Cruising, space and surveillance: decolonizing sexuality in Singapore

ABSTRACT

The policing of homosexuality in Singapore through legislation and public policy are imbued with colonial legacies that have enshrined heteronormative values within its public sphere. However, communities within new online spaces in Singapore disrupt the heteronormative surveillance efforts deployed by the state within public, family and political landscapes. Through an analysis of a local online forum dedicated to cruising this article unpacks how local gay men resist, negotiate and deploy surveillance techniques to navigate these heteronormative structures and cruise safely in Singapore. This article demonstrates how online spaces have become part of an everyday resistance that characterize modern-day efforts to decolonize sexuality in Singapore.

KEYWORDS:

• Cruising
• decolonization
• resistance
• cyberspace
• surveillance
• risk management

Introduction

Sex is a community building agent: ‘For gay men, sex, that most powerful instrument of attachment and arousal, is also an agent of communion’. (Low, 1995, p. 44; Seidman, 1991, p. 187)

In Singapore, cruising in public spaces such as parks and toilets peaked in the 1980s, where gay men patronized areas such as Hong Lim Park and Raffles Place seeking sexual encounters. These activities saw a decline in the 1990s, as the state began clamping down on homosexuality by conducting raids on gay establishments and deploying undercover police officers within these spaces (Heng, 2001; Low, 1995), utilizing strategies in line with the rise of surveillance as the key technology of spatial regulation (Mele, 2017). As a result, the gay community has become increasingly fearful of expressing their sexual citizenship openly and despite the growing resistance by a handful within the community, research suggests that gay men have become increasingly ‘private’ when cruising in public spaces in order to ameliorate these risks (Chua, 2014; Radics, 2013). As Low (1995, p. 6) notes, public cruising ‘operate[s] within hidden gay time and space’, only visible to those who have the ‘necessary (gay) cultural competence’ to identify other cruisers.

This has impacted cruising in several ways. Low’s (1995) in-depth analysis of cruising culture in Singapore found that surveillant pressures resulted in cruisers deploying rudimentary strategies of risk management to avoid being caught. For example, by opting to cruise at night due to the ‘added security of darkness’, they altered the meanings behind physical spaces, by using time to manipulate the normative function of these spaces (Low, 1995, p. 12; Yuen, 1996). Yet others have found that these earlier instances of cruising have developed into resistance movements born out of the Internet (Chua, 2014). Online forums and websites that provide information on the local gay scene has resulted in a growing resistance movement locally (Chua, 2014; Tan & Lee, 2007). In general, these spaces offer many advantages. They serve as informational cornerstones and sites of respite for gay individuals to reconnect and build community in ways that contribute to alternative discourses (Ashford, 2009; Fuchs, 2017; Tan & Lee, 2007). Additionally, similar to the ‘watch-queens’ who acted as a look-out to warn cruisers about the presence of police officers (Humphreys, 1970), the Internet has become a new mediator in allowing for cruising to flourish (Ashford, 2006; Chua, 2014). However, questions remain as to the impacts of online spaces for cruising in Singapore and how they are used within a context where entrenched heteronormative colonial surveillant assemblages control place and space.

As such, this article presents findings from an online ethnography of local internet forums dedicated to cruising and utilized by members of the gay community in Singapore. This article will unpack the role of surveillance within the interactions amongst forum members. In doing so, we argue that forum members appropriate both the authoritarian and lateral surveillance deployed by the Singaporean state in ways which legitimate and reproduce ‘responsible citizenship’ while reflecting the illiberal pragmatics of survival which characterize gay movements within Singapore. We argue that these acts of surveillance represent part of an ongoing process of decolonizing public spaces in Singapore, as the local gay community attempts to participate in the public sphere by re-appropriating public space for cruising, and reimagining them as ‘sexualized spaces’ (Fraser, 1990; Oswin, 2010, p. 259).

While research has explored post-colonial discourses on sexuality in Singapore, these narratives are often discussed in isolation from other policies that also influence how gay individuals exercise their sexual citizenship (Ho 2012; Radics, 2013). Moreover, while citizens negotiating surveillance is commonly explored within surveillance studies, there is a lacuna of research within the discipline that explores the relationship between sexuality and surveillance within the post-colonial states in the Global South (Ball, Green, Koskela, & Phillips, 2009). Contributing to the growing discourse on the mediated processes of decolonization in the Global South, (Chen, 2018, p. 561; Dasgupta & Dasgupta, 2018), this article will discuss the dialectics between private/public, online/offline and real/cyber in order to highlight the possibilities for decolonization to occur within ‘private’ spaces and one’s everyday lives (Hunt & Holmes, 2015). Furthermore, it will adopt a ‘queer’ perspective by examining how gay men use public space to create ‘new discursive and political spaces in which queer lives can be lived’ (Ball, 2016, p. 34).

