Conservative Singapore

Singapore is a highly conservative society. In this essay I'll not be wasting precious space to describe how conservative it is. Instead, what I wish to suggest is that Singapore's conservative culture is an extremely stable and deep-rooted one, to the extent that this country will still be as conservative as it currently is even in 60 years' time. In other words, I predict that there will be no social change in this particular aspect of society as long as I live. I'll be focusing especially on the way society thinks about 'expressions of sexuality', and sexuality itself.

Do not be deceived by the apparent signals of decreasing conservativeness in society. Things like Sexpo and Crazy Horse may make people feel as though Singapore is finally becoming less prudish. But do you really believe that there will be a day when Singapore allows magazines such as Playboy to be sold in Singapore? I do not think so. Censorship of the print media and online media will continue to be strict for the foreseeable future. So, to the extent that there are clear and unambiguous limits that cannot be crossed, the suggestion that society is somehow 'opening up' may cause people to think that this 'opening up' shall proceed in a teleological and linear fashion. Such guesses are overly optimistic and do not to take into account the ways in which powerful brakes exist in Singapore to halt the unbridled development of Singapore into a totally permissive society.

It is sometimes said that there is a silent majority in this country, which is an extremely moral bunch of people. While I do not know the exact size of this group of people, my wild guess is that they amount to at least 60% of Singapore. Naturally, the older generation will be conservative. The younger Singaporeans are split between the conservative, the not-so-conservative, and those who have never thought about this question or issue. Do a rough calculation based on some estimates and you might arrive at the same percentage as I have: the not-so-conservative group is a minority group in Singapore, amounting to probably only 10% of the total population!

Thus the Singapore in 20, 40, or even 60 years' time will still be the same old Singapore. Playboy magazine and that company's website will continue to be censored, and society at large will continue to support strict censorship. No doubts about that. There are two philosophies supporting this form of censorship by the State. The first is that pornography (both hard and soft porn) corrupts the mind absolutely, and will therefore convert most Singaporeans into lust-filled monsters who ought to be quarantined immediately. It is assumed that total chaos will follow and this pristine moral paradise will then be reduced to Fourth World status from the fighting, fires, rapes, molest cases, and a whole series of crimes due to the pornographic magazines and their close cousins. Why do you think the scene where Kate Winslet appeared nude in Titanic was cut? To those in charge of censorship, there is no such thing as 'forms of nudity' or 'nudity for artistic purposes'; there is only one monolithic category of 'nudity' which is equated to pornography and to the notion of 'evil'.

The second and more fundamental belief is that anything related to the enhancement of sexual attraction and desires or serves as a form of sexual expression is inherently bad. I'm not surprised because Singapore rests upon a system-wide perpetration of a 'wholesome' image for the sake of attracting tourists, foreign talent, and investors, and this overall country image can only be sustained when the circulating discourses, practices, and products (e.g. magazines, television programmes) are all equally wholesome. In fact, even married couples are not spared from the pressures that this subtle moral culture exerts. As an exaggeration, they might even hear some ghostly voices telling them that sex is at best a necessary evil (even for married couples!) It is a practice that is tolerated here only because it has the positive externality of churning out the next generation of workers. Once the goal of reproduction has been achieved, this evil practice shall promptly be discontinued, for there is no longer any reason why a person needs to touch his or her spouse. True or false?

Now, do I need to place a disclaimer to say that I am obviously writing rhetorically in the above paragraphs? Please don't take the sentences literally...What I want to say is really this: that Singapore will always be conservative. And the proxy that I have used in this short essay is the censorship of expressions of sexuality. Sex, lust, intimacy, and liberal attitudes, according to the invisible moral majority, must not be tolerated in our squeaky clean, no-nonsense island. One can only wonder whether local married couples are exempted from such moral injunctions, and whether it is a bad thing to be intimate with one's spouse after the national 'duty' of childbearing has been discharged.