Posts tagged "marriage"

The Moving Calculus

Some time ago I read a tweet by a queer Singaporean asking why any queer Singaporean would move to San Francisco, citing the following shortcomings (not verbatim):

• San Francisco used to be a place where queer Singaporeans would move to, for safety reasons, but perhaps those safety reasons aren't that dire anymore
• San Francisco / the US is the heart of the hegemonic world order / imperialist system
• We probably like the white gaze
• San Francisco provides the opportunity to be a Joy Luck Club Asian queer

There was a time in my life where those thoughts resonated with me.

This topic has been on my mind since I moved here and, surprisingly, did not hate it as much as I imagined I would (I did not like San Francisco at all when I came as a tourist).

Unlike many other immigrants I've met here, who have left deteriorating and debilitating circumstances, my 'why I moved and how has it been' calculus is different. I did not move for material comfort. I am, daily, reminded of how I left home, away from material comfort, and my support systems, to be here. (Not to mention the tremendous amounts of social privilege I've left behind.)

Some time in 2012, I was pretty satisfied with my life as a queer Singaporean living in Singapore. I was in a high growth industry (tech), I got to date (a lot), I had many opportunities to create and carve out a life for myself as an upper middle class Chinese Singaporean gay woman who'd probably end up in a relationship with someone like me. In fact, when I went home recently we hung out with my ex (as queer women do), I took a photo of their home office in their absurdly beautiful Bukit Timah home and I captioned it in my phone as: "the life I would have had if I stayed home".

Every conversation when I was home revolved around, "when are you coming home?" because it seems unexpected, even among some types of minorities in Singapore, to entertain the idea of leaving the supposedly best place in the world (that we still all complain about anyway).

I found that my connection with Singapore was weakening. Other than family, I don't have anything to do there, or many people to spend time with. I have loads of acquaintances, of course, but many of my friends are.. elsewhere. (Not all of them to the hegemonic core, many of them to many parts of the world, including China, Vietnam, Indonesia.)

Still, every conversation (especially with my family) was around: so are you done yet with San Francisco? Isn't it absolutely terrible, that country? When are you coming back to this superior place? was the underlying question. If you're an always online Singapore leftist, your concerns with my city of choice probably has more to do with the above list of questions. If you're not a leftist, your concerns with my city of choice probably has to do with things like safety, medical bankruptcy, housing, why someone would realistically choose a higher cost of living and physical discomfort (as mentioned, Singapore is far more comfortable, materially, in nearly very way), and give up substantial amounts of socio-economic privilege.

Why people choose to leave home is deeply personal. Every situation is different. I moved here exactly three years ago with my wife and my dog when we suddenly had to make a huge life decision on the spot, when her work visa ran out and we decided to get married. We were lucky to have the option to come here, and to be able to thrive.

I learned quite quickly that I would have survived in Singapore (it's getting harder for queer people there), but I no longer felt like I could thrive. In spite of my immense privilege.

I felt like like the short-lived optimism I had for Singapore expanding queer rights was over. Even if 377A is repealed, I don't feel optimistic. I don't feel like I want to wait for incremental improvements. That's not to say that I don't want to do the work. I did, for a time. And if my circumstances were different, if I had decided to spend my life with another Singaporean person, if I was okay with surviving and not thriving, if I was able to shut up and be okay with the already tiny space around me in Singapore, eroding further and further; perhaps that would have been different.

I don't pretend this city, or this country, is perfect. Far from it. Unlike the home I grew up in though, it lets me say so: even if I am not a citizen. No country is perfect, so for now, we'll enjoy the wide open space of California, where, frankly, life is pretty good (if you can hack it). I feel immensely lucky to be able to grow as a person out here, far from home, while also having the ability to move back to my country, which has given me so much, yet currently exasperates me, whenever I need. I'm certainly cognizant of how this is a huge thing to have. So many of the other people who have moved to where I now am, no longer have a country at all. After three years in San Francisco, I feel like I've finally passed the moment of transience and 'uprootedness' that I've felt for so many years, and that maybe 'home' is always 'small cities surrounded by the sea, that punch above their weight'.

But there isn't a single day where I don't grieve what I left behind.

Schrödinger's Lesbian

In 2018 I decided to leave my home country of Singapore even though I once thought I would lead my queer adult life here because it was not a bad one. I decided to leave because I had met the woman I would marry, and there was simply no path for us to lead the sort of life we wanted in both of our home countries.

Being queer in Singapore is strange because on some level, it's one of the better places to be queer in Asia. And on many other fronts, while it isn't quite the worst, it's also.. not at all fun.

Some time between 2012 (when I returned to Singapore) and 2018 (when I left again) civil society, and the state of queerness in the country, had a certain amount of momentum that made me feel cautiously optimistic. I am now of the opinion that that moment has passed.