This article begins by introducing the historical trajectory of Singapore’s perceptions on sexuality by taking into account its colonial histories and how they have influenced the contemporary marginalization of the local gay community. The following sections will explore the role of surveillance in both marginalizing and excluding the gay community. It will then shift the focus towards understanding the new measures that gay men have undertaken in order to circumvent state surveillance through the negotiation of space. It concludes by presenting research findings from the online ethnography conducted on local sub-forums on cruising activities that illustrate how forums have acted as spaces outside state surveillance and yet within these spaces, still highlight how members utilized state-supported technologies of surveillance to facilitate cruising.

Colonizing sexuality in Singapore

Perceptions towards homosexuality in Southeast Asia have deep colonial roots. In former British colonies such as Hong Kong and Singapore, Victorian values that emphasize the nuclear family have enshrined heteronormativity within the public sphere (Aldrich 2003; Kong, 2012; Peletz 2009). Focusing on Singapore, the imparting of these British values is best represented by a wider colonial project of ‘impart[ing] European (Christian) virtues to “savages” and “heathen[s]”’ (Aldrich, 2003, p. 4; Radics, 2013, p. 66). At the same time, the influx of male labourers in Singapore and the increased policing of homosexuality Britain meant that Southeast Asia became a site for British men to ‘escape the sexual conventions of the old world’ (Lowrie, 2013, p. 43). Whilst morality was actively policed, the presence of brothels and prostitution became a way to manage the sexual desires of both Asian and White men (Peletz, 2009). In spite of this, sexuality was also a key site of the expression of power by the British, where the feminization of Asian men who served as labourers became means of exerting dominance in Singapore (Lowrie, 2013). These power dynamics were clearly evidenced in the differential policing and prosecution of European men for sodomy during this period (Lowrie, 2013). As Radics (2013, p. 76) notes, Section 377A¹ in Singapore’s Penal Code, was ‘highly biased and subject to manipulation’ resulting in lesser convictions for European men due to their status and political influence.

Despite the processes of decolonization that have taken place post-independence, these colonial values have persisted and are evident in Singapore’s exclusion of homosexuality through the criminal law, family and public health policies. This is exemplified in social policies that enshrine heteronormativity through family-making and pro-creation in an attempt to uphold ‘tradition’ and ‘Asian Values’ (Teo, 2011, p. 29). Within local discourses on ‘Asian values’, homosexuality is often constructed as representing the ‘West’, with an emphasis on preserving the more conservative values from the ‘East’ such as heterosexual marriages and filial piety (Ang & Stratton, 2018; Peletz, 2009; Radics, 2013; Teo, 2011; Yulius, Tang, & Offord, 2018). Borrowing from Said (1985), Ang and Stratton (2018) argue that the public discourse on ‘Asian Values’ represents a process of ‘self-orientalizing’ by reproducing racial and cultural binaries that were imparted by the British during their rule. Moreover, Radics (2013, p. 77) argues that ‘re-orientalization’, is evident in Singapore’s incorporation of colonial legislation such as Section 377A that reaffirms the state’s increasingly conservative and heteronormative views towards sexuality, despite not being actively exercised. These legacies are also evident in health policies which heteronormatively surveille and control public space. For example, during the HIV/AIDS crisis, Ho (2012, p. 11) argues that the demolition of Bugis Street due to the ‘fear that transsexuals and transgenders might have contracted HIV/AIDS’, mirrors the isolation of Victorian women suspected of syphilis Victorian England. Despite the Singaporean government’s increasingly relaxed attitude towards homosexuality in recent years, this stance centres around its pursuit for economic progress rather than an acceptance of the gay community. As Tan argues, the gay community is simultaneously rejected for challenging the ideologies of heteronormativity, yet tolerated and ‘grudgingly relied upon by a state anxious to appear sufficiently open-minded in order to attract global capital and talent’ (Tan & Lee, 2007, p. 184). In the following section, surveillance will be explored in greater depth, to understand how it has come to enshrine heteronormativity within the public sphere and regulate sexualities in Singapore.

Within the gaze: the gay community in Singapore

In Singapore, the family is central in normalizing the accepted forms of sexual citizenship as a site for the production of information and a site for discipline (Teo, 2011). The family both incentivizes of heterosexual relationships (Teo, 2011), and exerts a ‘normalizing gaze’ in the values that it purports in order to discipline alternative sexualities (Foucault, 1979, p. 184; Oswin, 2010). This ‘ideological apparatus’, is intertwined with conservative Asian values that characterize state narratives (Tan & Lee, 2007, p. 186), that were partly influenced by its colonial histories that have been enshrined within the family institution (Oswin, 2014). Indeed, Teo (2010, p. 351) describes the heteronormative family policies as providing the ‘rhythm, logic and boundaries that guide the average Singaporean’s life choices’. Apart from reproducing Orientalist connotations of Asian cultures, these policies are also emblematic of the ways in which legislation and social policy substantiate ‘degrees or normality’ to ‘membership’ and concomitantly affirm individual difference (Foucault, 1979, p. 184). To successfully achieve this, Singapore deploys legislation and policy that normalize sexuality by instilling a sense of heteronormativity within public and private spaces (Oswin, 2010).

