The history and
subculture surrounding
Transgender people in Singapore is substantial.
Not immediately apparent to Singapore's mainstream society is the
fact that the
gay community sees itself as a
totally separate entity from the
transgender communities (often also referred to
as "
transvestite and
transsexual" communities). They are individual
subcultures with many different priorities and concerns.
History
National service
National service was implemented in
1967, whereby all 18-year old males were required to train
full-time for two or two-and-a-half years, depending on their
educational attainment.
Transgender was
listed as a condition in a
Singapore Armed Forces (SAF)
'Directory of Diseases' and recruits who outed themselves to the
examining doctors at the
Central
Manpower Base (CMPB) at
Deport Road
had their 'deployability' denied in sensitive positions. They were
classified as Category 302 personnel, downgraded to a Personnel
Employment Status of C or E and assigned only non-combat roles at
military bases.
Early sex reassignment surgery
As Singaporean gynaecological surgeons became more skillful,
leaders in the field like Prof. S
Shan
Ratnam were authorised to perform
Sex reassignment surgery
male-to-female (SRS) at
Kandang Kerbau Hospital. The first
such operation in Asia took place in Singapore in July 1971.
However, before patients could go under the knife, they first had
to subject themselves to an exhaustive battery of tests and be
given a clean psychological bill of health by chief academic
psychiatrist Prof.
Tsoi Wing Foo.
Legal reform
In 1973, Singapore legalized
sex-reassignment surgery. A policy
was instituted to enable post-operative transsexual people to
change the legal gender on their identity cards (but not their
birth certificates) and other documents which flowed from that.
There was no specific provision in the statutes which allowed the
Registrar to do this, so it existed probably only at the level of a
policy directive. However, for over 20 years, this policy seemed to
have operated smoothly.
Further developments in sex reassignment institutions
Later, the
more technically-demanding sex reassignment surgery
female-to-male was also offered at Kandang Kerbau Hospital and at
Alexandra
Hospital
, performed by gynecologists such as Dr.
Ilancheran. A Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) and Gender
Reassignment Surgery Clinic were set up at the National
University Hospital
two decades later. It was headed by Prof. S
Shan Ratnam until his retirement in
1995, after which leadership passed to his nephew, Dr. Anandakumar.
In fact, for 30 years, Singapore was one of the world leaders in
SRS, performing more than 500 such operations. This gave a new
lease on life to the many transgender individuals whose bodies did
not match their gender identity. As one consequence of this, Bugis
Street and Johore Road started to become populated with a range of
transgender people from transvestites to
iatrogenic intersex
individuals to fully transformed women.
In the 1970s, a well-known
transsexual
model was occasionally featured in
Her
World magazine.
Legalization of transgender marriage
Since the mid-1970s, post-operative
transsexual people had been discreetly lobbying
to be given the right to get married to opposite-sex spouses. In
1996, a bill was presented before the
Parliament of Singapore and the
Women's Charter amended to read:
- Avoidance of marriages between persons of same sex.
- (1) A marriage solemnized in Singapore or elsewhere between
persons who, at the time of the marriage, are not respectively male
and female shall be void.
- (2) It is hereby declared that, subject to sections 5, 9, 10,
11 and 22, a marriage solemnized in Singapore or elsewhere between
a person who has undergone a sex re-assignment procedure and any
person of the opposite sex is and shall be deemed always to have
been a valid marriage.
- (3) For the purpose of this section
- (a) the sex of any party to a marriage as stated at the time of
the marriage in his or her identity card issued under the National
Registration Act (Cap. 201) shall be prima
facie evidence of the sex of the party; and
- (b) a person who has undergone a sex reassignment procedure
shall be identified as being of the sex to which the person has
been reassigned.
- (4) Nothing in subsection (2) shall validate any such marriage
which had been declared by the High Court before 1 May 1997 to be
null and void on the ground that the parties were of the same
sex.
The minister moving the bill argued that since 1973, the
government's intention was for people who had changed gender/sex to
live a life according to their new gender, including the right to
marry. Through an oversight, the law relating to marriage had not
been re-aligned with the official policy to recognise sex
reassignment surgery. Now that the courts had illuminated this
inconsistency after a landmark case in which a woman sought and won
the annulment of her marriage to a
transman
(Lim Ying v Hiok Kian Ming Eric), it was necessary to amend the
Women's Charter to ensure that the original intent was not
undermined. Transgender people were officially granted their wish
on 24 January 1996 via an announcement by
MP Abdullah
Tarmugi without much public fanfare or opposition.
Closure and reopening of the GIC
The Gender
Identity Clinic (GIC)at the National University Hospital quietly closed in 2001. The official
explanation was that the gynecologist in charge had left for
private practice, and without him, the clinic did not have the
skills to perform SRS. However, as early as 1987, the Ministry of
Health had been directing hospitals to stop doing such operations
on foreigners. It also discouraged them for Singaporeans, saying
'the increased danger of
AIDS with such
patients poses unnecessary risk to hospital staff'.
