“Seems you are ok with discrimination as long as you are not the target.”
This is the allegation leveled against me in a comment to my previous post. And I am really sick of such comments.
For starters, let’s talk about discrimination. These are several types of discrimination which I know of:
- racial – e.g. against the African Americans back in the U.S. in the 60s, the Jews in Nazi Germany and the Chinese in the early 20th century;
- gender – e.g. females denied the right to vote, glass ceiling for female employees in organisations, jobs and promotion given in priority to males, or expecting sexual favors from a female employee;
- caste – e.g. the untouchables in India;
- age – e.g. rejecting a job applicant solely because of his age;
- disability – e.g. refusal to render to a person a medical aid because of his disability;
- religion – e.g. refusal to hire a person because of his religious beliefs;
- language – e.g. to disgrace the people speaking a certain dialect, such as those from Ryukyu Islands in early 20th Century Japan; and
- reverse – in my opinion, a fine example would be the Woman’s Charter of Singapore, which originally was used to protect the disadvantaged (i.e. lower educated, unemployed) women – usually home-makers – in the early days of post-colonial Singapore from abusive husbands. Sadly, it has become more of a bane to the modern man today.
Gender, age, disability, language and religion are also usually seen as a part of employment discrimination. That is why these days consultants advices interviewers never to ask questions related to them to avoid getting the company sued by the interviewee.
However, there is also another kind of discrimination – perceived discrimination. And it reminds me of an ex-colleague, who is in the opinion that our head of department looks down on him. It doesn’t matter that the real issue was the attitude and the lack of interest he displays towards his work. In the end he deliberately not do the things which our boss would consider him a good worker and a team player, and that goes onward to reinforce the boss continual dislike of him and his working attitude.
And so when I looked at the allegation leveled against me, I asked myself if there is any real discrimination in place against homosexual people, or is it all perceived as such. Are homosexuals in Singapore denied the right to vote? Are they denied the use of certain public services like health care or the buses? Are they getting thrown out of restaurants? Or are they denied employment even when they are more than qualified for the job?
Fortunately, I haven’t heard of such blatant acts of discrimination in Singapore. But the first thing that come to mind is Section 377A of the Penal Code, which I believe was necessary to protect the populace from certain sexual predators. However, before anyone screams about me drawing comparisons between male homosexuals and sexual predators, don’t put words in my mouth and consider this analogy: A prostitute may dress scantily, but is everyone who dress scantily a prostitute?
Then, there is also the ‘302’ classification and the straight downgrade of homosexuals to PES C in the army. I was reminded of this by fellow blogger Michael Cheng [aka Botak Cheng]. Personally, I have heard about incidents where those who are allegedly classified as such were bullied in camp by fellow soldiers. I am not sure if those classified as such are upset, but I do not see nor really understand the reason to the segregation. If homosexuals do not oppose those duties, then put them on duty like the rest of the men, until they do something against military regulations.
Anyway, parallel is continually being drawn in the U.S. between the homosexual community with that of the movement against discrimination of African American in the 1960s. But a quick check with a dozen of my friends who happens to be online in Windows Live Messenger showed that most cannot name any discrimination against homosexual here in Singapore. In fact, only 2 out of the dozen people I asked pointed me to this link to get myself duly informed.
Now, while I may oppose them, I have no issues with the homosexual community’s efforts to deal with the items listed on the Wiki page. But what has that got anything to do with DBS tie-in with FOTF? It was pretty obvious to me that it is nothing more than the fight against FOTF U.S. spilling over to FOTF Singapore. Has this ‘victory’ done anything to improve the situation of the homosexual community here in Singapore?
I won’t be surprised that in the near future, there is this opinion that all of these action groups are nothing more than small pompous groups presuming to speak for a larger community. In fact, I am in the opinion that the homosexual community by and large did not even give these ‘loud mouths’ the authority to speak on their behalf, nor are they very interested in the agenda.
It maybe possible these groups will raise the profile of those who claims to speak for the community, but it is doubtful it would have any real effects for the plight of the community or bring about any positive action. In fact, I am not even surprised if it actually galvanises the opposition.
To put it in the words of my friend, “Some people do nothing until they are called the enemy.”
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