Through policies that incentivize heterosexual institutions, the family has influenced how relationships are formed with public and private spaces being constructed and regarded as exclusively heterosexual spaces (Oswin, 2010; Teo, 2011; Yuen, 2004). For example, the introduction of new policies such as housing subsidies that incentivize heterosexual marriage, and allowed for heterosexual couples to live in close proximity with their parents, reiterate the importance of ‘family’ in Singapore (Teo, 2011). Moreover, family-centric spaces within residential estates that seek to promote family bonding activities such as playgrounds and gardens (Yuen, 2004). These efforts neatly affirm Singapore’s brand of ‘Asian values’, as a direct response to the increasingly influence of the globalization of Western values and the desire to protect and reaffirm its ‘Asianness’ through moral and cultural conservatism (Ang & Stratton, 2018; Tan & Lee, 2007, p. 186). The implications in the reorganization of public spaces to accommodate the development of a ‘nuclear family’, is best represented by a ‘spatiality of power’ in which power is exercised through the individual, with space becoming a medium to do so (Coleman & Agnew, 2007, p. 330). Through the changes implemented by the Housing Development Board (HDB) in 1960, such as the development of new (and affordable) public housing estates, the creation of new families were made more accessible, whilst also enabling heterosexual couples to maintain ‘Asian traditions’ such as ‘filial piety’ by staying in close proximity with their family members (Teo, 2011, p. 30). Through these means, Oswin (2010, p. 253) argues that these ‘households’ prescribe inherently heterosexual values, which readily excludes not only the gay community, but those who fall outside of these heteronormative boundaries such as ‘single mothers and the unfilial child’.

The demarcation of public space, as the space for normative citizenship and families is also imbricated in the significant investment in community policing and surveillant technologies. As is common in neoliberal contexts, surveillance has played a central part of knowledge production, with both bodies and space becoming sites of information (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). For example, Neighbourhood Police Posts (NPP) in public housing estates have made the police more accessible to residents that facilitated the exchange of information between both parties (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997; Ganapathy, 2000). State discourses surrounding crime control have also revolved around the production of information through surveillance efforts, and making the Singapore Police Force (SPF) more accessible to citizens (Ganapathy, 2000). By building the NPP within residential estates and equipping both the space and its residents with surveillance tools such as CCTV cameras and the right knowledge of how to conduct surveillance, citizens are held responsible for managing crime within their own estates (Ganapathy, 2000; Garland, 2001; Yuen, 2004). Therefore, in Singapore authoritarian modalities of surveillance are complemented by public participation in and support for community based and driven lateral surveillance (Jiow & Morales, 2008). Together, this creates a surveillant assemblage of panoptic and lateral gazing which exemplifies Koskela’s (2011, p. 269) argument that the proliferation of surveillance technologies and the democratization of technology has transformed the surveillant landscape to the point that the public is ‘targeted, resists, plays with or even conducts their own monitoring’.

The amalgamation of both family-centric housing policies and the emphasis placed on surveillance to self-regulate individual behaviour, have shaped how gay men are able to engage in public spaces. As the ‘family’ became central in informing the meanings behind public spaces, the state balances this by practicing a heavy-handed approach towards homosexuality in the 1990s, through the use of legislation and state apparatuses such as the police in order to curb public displays of homosexuality (Chua, 2014). For example, raids of gay venues such as clubs and bars, arrests of gay men cruising in public spaces (Chua, 2014), and the criminalization of anal sex between men normalize heterosexual relations in Singapore and demarcated difference as ‘other’ (Chua, 2014; Teo, 2011). Hence, whilst heterosexuality is normalized within private spaces such as the ‘household’, the policing of homosexuality within public spaces have also served a similar purpose in reproducing colonial values and illustrating the state’s desire to ‘modernize’ itself (Chua, 2014; Oswin, 2010). Therefore, the confluence of legislation and policy is central to the unequal social conditions of the gay community in Singapore (Radics 2013; Teo, 2011). That said, these recent events have also pushed homosexuality into public discourse, with the state engaging in a form of ‘illiberal pragmatism’ to address homosexuality (Yue, 2012, p. 2). By appeasing both conservative and liberal Singaporeans, the state balances between Asian values that espouse the importance of the family in Singapore, and liberal values which ensure that it remains economically relevant (Tan & Lee, 2007; Yue, 2012). Within this arrangement heteronormativity is central to defining how queer relationships are formed and transforming public and private spaces (Oswin, 2010).

Outside the gaze: resisting surveillance

This reproduction of colonial values through space and the restrictions they place on gay men’s participation within the public sphere, have been met with covert forms of mobilization, and careful negotiation (Yue, 2012), where gay men would meet behind closed doors in private forums (Chua, 2014). In Hong Kong, the emphasis placed on enshrining heteronormative values through ‘family’ has resulted in a tension within the ‘family home’ as well as tongzhi ² spaces such as public toilets (Kong, 2012, p. 910). Moreover, the transformation of these spaces as a result of redevelopment efforts through the addition of privacy partitions and the increased risk of police presence, have altered how these spaces are used for cruising (Kong, 2012, p. 908).

