Taken from villamaria.qc.ca

Everyone knows about the reputation of various girls’ schools in Singapore. RGS turns out unmarriageable feminists. SCGS creates tai-tais. Nanyang girls are eccentric, and would probably become First Ladies. These accusations are mostly asinine, and rational people would know that.

But the biggest false accusation leveled at all these schools is the supposed belief that girls’ schools ‘creates’ lesbians. Is there any truth to this? Does coming from a girls’ schools ‘make’ you lesbian? Many of you would remember the CNA show ‘Get Rea!’, by Diana Ser, one of whose episodes focused on this very matter, and concluded that girls schools do make our girls ‘lesbian’.

Before refuting this theory outright, I’d like explore the environment in girls’ schools, and see what factors might have contributed to this misconception.

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For me, being in a girls’ school was a liberating experience, after having to put up with dirty, rowdy [and very smelly] boys in primary school. Civilisation, at last! At least people here knew about deodorant, and didn’t think shouting profanities about each others’ private parts was funny.

This is a monthly column on life journeys, matters of the heart and healthy emotional living by Peggy.

My darling Wen

It has been almost a year since you died. I miss you my darling, I miss holding your hand in mine, those long conversations as we walked along the beach, your strong comforting presence next to mine.

I remember how we first got to know each other in the drama & debating team. We became fast friends due to our similar interests – films, books and music. We mugged together for our first year exams; stayed up late cramming formulas and facts into our heads.

I never knew, never in my wildest dreams did I guess that I could be in love with a woman. It was the same for you too. But yet, the moment when we realized that our feelings for each other were more than best friends – it just felt so right; both of us agreed.

We were no different from other couples in school. We were happy and contented, and like other couples, made plans to study in the same university when we have completed our A levels.

Until that fateful day, a week after our prelims, when this group of people came to our school to give a talk about sexual health.

How I wished that group of people never came and never said those things! Ever since then, it was never the same again; we were never the same again.

They told us that our relationship was wrong, they said that it was not natural and the reason why we fell in love with each other was because we were either from broken families or we have had some childhood psychological trauma resulting in an unnatural romantic attraction towards the same gender.

They presented us with testimonials and statistics which showed that our kind of relationship is short-term & promiscuous in nature. They showed us more figures which proved that we will have a higher tendency to be emotionally disturbed, suffering from depression and even substance abuse.

At that point in time, with the intensity of the whole situation, it didn't occur to us that you were from a loving complete family and that for me, even though my parents had divorced when I was still a toddler, my eldest sister was happily married to a man.

We were bullied and cowed into submission, we were made to feel guilty for being together, for being the way we were; we started doubting ourselves, doubting each other, doubting us.

Together, we signed up for their support group. The onslaught of all these troubling emotions and thoughts confused us and burdened us, we wanted the hurt and the guilt to stop, we wanted to be happy again.

But my darling, it became worse didn't it? The support group was a gathering of people who were similarly broken in spirit, who wanted answers, who wanted the hurt to end. We desperately renounced our former lives; we clasped frantically to information which were supposed to help us live out our new ones – our proper lives.

It was a downward spiral that never seemed to end.

Even as we struggled to live out our proper lives, there were nights where we could only find the peace we looked for in each other's arms. Yet, the next morning we would be burdened ten times over by what we did the night before. How can something that feels so right be so wrong?

A few months went by and you did not want to wait for the hurting to stop anymore. You decided to take matters into your own hands.

They killed you my darling, they killed your spirit.

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Media Release From People Like Us (PLU)
19 Jan 2006, 20.30h
Singapore govt gives $100,000 to Christian anti-gay group

By giving $100,000 to Liberty League, as reported by ChannelNewsAsia (CNA), the Singapore government is helping to promote a religious cause founded on unscientific and psychologically damaging methods.

Liberty League intends to “promote gender and sexual health” through “conduct[ing] sexuality talks in schools” – CNA report.

However, Liberty League’s website promotes a book ‘Freedom of Choice’. The book’s subjects were almost totally from the Christian group, Choices, which runs programmes teaching that homosexuality is a psychological dysfunction. The book thus promotes this kind of pseudo-therapy propagated by fundamentalist Christian groups.

Mr Leslie Lung, the founder of Liberty League has long been known to be associated with “ex-gay” ministries. The “ex-gay” or “reparative therapy” movement is strongly associated with the more extreme churches in the United States. Liberty League’s website itself uses terms such as “sexual brokenness”, “addiction and abuse”.

In a seminar organised by the Graduates Christian Fellowship on 13 October 2005, which described homosexuality as a psychological problem, Liberty League was touted as resource for counseling. It was recommended by Mr Tan Thuan Seng, the President of Focus on the Family, Singapore (FOTF-Sg) who is known to regularly give anti-gay talks in Christian circles.