“Am I in circulation or in vegetation?”
One might wish it were a cruel,
cruel joke, but it isn’t. A write-up recently appeared in The Sunday Times,
entitled ‘Active While Single: It’s OK to be single but it’s not OK to be
passive’. In it, single Singaporeans are encouraged to put themselves out
there; in other words, “circulate”.
It reads like a bizarre nightmare
involving an over-zealous auntie at Chinese New Year, but it’s actually a
sponsored piece by the Social Development Network, the government-linked
matchmaking/dating organisation.
Written by Dazzling Chong – whose
personal website promises that she will “make you laugh with her wit” and “help
you with her insight” – the piece is out of this world. “I am all for action
and ready for procreation,” she declares, referring to all the “unborn babies”
and the “time bomb” in her ovaries.
It would be absolutely hilarious
if it weren’t so outrageous at the same time. The piece has zero respect for
personal choice; it does not even stop for a moment to consider the possibility
that there are some people who are single because they like it that way. It
automatically assumes that if you are single, if you are alone reading books on
a holiday, you are sad and deprived, and doing yourself a disservice. It
assumes that all women want to be a “SG New Independent Princess”, whatever
that is.
It is a maddening piece of
badly-written fiction, only it’s endorsed by the government.
The message in the piece was
nothing new. The government wants babies, and is flinging money at the problem,
paying people to write, to campaign, to cajole Singaporeans to punch some kids
out. Throughout all these efforts they have forgotten that Singaporeans have
the right to choose whether they want to remain single or not, and it’s really
no one else’s business.
What makes it really worrying is
that the piece was written with Focus on the Family Singapore. Focus on the Family
is a conservative, evangelical organisation that originated in the USA. It is
famously anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, anti-divorce and anti-pre-marital sex,
advocating for abstinence-only sexual education and the enforcing of strong
gender roles. It’s troubling to find such a group – which has been criticised
and described as a “hate group” – in Singapore, but even more troubling to find
that the government is actually willing to collaborate and let them play a role
in social engineering.
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