When we are quick to judge, to believe authority over activists, to pine for some imagined decorum in a dialogue biased by the disparity in power, we leave out much from our collective consciousness, our understanding of who we are.
We forget that politicians are there to serve us, to lend a listening ear, to explain any issue that concerns us, and that the restriction of discourse, to acceptable matters through acceptable channels with acceptable decorum, is itself the way power, whether exercised by colonial plunderers or contemporary plutocrats, persists.
If we accept the premise that “bread and butter” takes precedence over the philosophical, then we forget that the two are linked. Urgent needs must be met urgently, but not at the cost of forever forgoing the deeper discussions that prod fundamental change. There is a direct connection between socio-economic desperation and freedom of speech. The cost of living is helped both by help with living costs and criticism of living costs—and of their underlying economic power structures. The women wanted to see Shanmugam for POFMA, not Palestine, and even though their focus was on anti-death-penalty speech, resistance to the problematic law could liberalise all speech, even on so-called bread and butter issues.
We forget that 60 years after independence, and 30 years after we declared ourselves a “first-world” country, there are still Singaporeans living hand-to-mouth. Our leaders seem more intent on maintaining their patronage towards people with “real issues” than in removing our need for it. We forget that they’ve created a system with an elite class that lives in comfort, and many others who live craving for handouts, whether bi-annual budget goodies or weekly MPS help, and the only difference in our dependence on our masters is a temporal one. So ingrained is our condition that even when two women challenge power, we recoil because we see them as a threat to the drip-feed of our money returned to us, rather than potential liberators from our shared predicament.
In any case, the two women claim to have told Shanmugam’s five minders that they’d wait till he’d first seen all his residents. Were they out to disrupt or were they unwittingly drawn to disrupt by one of Singapore’s sharpest lawyers, mic-ed up and ready to hold court, his minders recording proceedings against the two women’s wishes? Whatever one’s opinion of middle fingers, Korean love gestures and yells of “coward”, we forget that most of us aren’t equipped with the linguistic and behavioural tools for engagement with a senior counsel and senior minister.
We forget that we can both express dismay at certain actions and an appreciation of how tense conditions can lead to them. It’s clear that the rules of engagement in such encounters, even regarding one’s right to record or not be recorded, are unclear to many. All of us outside the establishment—including activists and indie media journalists—can better protect ourselves in such situations partly through constant self-reflexivity, of the sort the two women showed in their response. Perhaps we also forget that we can show empathy towards all parties, from those who seek to provoke conversation to those unused to being provoked. We are all probably captives of an archaic model of democratic engagement.
Yet even if so, we also forget the inherent power dynamic. Was the fearsome Shanmugam really riled by “deliberate rowdyism, rudeness” from a couple of young women? Why did so many come to his defence before even hearing from the women? Why were we so quick to condemn their actions? Academics, commentators, ex-journalists and many others seem to have forgotten a basic tenet of observation, reportage and analysis: multiple voices. Perhaps it’s just proof of Singaporeans’ authority bias.
We used to think that the making and spreading of sensationalised, single-perspective, citizen journalism was the preserve of the disgruntled and disenfranchised. We used to think that echo chambers and social media frenzies were the preserve of those unversed in dialectics. We used to think that virtue signalling, the one-upmanship of “calling out” people, was the preserve of the extreme left. It’s now clear that many here are vulnerable to shades of all that.
Most of all, we forget the damage we do to our collective soul when we perpetuate the caricatures of gender and race. Malay-Muslim hijabis are probably one of the most vulnerable groups in society, triply minoritised: race, gender, and presentation (given the historical prejudice and politicisation of the tudung). Shanmugam proudly claims the mantles of feminism and racial harmony, backed up by a battery of ever-expanding laws, but one wonders if he and his team had a deep discussion, before releasing that video, about the potential risk of tarnishing the image of Malay-Muslim hijabis. Maybe he could have just written a post about the interaction, revealing only the relevant bits of their identity: activists who wanted to talk about POFMA.
As it turns out, it’s mostly patriarchs within the community who’ve racialised the issue, and condemned the two for falling short of some idealised hijabi woman’s behaviour, further entrenching antiquated gender roles. Like the bupatis of old, rewarded by colonialists for keeping their subjects in line, for maintaining order for the functioning of an exploitative system, last week “Malay community leaders”, including some politicians, came out strongly against the two women, thus sparking further criticism against them. But why does the women's race matter? Malays aren’t the only ones concerned about POFMA, or Palestine for that matter. Earlier this year, when the government said it had detained an ethnically Chinese, “East Asian supremacist”, we did not see a cavalcade of clan associations condemning the person. It is only ethnic minorities, many of whom are complicit in our own oppression, who are forced to repeatedly prove our worth.
These are the many parts we leave out when we are quick to judge. While standing firm in their truth and faith, the two women ended by admitting to their imperfections, and to their commitment to “growing and learning”.
If only more of us did so.
This response to last week’s brouhaha is from Jom's editorial team. Thanks also to Liyana Batrisyia for reading. If you believe in our work, do get a paid subscription today so that we can keep doing it.
For context, watch the initial video published by K Shanmugam, law and home affairs minister, last week. And read the response, “The Parts He Left Out”, by the two women involved.