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Queer Southeast Asia
Edited by Shawna Tang, Hendri Yulius Wijaya
Routledge: 2023
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Iprofess to know what I know, and that I know so very little. This has been a source of great comfort to me. The realisation came to me when I burst into tears before my history preliminary exam, back when I was eighteen. I’d been overcome with the horror that the past was abyssal, and not a subject one could ever hope to study enough for—a horror that eventually gave way to understanding and acceptance, a familiarity with one’s own fallibility. Now, when I come face to face with the depth and breadth of my own ignorance, I know I can still reach forward to the large loom that is life and find a thread whose line I can follow for as long as I can.
As a queer man in Singapore, I found myself facing the end of one particular line: the repeal of Section 377A of the Penal Code, a colonial-era statute that criminalised sex between men. When it was announced during the 2022 National Day Rally, everyone seemed to know it was going to happen—everyone except me. Instagram Stories showed gay activists and supporters gathered to watch the live telecast of the prime minister’s speech, because they had heard that something would happen. Those Stories made me recall how, just the weekend before, as I walked towards the Arts House for an event, I noticed a curious group of middle-aged folk; they were clustered behind the fence that bordered Parliament House next door, their hands raised in fervent prayer. It appeared that they, too, had a sense of plans afoot.
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