Similarly, the impact of exploring the transformation of public spaces within a Singaporean context, has also been explored extensively by others, who have argued that the liminality of public spaces has also been subject to ‘symbolic transformation’ in order to facilitate cruising (Chua, 2014; Heng, 2001; Low, 1995, p. 10; Tan & Lee, 2007). In Singapore, the policing of gay spaces such as parks and beaches in the 1980s have resulted in new ways of utilizing public spaces for cruising, where gay men would use verbal and non-verbal cues that could only be ‘encoded and decoded’ by other gay men in order to cruise whilst remaining hidden to the general ‘public’ (Low, 1995, p. 45).

However, these efforts exist alongside its own resistance strategies which ‘toe the line’ (Chua, 2014, p. 73), without directly opposing the state and its dominant discourses on homosexuality (Tan & Lee, 2007, p. 200). Exemplifying what Puar (2017) refers to as ‘homonationalism’, or:

a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatised, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption. (Duggan, 2002, p. 179)

For example, resistance movements such as ‘Pink Dot’ exemplify a type of ‘homonationalism’ (Puar, 2017), by reproducing Singapore’s ‘Shared Values’ that form its official national rhetoric such as ‘Family as the basic unit of society’, through an emphasis on ‘familial bonds’ and presenting queer individuals as ‘normative sexual subjects’ that are capable of monogamy that disrupts ‘stereotypes of gay promiscuity’ (Lazar, 2017, pp. 430–433). In spite of this, gay men also maintain ‘the “private” nature of physical gatherings while publicizing them on Internet’, by limiting the dissemination of information with regards to these events in order to break away from state surveillance. The implementation of ‘phone trees’, that tasked a member of the gay community to contact a network of other members, relied primarily on the creation of new networks similar to the surveillant assemblage, serving as a means to invite individuals to community events via friends or other members within the community (Chua, 2014, p. 64). This precarious negotiation reflects what Yue (2012) refers to as the ‘illiberal pragmatics of survival’ highlight how conditional tolerance coupled with the open and ongoing legal, political and social denigration reproduces individual, isolated and inconspicuous consumer queer subjectivities.

These negotiations of space and sexuality illustrate their liminal nature, often shifting between ‘public’ and ‘private’ (Low, 1995). The use of space in these contexts re-emphasizes the interconnections between sexuality and space, in that the presence of cyberspace have also served to mediate and overcome the obstacles that may arise within real spaces but not replace it entirely (Hubbard, 2018). This understanding of how space operates in Singapore, with public and private operating in tandem with one another to allow for power to be exercised through the normalization of heterosexuality, illustrates the importance of treating these spaces as political and sexualized (Oswin, 2010). Exploring the use of spaces that exist outside of these heteronormative boundaries, online forums have become integral for the gay community’s participation within public discourses on sexuality, and has allowed for the creative exploration of alternative spaces for resistance (Luger, 2016). The local gay community has found legal loopholes in appropriating these newfound spaces in order to exercise their sexual citizenship and facilitate cruising activities within real (and heteronormative) spaces (Luger, 2016, p. 14).

These forms of ‘pragmatic resistance’ that does not run against the state, but instead alongside it, creates an important context to consider how such spaces are used to subvert surveillance and, furthermore, how surveillance is utilized within online communities (Chua, 2014, p. 146). As noted above, surveillance is no longer something done to communities but it is a tool which – within the wider power structures and political arrangements – can be utilized by citizens (Koskela, 2011). However, Koskela (2011) argues that surveillance can be appropriated by communities to either scrutinize the state and its agents of social control or in ways that meet the State’s needs. In this formulation, surveillance is either exerted from above or resisted from below. This conceptualization of the power dynamics between State and citizen prioritizes resistance which is direct, disruptive and embedded within the dialectic between surveillance and individual freedom and privacy. This makes limited sense within the Singaporean context, which has been described as ‘unapologetically anti-liberal’ in the sense that good governance places emphasis on actions and policies which benefit ‘collective well-being’ rather than individual rights (Chua, 1995, p. 185). Moreover, the homonational pragmatics of survival enacted within the gay community and exemplified through delicate negotiation, progress and pressure highlight the limits of conceptualizing surveillance as something which is either deployed in in the service of authoritarian control or subversive resistance.

