Are my parents gay friendly? Good question.

Hello! Further to my last post, one of my readers has pointed out that my parents are gay-friendly enough to "not mind" the fact that I am gay and have a partner (I'm married in fact, yes same sex couples in the UK can get married - welcome to the civilized world people). In case you haven't noticed, yes I'm gay and quite openly so - like everyone knows I'm gay and I do talk about my sexuality sometimes in my blog, my partner often makes an appearance in my vlog posts on my Youtube channel. But are my parents really that gay friendly that they have embraced an openly gay son? Well, yes and no, I don't think it's that straight forward - real life presents us a rather messy situation instead.

My parents are silent on the issue of my sexuality.

Indeed, I've visited Singapore many times with my partner over the years and we stay with my parents when in town. They have welcomed him into their house and have been nice to him. Now many will tell me that I shouldn't take that for granted for many Singaporean parents wouldn't even go that far - I actually do know of two Singaporean gay men with European partners but they will never go as far as to introduce their European partners to their parents as their parents would not want to meet them. For that, I have to thank my sisters - I think they went quite far in controlling any kind of reaction from my mother when I came out years ago: I think my parents realized that no amount of tantrums or drama is going to change my sexuality - you know me, I am not the kind of person to give in to emotional blackmail. I'm glad I came out over 20 years ago when my parents were younger and more reasonable then - they seemed to have become increasingly cranky and senile with age. Having said that, they don't talk about my sexuality at all because they can't deal with it. Even when my sister brings up the topic, they still find it rather hard to talk about it and my sister ends up just feeding them information with often virtually no response on their part.

You see the problem with many people is that they like to lump people into two simple groups: black and white, good and bad, gay vs straight, gay friendly vs homophobic. As explained in my previous post, real life is messy, very messy and we often have to deal with the shades of grey between white and black. Thus when it comes to my parents and the issue of being gay-friendly, well they're somewhere in between the two extremes in the grey bit in the middle where they don't really have much on an opinion on the issue at all But let me explain it to you like this: you know I've never been close to my parents, this started from when I was like 10 and the older I got, the further we drifted apart. Today, I barely even talk to them unless it is via my sister on Skype - all communication is channeled by my dear sister who is making a genuine and concerted effort to make sure my parents and I are still talking. Bless her, she is such an angel and always the peacekeeper in the family, what would we do without her? My parents and I are so distant that they don't know what I do for a living - how many parents out there actually have no idea what their children do for a living? 

Are my parents 'accepting' for the right reasons?

But imagine if I told you this: did you know that your neighbour's brother-in-law has a colleague who is gay and has a boyfriend? How would you react to that? You'd probably shrug your shoulders and not care either way whether you're gay friendly or homophobic because that gay colleague in question is just way too far removed from you to be of any interest - if it was someone closer to you, say if it was your neighbour or your colleague who's gay, someone you actually see all the time and spend time with regularly, then you might care enough to have a reaction to that person's sexuality (be it a positive or a negative reaction). Saying that my parents 'don't mind' that I'm gay is probably the wrong choice of words - they 'don't care' that I am gay perhaps, but the Hokkien words 'bochup' comes to mind. You see, I'm so distant and removed from their lives that whether I am gay or not is really not that important to them - since it doesn't affect them, they don't have an opinion on the issue. Imagine for a moment that I'm straight - I married a woman and have two kids, well guess what? Even if that was the case, I would still be raising those kids in London and they wouldn't be able to communicate with grandpa in Singapore as grandpa in Singapore wouldn't speak English and I'd deliberately make sure my kids are not taught any Mandarin just to spite my parents. I guess the point is not so much my sexuality, but rather we are just so incredibly distant that it wouldn't have mattered either way. 

What were my parents like when I was a child, on the issue of gay rights? Well my mother had been downright homophobic, saying things like "god created AIDS to punish the gays". I used to argue with her but it was pointless - she isn't educated enough to understand what AIDS was to begin with and she was too proud to listen to another person's opinion. We went to quite a homophobic church as well and the pastor made his views on sexuality very clear every Sunday (if I may point out, I used to go to church back in Singapore but I am an atheist today). So how do you get from there to her being 'accepting' of me being so openly gay then? Well, let me compare it to the situation I have right now in my house - the water pressure has been dropping over the last few weeks, something is wrong. I can still take a shower, run a bath, use my washing machine and dishwasher etc but it is worrying and I don't quite know whom to turn to. My partner said he'll take care of it and make a few phone calls - I've left him to deal with it as I really can't be asked or bothered to take on one more challenge at this point in time, I guess I just have to much on my plate at the moment to have to deal with the whole water pressure issue. If I come home from work one day and there's no water, then I'll panic and take charge but as long as I can get some water, I'm happy enough to ignore the problem,

As long as I can still get water out of the tap...

