex after all. Everyone finds an outlet for sexual expression and desire, whether it’s as simple as gushing about your workplace crush, watching pornography, or looking for casual sex. Whatever way we seek sexual gratification, there’s no shame in that. 

But for gay men—or queer people in general—the avenues to satisfy sexual expression and desire were far more limited in an era without Grindr, Jack’d, or any other contemporary dating app. Adding to the conundrum would have been a stark fear of exposure, back when attitudes were less tolerant. Cruising would present itself as a solution to these problems, for gay men to seek sexual intimacy in the relative safety of anonymity. 

 

One of Ann Siang Hill’s many back alleys, possibly used for cruising back in the day.

Bobby Luo, local nightlife veteran and impresario, ventures that the area’s high concentration of gay establishments and strong association with the gay community is linked to its history as a hotbed for cruising.

 

“During the 80s and 9os, the whole area for late-night cruising was centred around the Chinatown area. It started from the quiet back alleys in the Central Business District area including OCBC Building, Hong Lim Park, and Boat Quay where it was conducive for late-night car cruising,” he explains.

“I think it shifted further down China Square then Ann Siang Hill. Alongside these cruising hotspots, spaces of social interactions for gay men like bars and pubs started to appear in the area. Niche, Taboo, Why Not, Inner Circle, and Water Bar. Then came Happy, Mox, Backstage, Play. I remember during the late 90s, the first gay sauna Spartacus opened at South Bridge Road followed by others like Stroke, Raw, and Rairua.”

As Roy Tan writes in his photo essay, A Brief History of Early Gay Venues in Singapore, cruising spots shifted over time as they depended on “poor lighting, sparse human traffic and the presence of dark, derelict buildings or environs”. The gradual redevelopment of Chinatown explains the eventual shift of cruising from the Boat Quay area to the back alleys of Tanjong Pagar’s Ann Siang Hill.

The public cruising would eventually disappear from Ann Siang Hill in the 2000s when the area itself underwent redevelopment with the construction of Ann Siang Hill Park in 2004. But it would further cement Tanjong Pagar’s reputation as Singapore’s ‘gay village’, or as Bobby and his partner Ritz Lim affectionately call it, “our gay ghetto”.

But so what if Tanjong Pagar is so gay? 

Outside of nightlife and formally designated social spaces like Free Community Church or Pelangi Pride Centre, informal or commercial spaces of social interaction for the queer community seem to be less apparent. According to local drag queen, Becca D’ Bus,  while such spaces do exist in Singapore, there are several concerns accounting for their lack of visibility.

“How many of these spaces want to be publicly marked that way? And how many of these spaces remain safe when they are identified that way?” she says. 

The fear of being marked as a queer space arguably boils down to how the public expects queer social spaces to look like in the first place. Media representations have strongly encouraged the association of the queer community with vice and nightlife. Perhaps this has happened to the extent that gay bars or clubs have been normalised in the public imagination, but other spaces of social interaction like a gay bookshop still lie outside the realm of expectation. 

Indeed, while something as simple and innocuous as a gay bookshop is common enough overseas, the concept seems foreign in the Singaporean context. A colleague even confesses that while she finds the idea of gay bars to be normal and expected, she found the idea of a gay bookshop in Singapore “surprising” when I brought it up.

This begs the larger question: how should we think about the future of queer spaces in Singapore?

As Bobby says, while “more spaces for queer socialising can only be a good thing,“ it goes beyond that. 

“In an era where 377A has systemically erased all positive portrayal of gays in the media, representation matters.”

“We need to be seen more often, beyond the usual after-dark hours of bars and clubs.”

One of the alleys next to Tantric, also known as ‘make-out alley’, according to my editor, Julian.

It’s worth noting that of the gay bars, clubs, and saunas that Bobby mentioned—barring Taboo—all of them no longer exist, having gone out of operation. 

 

Undoubtedly, there’s a sense of impermanence to Tanjong Pagar’s gay establishments, given their successive opening and shuttering.

As Becca notes, “That’s a description of any nightlife space in this country—some stalwarts that stay for a long time, lots of coming and going.” 

Gay spaces, like all other spaces in Singapore—from the cruising hotspots, to the bars and clubs; the spaces that are prominently visible, and those that linger in the periphery of sight—all face gentrification and change. 