In limiting their ability to cruise within public spaces in Singapore, the heightened surveillance and unequal treatment of the gay community through both legislation and policy, have resulted in more creative measures in organizing these resistance efforts (Chua, 2014; Luger, 2015). Networked spaces like online forums have allowed gay men to organize discreetly, incorporating the surveillant assemblage in the creation of new networks to organize themselves (Chua, 2014; Haggerty & Ericson, 2000; Luger, 2015). While the liberatory potentials of such spaces are evident, Ashford (2006, 2009, 2012) argues that new technologies both incorporate and reject state surveillance measures, in order to mitigate the new risks involved whilst cruising. By limiting invitations to community events and controlling the dissemination of information, these measures replicate self-surveillance and self-policing strategies present on online forums dedicated to cruising (Ashford, 2006, 2012; Chua, 2014). These observations offer a more nuanced view towards the sexualization of public spaces, and lay a foundation in understanding how gay men negotiate such spaces with state surveillance in mind (Chua, 2014; Oswin, 2010).

Therefore, online spaces, like community forums raise important questions about how men access public space and negotiate the real risks involved when cruising, behind the safety of their computers (Ashford, 2006). Although the means to cruise have transformed, the factors that have threatened the safety of these activities such as the upholding of ‘family values’ that have transformed the use of public spaces, remain palpable (Chua, 2014; Teo, 2011). Whilst online spaces as sites of resistance have been explored by others (Chua, 2014; Hayes & Ball, 2010), this research examines the convergence in the use of online spaces and real, public spaces in order to participate in various activities from public activism to cruising (Ashford, 2006; Luger, 2015). Contributing to Coleman and Agnew’s (2007) considerations towards the ‘constellation of overlapping and complex relationships’ that encompasses both time and space, the use of online spaces offers a new contribution towards understanding the sexual citizenship of gay men in Singapore. Accounting for the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of state narratives through the deployment of surveillance strategies and adoption of nationalist discourses on ‘family’, this research illustrates the complexities behind understanding gay resistance movements in Singapore (Chua, 2014; Luger, 2015). This analysis explores how gay men have appropriated online spaces to circumvent state surveillance within public spaces, through the formation of new networks, the adoption of their own forms of surveillance measures that mirror those promoted by the state. These findings will subsequently facilitate a broader discussion on current developments in decolonizing sexuality through the queering of public spaces that destabilize normative understandings of sexuality in Singapore.

The research: charting surveillance within queer spaces

Research into queer communities in Singapore have illustrated the influence of the Internet on the increased visibility of gay individuals (Heng, 2001), bridging different segments of these communities for resistance (Chua, 2014), and creating an alternative space for queer individuals to participate within the public sphere (Yue, 2012). Whilst the Internet has been largely attributed to supporting these achievements, online forums and social media have broadened opportunities for collective mobilization (Fuchs, 2017) and the construction homonormative spaces (Ashford, 2009; McLelland, 2002). Ahlm (2017, p. 374) demonstrates this by exploring how Grindr³ introduces a new ‘contested cultural space’ that transcends both digital and physical spaces, affording gay men a greater capacity to shape their own identities within the gay community, and weave between both public and private spaces. Additionally, social-networking applications such as Grindr have also emboldened gay men to be more visible within the public sphere, moving away from discreet forms of communication such as ‘signaling’ for sex (Ahlm, 2017). In Singapore, the Internet has had a similar effect on the queer community, enabling gay men to engage with one another and influencing the way they ‘thought about self-identity and their relationships with others’ (Chua, 2014, p. 163). Apart from producing new resistance movements such as ‘Pink Dot’ through these means (Chua, 2014), the privacy afforded through the use of online spaces have also enabled gay men in Singapore to participate sexually within heteronormative physical spaces (Ashford, 2009).

This extant research into the role of online spaces in queering of public spaces foregrounded the methodology used in this article (Ahlm, 2017; Ashford, 2006; 2009; Dasgupta & Dasgupta, 2018; McLelland, 2002). In particular, we are informed by Bell and Binnie’s (2004) work which shows the need to investigate how sexual citizenship and urban politics come together to reproduce the meaning and usage of queer spaces. While this research explores online spaces, we draw from Dalton’s (2008) conceptualization of ‘resistance’ as being part of day-to-day life, focusing on the daily expression and performance of sexuality within the public sphere (Ashford, 2009), while also revisiting the forms of communication that facilitates these daily sexual encounters (Fuchs, 2017). This research involved an online ethnography of prominent online message boards where gay men would come together to discuss and negotiate popular cruising sites in Singapore. It selected a message board thread dedicated to cruising in a local neighbourhood park, (hereafter Park A). It analysed approximately 1400 online posts on cruising in Park A spanning between 2014 and 2017 in order to better understand how public spaces were used in tandem with online spaces to mitigate the risks involved whilst cruising. This ethnographic approach unpacked the intricate networks within online forums to shed light onto its use in facilitating and changing manifestations of gay resistance in Singapore. While other research has demonstrated the queering of public spaces, the illiberal pragmatics of local gay resistance movements, and the use of counter-surveillance as a new method of resistance, this article bridges this literature by considering the ‘illiberal pragmatics of governance’ as cruising sits outside of heteronormative spaces, but also reproduce state-promoted surveillance efforts. In the following sections, this article unpacks how men used these online spaces to create spaces outside of state surveillance while also mimicking and deploying State sanctioned technologies of surveillance within these forums to cruise safely.