As for my sexuality, I think it's simply something my mother has chosen to ignore all these years. You'll be amaze how some people can choose to ignore something and see what they wanna see - I remember once talking about my sexuality quite openly for the first time when I was about 18, my two sisters just rolled their eyes and said, "yeah right, tell me something I didn't know already. I would be surprised if you turned out to be straight." Like I said, I am close to my two sisters and they know me well enough to have known that I was gay all along. My mother however, reacted with total shock to the point where even my father was like, come on, surely you could have guessed, like seriously you're really that shocked? Have you not observed your own son in the last 18 years? Either my mother is doing exactly what I am doing with the water pressure in the house at the moment or there's another plausible theory: my mother has no concept of what it means to be gay. For her generation, they may be familiar with the 'bapoks' in old Bugis Street - where the drag queens and transgender artists performed cabaret. I am a man who has sex with men - not a man who has any desire to become a woman. There's a huge difference between gay man and a transgender person: now the impression that she got from the Bugis Street drag queens is simply that these people had the brains of a woman but the body of a man, thus they are trapped in the wrong body, that's why these men want to put on make up, wigs, dresses and high heels to look like a woman. That was her only concept of what being 'gay' meant. 

But the vast majority of gay men don't actually have any desires to change their gender - they are simply attracted to members of the same sex, rather than members of the opposite sex. However, in Singapore, most gay men usually keep a very low profile and are in the closet because it is generally quite a conservative society. So the only representations of the LGBT community in the media tend to be the stereotypical images of the flamboyant and loud drag queens. I remember when I was a kid and we went to see one of those lady-boy shows in Pattaya whilst on holiday in Thailand, my mother said, "we are going to see a Thai gay show." That's not quite correct of course, the lady-boys in Pattaya are trasngender women, they are men who are in the process of getting gender reassignment surgery in order to become women. Well, that's what my mother thinks gays are and I can assure you that I look nothing like a Thai lady-boy - they usually look absolutely gorgeous whilst I am in fact a middle aged, balding man. 

But you see, in the UK, we are so used to seeing openly gay men in public life. We have so many openly gay politicians - from MPs to ministers, one's sexuality is rarely not an issue in politics. It's perfectly fine to be openly gay, but it is not acceptable to pretend to be a heterosexual, monogamous family man whilst sleeping around with gay prostitutes behind your wife's back. We are quite used to seeing quite ordinary looking middle aged men who look more like boring accountants than flamboyant drag queens being totally open about their sexuality. Indeed, any Singaporean who consumes enough news and media from the West will realize that too - but of course, that has to come mainly through the internet and as for my mother, she is not on the internet at all. She is quite resistant to adapting to new technology hence she only consumes news via local Singaporean news papers and TV channels which tend to shy away from reporting any gay issues altogether. So perhaps there's a part of her that still is in denial that her son is not gay simply because I look more like a boring, balding middle aged accountant rather than a flamboyant drag queen with a wig, a face full of make up and pink feather boa.

Indeed in many Asian cultures, they naturally equate being gay to being quite effeminate or being a sissy, the image of an ultra-masculine gay man seems to be something rooted in Western gay culture. There is definitely a correlation between the acceptance of gays and the image of gays in a society: in very conservative countries, there is such a stigma associated with being identified as gay that most gay men would hide very deep in the closet, so the only gays who are ever visible are the ones who are transgender and fit the stereotype of Pattaya lady-boy. Whereas in more liberal Western countries, gay men are less concerned about being very open about their sexuality, that's why you gay men of all shapes and sizes being quite visible in the media rather than just your hyper-effeminate lady-boy stereotype. Take Sir Alan Duncan for example - an openly gay politician in the UK who is a minister and has held various equally important ministerial positions in government. He's a grey-haired respectable looking 59 year old man who couldn't look more different from your Pattaya lady-boy. I think that he is an excellent role model in the gay community here in the UK - but would an openly gay man manage to not just enter politics but become a minister in a South-East Asian country? No way, that seems highly unlikely - that's why when we think about gay men, we do think about Sir Alan Duncan in the UK, but in SE Asia, the first image that comes to mind would be Pattaya lady-boys. 