After all, despite the good business, Kent tells me at the end of the night,  that Inner Circle would close around 2003, due to its lease ending and issues with rental increases. 

It’s important to remember that the history of queer venues in Singapore did not start with Tanjong Pagar as  Audrey Yue and Helen Hok-Sze Leung point out in Notes Towards The Queer City: Singapore and Hong Kong. 

Bugis Street in the 1950s and 1960s  was one of Singapore’s first visibly queer venues, with its “transsexual sex trade” popular with British soldiers and foreigners in a post-WWII atmosphere. 

Later on, the first gay bars like Le Bistro, Treetops, Pebble Bar and Niche would pop into existence along Orchard Road in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Yet as we know today, in the march of modernity, these spaces no longer exist, and for the most part, have faded into relative obscurity. 

Tanjong Pagar could just as easily follow in their wake one day. 

To this end, Tanjong Pagar’s gay history matters because of how history matters as representation, as a way for communities to resist broad narratives that have overlooked their existence, and as a way to understand their identities. 

 

As Bobby says, “It’s important to know the roots and histories of all the safe places, so that we are reminded of the struggles we face every day, how far our community has grown and our culture has evolved.“

“Where we are now, is because of all the people before us.  And together, with the people with us now, we will get to where we want to be.”

 

 

Sources:

 

Singapore Infopedia

A Brief History of Early Gay Venues in Singapore by Roy Tan

Rainbow Belt: Singapore’s Gay Chinatown as a Lefebvrian space by Chris K.K Tan

Notes Towards The Queer City: Singapore and Hong Kong by Audrey Yue and Helen Hok-Sze Leung. 

Did you know Tanjong Pagar was so gay? Tell us at community@ricemedia.co.

Author

William HooContributor

 

 

[Fiacla]

I have live at Tanjong Pagar Plaza for so many years but I do not see a lot of gays living here. Though there are a few gay pubs and some gays starting appearing at 100AM since Fitness First outlet located there.

[Guest Reminiscer]

Is there any new published history of the LBGT community in SEAsia? Anyone writing one? 

 

The last I remember was the book about Bali, Thailand's King Rama 5, and SG Stuart Koe.

 

There should be enough material (non-porn)  for a hefty volume or a series!

[Guest Reminiscer]

[Steve5380]

3 hours ago, Guest Reminiscer said:

 

I looked into this book at Amazon and it is really fascinating, although it's not an easy read.

It must be highly rated, since the Kindle edition is priced at nearly 25 dollars.

So I ordered it second hand and I will get it in a week for $9.73 

 

[Guest Yummy]

12 hours ago, Steve5380 said:

 

I looked into this book at Amazon and it is really fascinating, although it's not an easy read.

It must be highly rated, since the Kindle edition is priced at nearly 25 dollars.

So I ordered it second hand and I will get it in a week for $9.73 

 

Good!!  I trust that once you have received it, you will share it here freely. 

[Discrete2020]

 

This book examines three big ideas: difference, legitimacy, and pluralism. Of chief concern is how people construe and deal with variation among fellow human beings. Why under certain circumstances do people embrace even sanctify differences, or at least begrudgingly tolerate them, and why in other contexts are people less receptive to difference, sometimes overtly hostile to it and bent on its eradication? What are the cultural and political conditions conducive to the positive valorization and acceptance of difference? And, conversely, what conditions undermine or erode such positive views and acceptance? This book examines pluralism in gendered fields and domains in Southeast Asia since the early modern era, which historians and anthropologists of the region commonly define as the period extending roughly from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

 

 

 

"A transnational study of Asian performance shaped by the homoerotics of orientalism, Brown Boys and Rice Queens focuses on the relationship between the white man and the native boy. Eng-Beng Lim unpacks this as the central trope for understanding colonial and cultural encounters in 20th and 21st century Asia and its diaspora. Using the native boy as a critical guide, Lim formulates alternative readings of a traditional Balinese ritual, postcolonial Anglophone theatre in Singapore, and performance art in Asian America. Tracing the transnational formation of the native boy as racial fetish object across the last century, Lim follows this figure as he is passed from the hands of the colonial empire to the postcolonial nation-state to neoliberal globalization. Read through such figurations, the traffic in native boys among white men serves as an allegory of an infantilized and emasculated Asia, subordinate before colonial whiteness and modernity. Pushing further, Lim addresses the critical paradox of this entrenched relationship that resides even within queer theory itself by formulating critical interventions around "Asian performance." Eng-Beng Lim is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University, and a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Department of East Asian Studies, and Department of American Studies. He is also a Gender and Sexuality Studies board member at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. 

