Ladies, ladies and ladies… it has been one year since Sayoni was born. Time passes by so fast when we are having fun, doesn’t it?
To celebrate our first birthday, Sayoni is having an Anniversary Party and yes, you are invited. We have reserved a cosy living room and rooftop for a barbecue, music and photo slideshow. It will be a night of fun, music, dance and mingling.
Date: Saturday, 3 March 2007 Tickets at the door: $ 18, includes a simple bbq and mineral water bottle Dress code: Smart casual Guests: Queer Women
The highlight of the party will be a Lost Talent Night, where you are invited to showcase your secret talents, such as singing, dancing, playing the guitar or contortionism. There will be PRIZES.
DJ pleinelune will be spinning the tracks and taking dedications too.
This is a private party, so please RSVP to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your nick name, real name, contact number and names of accompanying friends. We will be sending out the final details by email.
If you are interested in participating in the Lost Talent Night, please respond to Jean, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Sayoni proudly presents Sayoni Queer Women Survey 2006 Report, compiling the results of this year’s survey.
Abstract
Objectives:
1. To ameliorate the dire lack of information on queer women in Singapore. Currently, there is no proper understanding of how the women�s queer community functions, other than biased and disjoint personal views.
2. To gain some perspective on the actual needs of queer women, and what we can do about them
3. To provide free and accessible information to researchers, and act as a starting point for further research into the field The survey is broken down into four main aspects. Questions in each category are streamlined and standardised for easy answering, by presenting most of the questions as rating questions where possible.
1. Introduction General background.
2. Family, Friends and Work Questions on how out the respondent is to various circles of people in their lives, how this group has reacted to the information, and the respondent�s intention to come out to that particular group.
3. Personal Questions on the personal level relating to sexual orientation. Probes how the respondents come to realise their sexuality, different aspects of personal identity, and how their sexuality has affected them. Also includes information on relationships of respondents.
4. Financial Questions to ascertain the financial status of queer women as a community – on salary, type of industry respondents choose to work in, housing and car ownership.
This survey was not carried out with a null hypothesis in mind, and much of the information contained in this report is processed descriptive statistics. Where possible, averages and trends have been pre-computed, presented along with a broad analysis of the data.
The statistics available are broken down across Age, Ethnicity and Religion, as it is believed that these three different aspects affect the average queer woman in her views and social situation with respect to her sexuality. Where either age, ethnicity or religion is perceived to have no bearing on the response, the data has been left out.
This report is available for free download for the public. However, a lot of effort and time has been put into conducting this survey and collating the results into this report. If you feel we have done a good job, please donate through the Paypal link below the Paypal button. All donations will only be used for the running of this organisation
TLL, an online site made up of over 50 amazing blogs and authors from all around the world is hosting the first annual Lesbian Blog of the Year Award.
Quite unexpectedly, we have been nominated yet again. Thank you and we hope to continue to serve the community and demonstrate the good qualities you saw in us.
Finally the long awaited launch of SAFE (Supporting, Affirming and Empowering our LGBTQ friends and family) on 9th December 2006, at PPC’s Community Fair in Mox Bar. We went, we celebrated the new birth of courage and hope, this time round for those dear to our hearts. Our friends and family.
With SAFE’s mission to
form a network of support, affirmation and empowerment for families and friends of LGBTQ persons by providing information and resources and encouraging dialogue that promotes respect for human diversity and the well-being of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning persons,
this will be another important milestone in our community.
Do check out their website and pass the message around.
�Singapore,� Leong (1997: 142) wrote in 1997, �appears to be the last frontier in the Asian region for positive gay and lesbian developments�. Almost a decade later, however, this statement no longer rings true because Singaporean activists successfully held the first gay pride month there in Aug 2005 with little state interference. Called IndigNation, this gay pride month witnessed limited attendance and lacked the often-fully commercialized gay pride parade that has come to represent Euro-American gay pride (Armstrong 2002). Instead, IndigNation offered such free events as a poetry-reading, an art exhibition, and two public lectures on the history of same-sex practices in Singapore and China. The activists held IndigNation to protest both heavy state censorship of magazines serving gay Singaporeans and the state�s ban on such public gay parties as Nation. Incepted in 2001, Nation was a series of three parties that Asian gay portal site Fridae.com organized yearly to celebrate Singapore�s independence on Aug 9. Despite Nation�s reputation as the crown jewel of Asian circuit parties � it attracted a record 8,000 revelers in 2004 � and the US$6 million tourist revenue it generated that same year, the state banned it in 2005 on still-unverified allegations that Nation threatened public health as an HIV vector.
In view of the banning of Nation, homosexuality appears incompatible with the Singa-porean state. Although homosexuality, modernity and Americanization are not necessarily coter-minous (cf. Brenner 1998), the state treats them otherwise. Using antiquated laws that Singapore inherited from its days as a British factory, the state criminalizes same-sex acts as the results of the �immoral� American influence that industrialization exposed Singapore to in the late 1960s. However, I argue that homosexuality does indeed commensurate with the Singaporean state. Although Fridae.com continues to deny it, Nation presented the strongest statement of full national belonging gay Singaporeans have made thus far. Indeed, in attracting mostly moneyed gay men from Asia to its three nights of non-stop partying, Nation mimicked the Singaporean state in positing consumption as the basis of citizenship. In assuming that good consumption will literally buy gay Singaporeans full societal acceptance, Nation practices an assimilationist politics that Duggan (2003) calls �the new homonormativity.� Ironically, it takes IndigNation, with its free and diverse events that focused on inclusivity and community-building outside of consumption, to highlight both this commonality and the limits of homonormative model of gay citizenship that Nation presented.
The seeming incommensurability between homosexuality and the Singaporean state rests upon two bases. Legally speaking, same-sex acts remain chargeable offences in Singapore. Sections 377 and 377A of the Penal Code punish �unnatural� sex and gross indecency respectively, with life sentences as the maximum penalty. Media guidelines also forbid the positive portrayal of homosexuality. As recently as Oct 2006, the Media Development Authority (MDA) fined cable-TV provider Starhub Cable Vision (SCV) S$10,000 (US$6,500) for airing an episode of the American reality TV program Cheaters that featured footage of women engaging in m�nage � trois and bondage sex. Although SCV aired the heavily pixilated footage at midnight, the MDA still found it guilty of promoting lesbianism (The Straits Times 2006).