The 'fun' bits about being queer here are:

• If you have a certain amount of money and class privilege, your life will be virtually indistinguishable from any other queer life you might lead in a major Western city
• If you have a partner who is either a professional in the right industries, or also a Singaporean or someone who has the right to reside here regardless of your marital status or sexual orientation, you will have a pretty decent life
• If you are important enough and your partner has the 'right background', there are 'case-by-case' ways to continue to lead a life in Singapore in important jobs and special privileges
• Homophobia exists at all levels of society but is virtually invisible in the upper echelons of English-speaking, cosmopolitan, world-traveling, Bali-on-the-weekends Singaporean and Singapore expat circles
• Dating opportunities, in terms of quantity and quality, is just as good as most major Western cities
• If your partner is also Singaporean, and you're both above 35, you can technically purchase a subsidized public housing flat together under the Singles Scheme
• The lifestyle is nothing to complain about (but only of course if all of the above apply to you)

The not-so-fun bits:

• All of those things have to apply for it to be fun
• You will have zero legal rights forever
• The state of LGBTQ rights has not only stagnated, it is probably going backwards (significantly)
• Every interaction you have with the state as a queer person is an edge case

One in four heterosexual marriages are between a Singaporean and a non-citizen. We are a city-state, an entrepôt city, a trading post, midway between the world and back. It makes sense that would be the case. There aren't any official numbers, since there's no offical recognition of queer relationships, but an anecdotal guess would rate the share of transnational queer relationships in the LGBTQ world to be even higher than the heterosexual one. We're a global-facing city, after all, and upper-middle class queer Singapore's access to a cosmopolitan dating pool would not be surprising.

This is where the problem begins.

Even though the extent of this country's discussion on queer rights at the moment starts with 'should we repeal a Victorian law against sodomy?' and ends with 'what are the gays going to want next? Marriage?', I have been married for 3 years now. I have been leading a regular life in a society where it is so utterly 'normal' that being a cis lesbian is perceived to be regular and boring and not at all revolutionary in any way. I go anywhere, and old Asian ladies talk excitedly about how cute my wife and I are, and express outrage at why we can't lead a regular life in Singapore, where we want to be.

How does one come back to... this?

I miss, so much, the heat, the humidity, the potential Bali weekend trips, the well-paid tech jobs in senior roles with far, far lower taxes, the quality of housing, the presence of a washer in every apartment, the public transit, the.. the everything. Nobody should ever have to leave home just to be able to be who you are. And yet, for queer people, leaving is not only about visas. It's about a place to catch your breath because you're just been sprinting and jumping over hurdles your entire life, only to find out that everyone else got to the finish line without a potato sack tied to their foot.

Being queer in Singapore is about having a potato sack tied to your foot. Some people, people like me, who have the above-mentioned privilege, think for some time that you can get away with whatever life throws at you because you're used to winning the race anyway. But at some point you wonder why you had to win anything at all.

Today, I was reminded of this fact. We were at a government office trying to get something done, something extremely innocuous that is granted to any heterosexual Singaporean married to a foreigner. While I appreciate that we eventually got things done, every moment is one of debilitating terror. Knowing that what's ahead of you is entirely 'case-by-case', that it depends on the beliefs and the feelings of the people you transact with, wondering if.. perhaps I had shown up as the director of a Singapore company (which I am) and not as the spouse of a foreigner (which I also am), I would have gotten this task done much faster without any questions.

On top of questions, there's also the indignity of having your marital status yelled out loud in several languages, as if they'd never heard of such a thing.

I feel like Schrödinger's Lesbian: I am at once a lesbian and not. I am married, there is no question about it, but that marriage does not exist, at the same time. If I were to be hit by a car tomorrow, and die, not only would my wife not be able to come to collect my body, she would also not receive a single cent from me. My sexual orientation matters, because the state does not want me to be visible or loud about it, but it matters as well, because the state also wants you to believe they are the best society in Asia for someone to be queer in, that there is utterly and totally no discrimination at all.

A few years ago I was interviewed by a local newspaper about my 'unconventional marriage'. Not only was the focus of the story that I was so unconventional we had to leave the country, I spent the entire interview talking about insurance. Insurance excited me greatly. Not only because insurance is essential in healthcare-terrible America, but also because the very boring, blasé act of naming a person you're married to as your next-of-kin is so revolutionary where I'm from. Between the quiet moments of our boring life filled with too much fur in our noses, and the indignity of justifying who we are to bureaucrats who think we don't exist because it doesn't say so in the SOP, I'm quite glad to be going back to boring. And fur. Boring fur and furry bores. But there is not a single moment where I wish I did not have to leave my home for it.

This Modern Love

I have spent the last six weeks in Reno. There was a point, at some time in my life, when "six weeks in Reno" was something I would eventually do — to atone for some adolescent sins. The sin of believing, as you're in the thick of massive progress for people like you, that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Growing up queer, I was utterly convinced that I would never, ever, be able to find happiness. That everyone else's happiness was not for me.

At age five, I dreamed up insane plans. I would go away, somewhere, and then I would tell my family that I was going to marry a woman. I would have a baby without them knowing about it. In what universe, in my sheltered, evangelical Chinese-Christian-Singaporean triple-barreled identity was the life I thought I would have, possible? It was not.

My home life and my brain, my romantic life and my body, led a separate existence on two completely different planes. I found it easy to date, but not easy to find what was most important to me: the ability to move, generally, towards the arc of the idea that in some universe, somewhere, I can have a family.