 

 

 

 

The Gay Archipelago is the first book-length exploration of the lives of gay men in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation and home to more Muslims than any other country. Based on a range of field methods, it explores how Indonesian gay and lesbian identities are shaped by nationalism and globalization. Yet the case of gay and lesbian Indonesians also compels us to ask more fundamental questions about how we decide when two things are “the same” or “different.” The book thus examines the possibilities of an “archipelagic” perspective on sameness and difference.

 

Tom Boellstorff examines the history of homosexuality in Indonesia, and then turns to how gay and lesbian identities are lived in everyday Indonesian life, from questions of love, desire, and romance to the places where gay men and lesbian women meet. He also explores the roles of mass media, the state, and marriage in gay and lesbian identities.

The Gay Archipelago is unusual in taking the whole nation-state of Indonesia as its subject, rather than the ethnic groups usually studied by anthropologists. It is by looking at the nation in cultural terms, not just political terms, that identities like those of gay and lesbian Indonesians become visible and understandable. In doing so, this book addresses questions of sexuality, mass media, nationalism, and modernity with implications throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.

 

 

 

From private meetings in living rooms in the 1990s to the emergence of annual rallies and decriminalization campaigns in the past six years, Singapore's gay rights activists have sought equality and justice in a state that does not recognise their rights to seek protection of their civil and political liberties. In her groundbreaking book, Mobilizing Gay Singapore, Lynette Chua tells the history of the gay rights movement in Singapore and asks what a social movement looks like under these circumstances. She examines the movement's emergence, development, strategies, and tactics, as well as the roles of law and rights in social processes.

 

Chua uses in-depth interviews with gay activists, observations of the movement's activities, movement documents, government statements, and media reports. She shows how activists deploy "pragmatic resistance" to gain visibility and support, and tackle political norms that suppress dissent, while avoiding direct confrontations with the state.

[Guest Guest]

On 11/12/2019 at 4:51 AM, Steve5380 said:

 

I looked into this book at Amazon and it is really fascinating, although it's not an easy read.

It must be highly rated, since the Kindle edition is priced at nearly 25 dollars.

So I ordered it second hand and I will get it in a week for $9.73 

 

Wow!! This is too much! Why profit fron our culture? These should be made free for all singaporeans!! The government should let all gays have a copy so we can understand and appreciate our culture! What is MOE doing? Sleeling as usual!!!!

[Steve5380]

27 minutes ago, Guest Guest said:

Wow!! This is too much! Why profit fron our culture? These should be made free for all singaporeans!! The government should let all gays have a copy so we can understand and appreciate our culture! What is MOE doing? Sleeling as usual!!!!

 

Maybe you are not familiar with the Western capitalistic system. 

 

When an author takes the trouble to write a book, hopefully a contribution to a culture, he expects to get some compensation for his effort.  The only way to do so,  unless your government is willing to pay the author itself,  is to charge for each copy of the book. 

 

Otherwise,  if you are familiar with how books are commercialized and you ever bought a book,  I don't understand what the hell are you complaining about!  

BTW...  what is there of "your culture" in a description of Asian men fucking around in a gay paradise ?  

[Guest InBangkok]

I have not read Imagining Gay Paradise yet and will obtain a copy of the book.

 

I do hope it spends time on the pre-history of the 20th century gay movement. Relationships between men were not uncommon in Asia even going as far back as Imperial China. We know that the gay courtier Long Yang-jun lived in the 4th century BC. Later Emperors Wu Ti and Ai Ti had male lovers - and they lived before Christ appeared in the Middle East. Even later, in the 5th century, one of the emperors during the Liu-Song Dynasty, 15-year old Liu Ziye became famous for his orgies. China then introduced gay relationships to Japan. There is documentary evidence of gay relationships in the Korean courts. In the Chosun era, Travelling theatre groups developed providing various types of entertainment. Often these included under-aged “beautiful boys” and the entertainment, which included music, songs, masked dance, elements of circus and puppetry, would also add graphic representations of same-sex couplings. The troupes were composed of two distinct groups: the Sutdongmo and Yeodongmo – perhaps best translated today as butch and queens! Even as late as the 18th century in China, the book Passions of the Cut Sleeve (a reference to Ai Ti and his lover) outlines the fifty most famous cases of love between men in China

 

Hot on the heels of the merchant adventurers and subsequent colonisers from the West came their missionaries. Over time, they had a major influence in changing Asian traditional culture including its attitude to nudity and sex. Yet quite a few of these very colonisers maintained gay staff and gay lovers.