Creating queer spaces in Singapore

Singapore’s conservative views towards homosexuality, alongside its use of surveillance to govern sexual conduct has led to the suppression of the local gay community in expressing their sexual citizenship (Chua, 2014; Tan & Lee, 2007). To mitigate this, gay men have appropriated public spaces by ‘attaching personalised readings to the networks of urban streets and built environment’ (Low, 1995, p. 45), finding new and intricate ways of utilizing these spaces for sex. What was primarily evident was that forum members were re-imagining Park A, as a ‘sexualised space’ (Oswin, 2010, p. 259), using online space as a medium and method to engage within the public sphere (Ashford, 2006; Fraser, 1990).

This was evidenced by posts that showcased the re-appropriation of Park A as a space for sexual encounters. Serving as a point of departure from its initial function as a neighbourhood park for families (Yuen, 1996), the transformation of Park A into a cruising ground during the night, represents the ‘sexing’ of these spaces in altering the heteronormative meanings ascribed to it (Ashford, 2007, p. 506; Low, 1995). In recounting their cruising experiences, forum members offered detailed accounts of their sexual encounters at night, often expressing their ‘thrill’ when Park A was lit by ‘oncoming trains’, or noting their observations of ‘nude men’ and their role as a ‘voyeur’ within these spaces:

Member A:

The light from oncoming trains is thrilling.

Member B:

I saw someone entering Park A and exiting nude; decided to be a voyeur and watched him from afar.

Transforming the meanings associated to public spaces and how it is used through a process of ‘gaying’ and ‘de-gaying’ (Low, 1995, p. 9), enables forum members to insert themselves within the public sphere by ‘establishing forms of queer territoriality’ (Bell & Binnie, 2004, p. 1810) within Park A. Apart from altering the physical space in order to facilitate cruising such as cruising in darker areas of Park A (Low, 1995), the use of online forums have also enabled gay men in Singapore to construct ‘counter spaces’ that straddles between both public and private. These spaces are reminiscent of Dalton’s (2008, p. 106) observations about ‘beat spaces’ in Australia. Through these forums, the liminality of spaces – both online and offline – is challenged as forum members are able to interact anonymously with one another through the guise of their online personas, whilst also allowing them to ‘disrupt the dichotomy’ of public and private spaces through the act of cruising within Park A (Dalton, 2008, p. 106). These shifts between public and private and online and offline spaces affirms Ahlm’s (2017, p. 365) argument that digital and online spaces are layered as these spaces converge to enable gay men to cruise safely.

To facilitate this, members engaged with one another on multiple social media platforms, leading to the expansion of existing networks allowing forum members to bridge their online personas with their real identities by requesting for group chats via other social media applications, whilst also utilizing the private messaging function to engage with other members prior to meeting up with them:

Member C:

If anyone’s going – leave me a private message so we can change contact info!

Member D:

Would those who frequent Park A want to start a chat group for easy communications?

Member E:

I think there’s a group chat already – you have to search for Park A. I agree, it’ll be easier.

In order to minimize the risks involved whilst cruising at Park A, these online networks were reliant on the information provided by other forum members, replicating ‘phone trees’ that were present in earlier resistance movements where the dissemination of information within the community was dependent on a key figure who was tasked to do so (Chua, 2014, p. 64). With this in mind, the transformation of these networks also suggest the use of online spaces as a new ‘community-building agent’ that bring members of the gay community together (Ashford, 2006; Low, 1995, p. 4). Apart from being sites that facilitate cruising activities, forum members were also observed to reach out to other gay men to seek companionship for other social activities such as ‘jogging’ or ‘hanging out’ together:

Member F:

Hi, is there anyone around?

Member G:

Would anyone like to go for a walk with me there?

Member H:

Anyone want to hold a gathering – we could jog or hangout together.

Through these interactions, multiple observations can be made. Firstly, online spaces have allowed for the deconstruction of heteronormative meanings ascribed within public space, where Park A was viewed and treated as a queer space through cruising (Ashford, 2007). Secondly, online spaces have also enabled gay men to adopt new personas within the ‘safety of the private “gay scene”’ (Tan & Lee, 2007, p. 194). Providing a new layer of utilizing public space, the anonymity provided through within the forum highlighted how gay men negotiate between public and private spaces simultaneously (Ashford, 2006; Low, 1995), allowing them to express their sexuality ‘openly’ in Singapore without being in the public sphere. The use of these forums in this way accord with Low’s (1995) findings that online forums have become an extension of cruising sites, in so far as it becoming new social spaces for gay men to meet one another despite being under the guise of meeting for sex.