In 2013, when DOMA was struck down, Edith Windsor managed to get, for the rest of us, the ability to call the same-sex partners we've had for decades, our wives and / or our husbands. Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were with each other for 40 years: when Thea died, Edith was hit with a $363 000 estate tax that she would not have been hit with had she been in a heterosexual marriage. Don't fuck with a grieving lesbian, I think, is the first thing to remember when you're trying to oppose LGBTQ+ rights. She won, and it felt like a victory for five year old me, too.

Somewhere between five and 28, I discovered that I could be quite popular with the women — and I discovered my political bent, much earlier than women discovered me. From the 'gender studies' bookshelves of Borders bookstore, Wheelock Place Singapore, I and dozens of other young queer kids camped out, daily, devouring all of the books we could not afford; reading everything about feminism, at first, then what it would take to biologically and legally have a wife and a child.

At that time, the idea of all of that was as alien to me as the content on the scifi shelves: how, in any universe, was this going to be possible? I kept reading, anyway.

So when Edith Windsor won for us the ultimate right, that I did not imagine possible in my lifetime (for, in all of my fantasies and estimates, being able to marry a woman was something I thought I would do in secret, and / or when I was dying, which is kind of the same thing) — I was ecstatic.

That is where my problems begin.

For in 2013, I was a muck. I was, so to speak, in the throes of a great many bad, terrible, awful decisions. My political self was not separate, then, from my personal self — in some ways, it still isn't. But I had never seen shit. I had, up until that point, had the luxury of only knowing unconditional, selfless, incredible love. My family was intact, and they loved me in spite of my awful decisions. My romantic life, was, hitherto, messy, but largely positive. I thought I knew everything.

I thought, also, that marriage was a political decision; that everything else would follow. How could I have known any differently? The only queer people I knew who had gotten married had gotten married in secret, without ever telling their families, in acts of what seemed like bravery (in hindsight, all of them had extremely religious families), in unions that were never acknowledged by the countries they lived in, the country I call home. I didn't know any better.

164 weeks later, on a papan in Bali

What are your traumas?

What makes you anxious?

What can I do, when you are anxious or upset, to make you feel better?

Why did you do the thing that you did?

Who do you think you will become?

What drives you?

What are you looking for?

How will we deal with you being in Reno, at some point in the future, to undo the thing that you did back when you had a different perspective on life and love?

A woman, a near stranger to me, asked, never once inserting herself into my story. For the first time, I had answers. For the first time, she wanted to listen, and to be a part of my story, in spite of the deadweight I had shackled myself to.

I had 164 weeks to take a good, hard look at how to be better. In that time, I learned that one should never marry a person who tells you they will hurt themselves and others if you didn't. I learned that if you were to ever be in a situation where someone pulls out a tool that can kill you and puts it to your throat, you walk the fuck away. I learned that if substances are involved, you run as fast as you can. I learned that even if I care very much about mental illness, it's not my fucking problem anymore if you try to kill me. I learned that people don't care about violence if a woman does it. I learned that the police don't care about violence if your country is so patriarchal they think it's the same as just two housemates having an argument about a salad. That even when a woman dies, the newspapers are going to call it the murder of a best friend. I learned that as I'm having my life flashing before me, for the first time, that I didn't want to be the dead best friend.

Thousands of dollars of therapy later, I am here in Reno, Nevada. I spend my days cycling, drinking coffee, cooking. I ran the fastest miles I've ever run since I left school today, and in a way it was like running to freedom, like running to a younger, more innocent me. I ran the miles to the courier service at the airport, I ran to pickup the documents I will soon file, I ran away from it feeling freer and light, like I haven't, in 164 weeks.

On Monday, I will have the luxury of leaving this city with a document with the words, "it has been decreed.." on it. It will be the best piece of paper in my life, more than the college degree I paid a lot of money for. It will be the start of the rest of my life. It will be the erasure of a brief moment in my life where 'love' felt like pain, where 'devotion' felt like a menial chore, where 'keeping the person you're with alive' felt like a lonely, one way street.

The homophobic among you probably think, oh, all queer relationships are like that — but that would be akin to asking you to imagine yourself married to the sort of person you hear nightmares about at Chinese New Year, then congratulate yourself for not marrying. It's like that, but worse.

The cynical among you may be tempted to think, oh, that's what marriage is about — disappointment. But that would be akin to asking you to marry anyone at all, even the best for you, and having you find it a disappointing venture. I don't need to change your mind, and neither do you.

6 weeks later. I've had a crazy, fun time. I've met the best people. I've met the best dogs. Everyone, from the diner lady to the beer shop I go to to the DHL person is incredibly invested in my freedom. There's not been a moment in the last 164 weeks where I haven't thought, what is life? Love? Marriage? Family? And I am incredibly lucky that I have the opportunity to do it all over again, this time — when I know how to ride a bicycle, the bicycle isn't falling apart and threatening to throw me into a ravine, the tandem rider I've got travels at the same speed and doesn't even mind my farts. And we've got the absolute best bicycle that's ever been built. And the best of pretty much everything. She's my best friend, too, and there's no need for air quotes.