 

In the last century, it was probably Bali which first came to attention as a haven for homosexuality. The German homosexual artist Walter Spies settled in Ubud in the 1920s. Soon he was followed by others. Spies integrated himself thoroughly into the island's culture, even developing the modern version of the Kecak Dance most tourists see today.

 

When I first became aware of gay Asia, it was Manila in the late Marcos years. Coco Banana was then, I believe, Asia's first openly gay club and the heart of gay activity. Further north was the much larger sleaze club 690 Retiro Strip in Quezon City. So many flocked to the club that when telling a taxi driver where to go, all one had to say was "690"!

 

After Manila, Japan was not far behind in developing gay venues. Oban in Shinjuku's Kabuki-Cho District was one of the early saunas which opened in the late 1970s. Soon, Ni-Chome became the main centre for gay bars and clubs, with Ueno running a close second, although Ueno catered almost exclusively for Japanese.

 

Asia has a long gay history. It deserves an extensive history (if one does not already exist).

[Guest superfluous]

1 hour ago, Guest Guest said:

Wow!! This is too much! Why profit fron our culture? These should be made free for all singaporeans!! The government should let all gays have a copy so we can understand and appreciate our culture! What is MOE doing? Sleeling as usual!!!!

 

1 hour ago, Steve5380 said:

 

Maybe you are not familiar with the Western capitalistic system. 

 

When an author takes the trouble to write a book, hopefully a contribution to a culture, he expects to get some compensation for his effort.  The only way to do so,  unless your government is willing to pay the author itself,  is to charge for each copy of the book. 

 

Otherwise,  if you are familiar with how books are commercialized and you ever bought a book,  I don't understand what the hell are you complaining about!  

BTW...  what is there of "your culture" in a description of Asian men fucking around in a gay paradise ?  

 

Why taking the effort in explaining this for him. 

His post is just provoking reactions and posting nonsense...  You should have recognises who exactly is behind the post...  (am I digging up too much Dirt?)

MOE is not supporting any "gay" publications and as long as there is 377A, nothing will change because currently it clearly states not to support any "gay lifestyles". Just take a look at the government guidelines on "gay" and the censor regulation... 

[Steve5380]

12 hours ago, Guest superfluous said:

 

 

Why taking the effort in explaining this for him. 

His post is just provoking reactions and posting nonsense...  You should have recognises who exactly is behind the post...  (am I digging up too much Dirt?)

MOE is not supporting any "gay" publications and as long as there is 377A, nothing will change because currently it clearly states not to support any "gay lifestyles". Just take a look at the government guidelines on "gay" and the censor regulation... 

 

Yes, his posts are dumb.  But cannot we allow ourselves to be dumb sometimes too? 

 

[Guest Tyler nipples]

Nice article to read. Any link on the videos?

[fab]

Why you dig. an old thread?

 

U want a link to shenweijuns?

[Guest Tyler nipples]

2 hours ago, fab said:

Why you dig. an old thread?

 

U want a link to shenweijuns?

Lol

 

Tyler Nipples dun dig old threads

 

But u shd know who loves handling these threads.

LoL

 

Aiyo 给他ntuc voucher la

[Zealouslogue]

On 11/5/2019 at 12:15 AM, Guest Reminiscer said:

Is there any new published history of the LBGT community in SEAsia? Anyone writing one? 

 

The last I remember was the book about Bali, Thailand's King Rama 5, and SG Stuart Koe.

 

There should be enough material (non-porn)  for a hefty volume or a series!

Do go check out Dear Straight People. 

[Guest Roy Tan]

https://the-singapore-lgbt-encyclopaedia.fandom.com/wiki/Singapore_gay_history