This dismayed transgender people seeking to have their operations
performed locally. The online edition of the now-defunct newspaper
Project Eyeball carried out a survey
in June 2001 asking, "Should
sex-change operations be resumed in
Singapore?" 39% of respondents said, "Yes, they are people with
valid medical needs, like infertile couples" and 35% said, "Why
not? It is legal here, as are
transsexual marriages". The results showed that
Singaporeans were generally quite supportive.
The transgender community petitioned for the GIC to be reopened and
were successful, with the clinic discreetly resuming it services in
2003, helmed by Dr. Ilancheran.
However, owing to the discrimination against
transgender people in Singapore even within some segments of the
medical community, the high financial outlay involved and the
necessity for psychological clearance, many preferred to have their
operations performed sans the hassles in Bangkok
, which had
by then become the première centre for SRS.
Transgender Culture
Bugis Street
One of Singapore's most famous tourist meccas since the 1950s,
renowned internationally for its nightly parade of
flamboyantly-dressed
transwomen, Bugis
Street attracted hordes of
Caucasian gawkers
who had never witnessed Asian queens in full regalia.
The latter would tease, cajole and sit on visitors' laps or pose
for photographs for a fee. The amount of revenue that they raked in
was considerable, providing a shot in the arm for the tourism
industry. Veterans recall that the notorious drinking section began
at
Victoria Street, and
proceeded west to
Queen
Street. Halfway between Victoria and Queen Streets, there was
an intersecting lane parallel to the main roads, also lined with
al fresco bars. There was a
well-patronised
public toilet with a
flat roof of which there are archival photos, complete with
jubilant rooftop transwomen. The earliest published description of
Bugis Street found by
Yawning Bread as
a place of great gender diversity was in the book "Eastern Windows"
by Ommaney, F.D. (1960. London:Longmans. pp. 39–45). Ommaney
did not date specifically his description of the street, but his
book made clear that he was in Singapore from 1955 to 1960.
In the mid-1980s, Bugis Street underwent major
urban redevelopment into a retail
complex of modern shopping malls, restaurants and nightspots mixed
with regulated back-alley roadside vendors.
Underground digging to
construct the Bugis MRT
station
prior to that also caused the upheaval and
termination of the nightly transgender sex bazaar culture, marking
the end of a colourful and unique era in Singapore's
history. Tourist and local lamentation of the loss sparked
attempts by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (STPB) to attempt
to recreate some of the old sleazy splendour by staging contrived
"Ah Qua shows" on wooden platforms, but these artificial
performances failed to pull in the crowds. They were abandoned
after a short time.
Bugis
Street was immortalised in an English-language film of the same
name, made, ironically, by a Hong Kong
film company which did employ some local talent in
its production.
Johore Road
Formerly located between and parallel to
Queen Street and
Victoria Street, and bisected by
Ophir Road, Johore Road was the less
well-known cousin of its glamourous counterpart,
Bugis Street, just a stone's throw away. It was
the seedy haunt of transgender prostitutes who solicited sex from
locals, away from the glare of Western tourists. No photographs or
media attention were focused on this street of ill-repute; only a
no-frills approach to an economic exchange.
It was one of the few roads to be completely erased from the map of
Singapore after a fire in the late 90s, to be replaced by an
unnamed park next to the Bugis MRT station and the
Victoria Street Wholesale
Centre.
Boom Boom Room
Boom Boom Boom was Singapore's only
drag
queen cabaret nightclub and thought by many also to be
Singapore's only real national institution in the same uninhibited
spirit as the original
Bugis Street.
It is the
namesake of John Lee Hooker's
legendary blues club in San Francisco
, shooting to international fame when the postmodernist magazine Wallpaper called it "our top pick for a good
night out in all of Asia!"
Originally
established by owner Alan Koh in 1993 at 4
New Bugis Street in Bugis Village, it later relocated on 2 April
2000 to the second floor of the old 2-storey Chui Eng Free School schoolhouse at
130-132 Amoy Street, Far East Square (10 min walk from the
Raffles Place
MRT Station
). The new venue, which was reputed to have
the best
Singapore Sling in town,
had a restaurant downstairs for informal and outdoor dining.
Its overwhelming attraction were the risqué comedy routines by
local
drag superstar
Kumar who took no-holds-barred digs at
topics close to the hearts of Singaporeans. He was aided by his
coterie of flamboyant, dazzlingly costumed, cross-dressing backups,
nubile toyboys and other straight stand-up comedian/comedienne
friends.
The first performance debuted on 18 Aug 2000. There were 2 shows
each night and outrageous wisecracks, in raw
Singlish which made the banter difficult for
tourists to understand, were interspersed with
DJs playing the latest chart tunes. Members of the
audience sitting next to the stage ran the highest risk of being
drawn into the performance. It was patronised by a largely
heterosexual audience who danced wildly during
the intervals, but Tuesday nights were
gay with
access granted to password holders only.