If my parents and I were close, then perhaps I would have taken the effort to educate my mother about what it means for me to be gay, how I can be in a relationship with another man - but they are not interested in finding out about that, the same way they are not interested in finding out about any other aspect of my life. Hypothetically speaking, if my nephew does come out as gay in the future, then they might turn to me and ask me a few questions given that my partner and I are the only gay men they know. I'd like to think that having a gay son is enough reason for my parents to want to find out about the whole gay issue - but apparently, it just isn't enough to force them to do some research, to learn more about the issue. They still knows very little and has not made any effort after all these years to try to find out more. Anything they know is probably quite inaccurate and unhelpful as it would pander to the worst stereotypes.

I think the only thing that bugs my mother is being embarrassed if more people found out that I'm gay (boy did I enjoy telling her that I'm totally out on my blog). Like for example, when I told a neigbour that I'm gay - she got furious, she didn't trust that neighbour. She thought that neighbour had a big mouth and would tell everyone in Ang Mo Kio, that somehow it would reflect badly on her. Duh. I don't care who knows I'm gay but she does? Go figure. I've also heard her refer to my partner as my 'friend' when speaking to her siblings - I'm out to my cousins and everyone of my generation, but as for my mother's siblings (who are in their 60s to 80s), I really don't care what my elderly uncles and aunties think and if my parents are that uneasy about telling them their son is gay, I don't care either way. They are the one who have to face her siblings in Singapore all the time whilst I'm in London and barely ever see them - so I choose to be indifferent on that issue. But when I do visit Singapore with my partner, we stay at my parents house and they have no qualms about welcoming him. Likewise when they arrive in a few weeks, they're going to be staying with my partner and I. They actually get on remarkably well with my partner - they think he is very polite and is impressed with the way he treats them with respect. They also respect the fact that he is very rich and has made a lot of money. 

Frankly, I don't have the perfect solution either.

But the problem goes back even further - you see, I don't even think my mother ever considered what she wanted for herself in life: did she want to be a mother? Did she understand what being a parent meant, especially if you don't get the child you wanted? Oh look, I have a son but he turns out to be gay, what do I do then? You see, my mother's view on the family are painfully traditional, patriarchal and sexist. She has a sister who was about two years younger than her and they were always in competition: who would get married first, who would have the first son, who would get the first grandson. And I'm like WTF, not only do you define the role of the woman as a wife and mother, but you totally disregard daughters and granddaughters as part of that equation? How can women accept such a sexist, patriarchal definition of their role in society? But my mother and her sister are so traditionally Chinese that they accepted this definition without even once questioning it. The problem arose when she finally got herself a son and then it hits her: nobody actually gave her any lessons on parenting 101 and now she has three children: two daughters and a son. Maybe at some level she realized, damn I had no idea parenting would be this hard - why is that son of mine being so extremely difficult to handle when my two daughters are so obedient? Maybe at some level she just thought, fuck it, do what the hell you want, be gay, heck go do an Annabel Chong and be a porn star, do whatever the hell you want, well screw you, see if I give a shit, I never wanted to be a mother of so many bloody children in the first place, I was just pressured into this by my family and culture, I can't be asked to deal with this, fuck off. 

Did my mother actually think that? Who knows. All I know is that she never actually cared that much when I did come out to her, sure there was a period of denial but I suppose I must be grateful that she spared me the drama that some of my other gay friends faced when they came out. I remember how my friend Daniel was homeless for a while after he came out to his parents and they literally kicked him out of the house - his brother had to sneak him his clothes and other belongings whilst he stayed with friends. Furthermore, I had never allowed her to get her way with me - my sister expressed an interest in gymnastics but my mother put her foot down and said, no way too dangerous. So my sister just took no for an answer and never tried the sport. Whereas for me, my approach was always to get whatever I wanted without even bothering to seek my mother's permission or opinion - I guess at some stage she realized she had zero influence over me anyway, so why even try since I was nothing like my sisters who actually obeyed my mother. Thus a combination of "bochup-ness" and her lack of understanding of what it meant to be gay probably led to a far more low-key response from my mother to my coming out, rather than them being great advocates of gay rights.

Actually my parents know precious little about gay rights issues.

So, I hope this explains the stance of my parents when it comes to my sexuality. Life is complex. think about the shades of grey between white and black. You have so many different kinds of parents who are neither super gay friendly and extremely homophobic. Somewhere in the middle of that scale are those who are indifferent, or as we say in Hokkien, bochup. I suppose I have to remind myself that things could be so much worse - or should I? I do have so many other gay friends who parents are so gay friendly and they have such great relationship with their parents. So what do I compare my situation to then? What I compare it to can determine how I feel about the situation - given my parents' indifference, I suppose I just don't really care either way, I'm equally indifferent. I hope this clears up the issue, let me know if you have any other questions about this issue and I'd be happy to talk about it. Thanks for reading.