Online forums have not only allowed members of the gay community to engage in sexual activities in public spaces (Ashford, 2006), it has also provided a social space for them to meet and provide support to one another within and outside the public sphere (Chua, 2014; Fraser, 1990; Tan & Lee, 2007). Having said this, the re-organization of gay men through this online forum supports prior arguments that such spaces have resulted in ‘participatory cultures’, as forum members become increasingly connected through their shared values and a common purpose of seeking companionship (Fuchs, 2017, p. 59). Whilst these observations are in line with past research into the gay community in Singapore (Chua, 2014; Heng, 2001; Low, 1995; Tan & Lee, 2007), they also illustrate how this online forum allowed gay men to situate themselves outside of state surveillance and its heteronormative discourses. By re-interpreting public spaces as sexualized spaces, the ‘queering’ of these spaces deconstruct existing conventions, and provides a new understanding of how online spaces can be queered to facilitate the expression of one’s sexuality and offer counter-discourses within the public sphere (Ball, 2016, p. 35; Fraser, 1990; Hayes & Ball, 2010).

Mimicry: utilizing surveillance

The techniques of re-imagination and networking evident within these forums have allowed forum members to subvert surveillance. While Dalton’s research (2008, p. 111) has found that risk management techniques are instrumental in avoiding police detection and ensuring safety, members adopted similar surveillance technologies used and promoted by the State. They managed the risks associated with cruising by gathering information on Park A, and altering their cruising behaviour in relation to the updates provided on the online forum. The technologies favoured on the forum included live updates on police presence, safety information and field reports.

Firstly, forum members would often watch key parks and provide live updates on police presence:

Member K:

Did you see any police officers?

Member L:

Don’t come here – someone reported to the police and they are patrolling.

Member M:

Anyone who’s going to this place, post updates on whether or not you have any encounters with the police.

These comments reflect how the ever-present nature of state surveillance within public space is negotiated through a networked surveillance which inverts the surveillant gaze to focus, instead, on the police. Moreover, this intense watchfulness for the police exemplifies Chua’s (2014) observation on the fear expressed by members of the gay community towards the possibility of being under state surveillance, but more specifically, the possibility of being outed to family members or the general public. However, posting live information on police presence appropriates traditional styles of community surveillance that encourages the collection and sharing of information within the community, forming an assemblage outside those controlled by the state and engaging in a new form of counter-surveillance that shifts its sights on the state (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000; Koskela, 2011).

The second key way in which forum members deployed and inverted surveillance within Park A was by sharing and soliciting safety information (Ashford, 2006; Koskela, 2011). For example:

Member N:

Did anyone else see suspicious looking persons near the area?

Bearing in mind the reliance on information provided by other forum members observed in the previous section, online interactions were the primary source of information on Park A. Analyzing these interactions, the collection, dissemination and consumption of information produced by means of surveillance, illustrates how forum members have become increasingly dependent on one another for information in order to cruise safely in Park A (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000). Co-opting these surveillance tactics as part of their cruising activities, the forms of lateral surveillance observed in these posts begin to mirror existing state narratives on the deployment of surveillance apparatuses within its own community policing efforts (Ganapathy, 2000). Furthermore, the internalization of ‘surveillance’ observed in these posts also suggest how it has become a way to counter the more authoritarian forms of surveillance the state engages in to suppress these activities, while also bringing together members of the gay community through these online spaces.

Thirdly, forum members also emulated the surveillance practices utilized by police, by reproducing the language used to describe their observations as ‘field reports’ (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). Whilst largely similar to the crime prevention advice provided by the police to members of the public (Ganapathy, 2000), the detailed accounts provided by forum members closely resemble the methods of reporting by police officers, which included descriptions of individuals they found suspicious, the risks they might pose to potential cruisers, and offered precautionary measures to other forum members (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997):

Member O:

Here’s my field report for today: Saw a few people there, but did not engage in any activities. Left shortly after – to the person who just went in, there’s no one inside so don’t bother walking in.

Member P:

Based on my experience, these field reports are not wrong – I’ve seen it myself.

I decided to investigate Park A, and stake out the location to find that there have been suspicious-looking characters moving in and out of the area. There was a woman with her phone and flashlight walking in and out of the park, as well as other individuals who would loiter and leave. They would dress suspiciously, wearing attire similar to the police. There was also a dog present, who seemed trained to come to its owner if interacted with.

This online forum is a public space – please be mindful of what we post and stay safe.

While Williams, Lyons, and Ford’s (2008) analysis of Singaporean sex tourism forums found that the use of the term ‘field reports’ evoke militaristic briefings, in these forums field reports replicated, more closely, local community policing strategies. From a broader perspective, these efforts tend to mirror the narratives that characterize counter-terrorism efforts in Singapore, with the suspicion observed in the above interactions indicative of the SG Secure initiatives that are predicated upon the engagement with and within the community by mobilizing them in the collection of information (Abdul Rahman, 2016, 2017). However, these field reports are also indicative of new resistance efforts where surveillance has become embedded within the ‘daily practice’ of cruising for gay men in Singapore (Dalton, 2008, p. 104).