It closed after 12 years on 15 Jan 2005, reportedly to enable its
artists to move on to fresh creative pursuits. However, many
thought other reasons were that the shows were getting stale, the
drag queens were getting old (
Kumar was 36) with no fresh blood to
carry the torch and the existing ones not having what it took, and
the club's poor location.
It spawned a spoof
version called the Bang Bang Room at
Changi
Village
which held late night performances every
weekend.
Desker Road vicinity
A well-known area for men seeking the services of non-transsexual
women prostitutes in the
Serangoon or
Little India area for
decades, it attracted many of the transgender street-walkers from
nearby
Johore Road after the latter was
erased from the map by a fire in the late 1990s.
Unlike
their genotypically-female
government-regulated counterparts who are on display, usually
seated on armchairs or sofas in well-lit rooms, reminiscent of a
low-class back-lane version of Amsterdam
, the transwomen of
Desker Road, in contrast, cruise while
standing or strolling. This is done to render their
activities, which are considered illegal, less vulnerable to
vice squad raids. The seedy atmosphere of
the whole vicinity has largely disappeared due to massive
redevelopment around
Mustafa
Centre.
Changi Village has been popular with
transwomen since the early 1990s and the straight
men who go there to ogle at them, chat them up or use their
services.
Woodlands Town Garden is a "heartland" park smack in the middle of
a Housing Development Board satellite town which has recently
gained notoriety for the activities of transvestites, some of whom
reportedly rather aggressively solicit paid sex from casual
passers-by.
Gold Dust
Located
on level 2 of the rear block of Orchard Towers
along Orchard Road
, it is Singapore's second drag queen cabaret
nightclub, a joint venture between Kumar, and partner Gwen Koh, who also owns the 3 Monkeys Restaurant in Orchard
Towers. Together, they spent $50,000 to open the
venue in July 2005, 6 months after the closure of
Boom Boom Room.
Aiming for the high-end market, Gold Dust boasts professional
dancers with flamboyant
mardi gras-type
costumes, and real women dancing alongside drag performers. Kumar's
trademark provocative jokes are still the main focus, but now
framed in a classier and more streamlined show.
Kumar aims to capture
the cozy feel and stylish look of New York
-style theatre
bars. Thus, the club has no dance floor and all the
chairs and tables face the stage. It can hold 180 people, and has
the feel of a 1970s glam
disco, updated for
the new generation. Instead of young National Servicemen and
students, who formed a significant part of the
Boom Boom Room clientéle, Gold Dust intends
to target a slightly more upper-crust crowd.
The main aim of the
theatre bar is to
showcase talent. In addition to the cabaret dances and stand-up
comedy staples, it is considering expanding the shows to include
mime, monologues, plays and singing.
Partner Kumar decided to open the venture because he needed a
steady income stream, as well as a home base for his stand-up
performances.
Although the bar is located in the back
block of Orchard
Towers where Harry's Bar and
Jason's supermarket reside, some
felt that the idea of a bar next to the infamous '4 floors of
whores' may not appeal to some patrons. However, Kumar felt
that Orchard
Towers was always known to be a controversial place, and
since he was also a controversial performer who pushed the
boundaries, it made sense for the bar to be based
there.'
For the first time, Kumar's show incorporates two female
professional dancers,
Samantha Kan and
Aslinda . There were only male dancers at
the
Boom Boom Room. He always felt
that the latter was lacking something and now he realised that it
was girls.
Chinatown Caberat is a drag queen cabaret opened in 2006 by
entrepreneur Max Lim at Ann Siang Hill.
Transgender in Malay Culture
There is far less information available on
transmen, that is female-to-male
transgender people, as they are much less
visible. It should also be noted that not all
transwomen casually solicit sex or prostitute
themselves, although it is sometimes the only paid work available
to them.
See also
References
Further reading
- Sisterhood by Leona Lo (Select Books, 2003, ISBN 981-04-7198-X)-
a personalised emotional exposé of the local transvestite and transsexual community by an intellectual
transwoman herself.
- My Sisters: Their
Stories by Leona Lo and Lance Lee (Viscom Editions Pte Ltd)
- Cries from Within by
S. Shan Ratnam; Victor H. H. Goh and
Tsoi Wing Foo- a tome on sex-reassignment surgery and its attendant
psychological considerations by two eminent gynaecologists and a
psychiatrist.
- "The Mak Nyahs: Malaysian Male to Female Transsexuals"
(Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2002, viii + 175pp., ISBN
981-210-209-4) - a large body of information on the Malay
transgender, transvestite and transsexual communities amassed by
sociologist Teh Yik Koon from the School
of Social Development, University Utara Malaysia.
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