As the excerpts above have illustrated, forum members take special care in collecting and sharing information on Park A with other members. Coinciding with Dalton’s (2008, p. 116) observations, the production of field reports were ‘resistant tactics’ deployed to ‘familiarise’ the environment, in order to better manage the risks associated with cruising. As part of a broader effort to understand the ‘culture’ and ‘idiosyncratic characteristics’ of Park A (Dalton, 2008, p. 116), forum members inadvertently embedded these surveillance measures into their day-to-day cruising activities, in ways that allowed them to engage in more overt forms of resistance such as occupying public spaces and designating them as counter-spaces (Bell & Binnie, 2004).

Despite serving different functions, the types of surveillance above symbolize the success of state-led interventions in creating the productive citizen who internalizes policing strategies. At the same time, it also shows how these technologies are mimicked and ‘inverted’ from their intended use to reduce the risks associated with cruising (Foucault, 1979, p. 210). As such, this unique re-purposing of surveillance techniques highlight the manifestation of ‘illiberal pragmatics’ within the gay community (Yue, 2012), as they communicate their concerns on cruising, whilst also ‘aligning themselves with the official aims of remaking Singapore’ by participating in state-promoted surveillance (Tan & Lee, 2007, p. 197).

Internalizing surveillance

While these forums assisted forum members in mitigating the risks of cruising in urban spaces (Ashford, 2006), these interactions did not constitute an explicit form of resistance. Rather, forum members displayed the same responsibilized subjectivities produced through the normative state surveillant assemblage. By engaging in their own forms of surveillance and producing these field reports, forum members developed a pre-emptive tool to manage the situation should they encounter police presence (Dalton, 2008). However, they also exercised vigilance by taking on responsibility for the use of Park A for cruising, in order to reduce the likelihood of getting caught. Recognizing Park A’s increasing popularity amongst the gay community, forum members would often remind each other that the space is shared with the public, and encourage each other to keep the area clean by disposing any used condoms or tissues. For example:

Member Q:

If anyone’s shifting to Park A to cruise, please don’t leave any items like tissues behind. The elderly within the community use Park A for their morning walks and we don’t want them to complain. We can all help to maintain Park A!

Member R:

I just finished a round at Park A – if you’re going to cruise, please throw away your used condoms at the rubbish bin and not litter all over the place. Saw a lot when I was walking around.

Member S:

I agree – we shouldn’t leave evidence for someone else to find. Please be discreet and responsible when cruising and clean up after yourselves.

Member T:

Park A is a good place to cruise, but we have to respect other park users and not cruise openly. All we need is someone to complain and there will be more police presence.

The language of ‘personal responsibility’ evident within these interactions reflects the construction of public spaces as communal sites for which citizen bear and share responsibility (Neo & Chua, 2017, p. 671). By advising members to remove any ‘evidence’ of the activities that occur when the public is not around, posters affirm Park A as shared community space, (Neo & Chua, 2017), reproduce themselves as responsibility-bearing citizens with obligations towards such space and affirm social norms by erasing expression of homosexuality in public (Chua, 2014; Tan & Lee, 2007). This internalization of surveillance was also evident through the continued focus on sexual safety within the forums. For example, forum members reported physically handing out condoms to other forum members by meeting up with them in such spaces:

Member U:

Received condoms for free at the clinic – I’m giving them away for free for anyone who is interested.

Member V:

Got a few messages, but many didn’t come to collect. I’ll be waiting at the entrance if anyone needs any condoms tonight.

Member W:

Thank you for sharing – always practice safe sex and share your condoms with your partners!

In this interaction, forum members reproduce discourses of sexual danger and personal responsibility which have coalesced the gay community in Singapore (Leong, 1995). These instances highlight how urban spaces such as Park A have become functional in exercising discipline through the reproduction of heteronormative values espoused by the state (Teo, 2011; Yuen, 2004). However, these spaces are also productive by creating docile citizens who police their sexuality within these spaces, but are also responsible for their own expressions of sexuality (Anderson, 2018; Chua, 2014; Foucault, 1979, 1980). Further highlighting how citizens are pushed to ‘play positive roles’ in order to ‘increase their possible utility’ (Foucault, 1979, p. 210).

By encouraging the ‘responsible’ use of cruising sites and ‘safe’ sexuality, techniques of surveillance and their focus are redirected. They are redirected from an externalized counter-surveillance aimed at warning forum members about the state-community surveillant assemblage to facilitate cruising and towards an individualized and internalized surveillance aimed at restricting excess, and affirming communal spaces as both non-sexual and heterosexual. By removing the evidence of cruising through self-surveillance of condom use in these spaces, and placing emphasis on the use of said condoms, forum members internalize ‘heteronormative bioregulation[s]’ by simultaneously ensuring that heteronormativity is upheld within public spaces (Anderson, 2018, p. 703; Leong, 1995). The repurposing of surveillance within these forums highlight the ‘spatialization of power’ in Singapore (Koskela, 2000, p. 256), and how this ‘permits an internal, articulated and detailed control’ of its citizens, where ‘architecture operates to transform individuals’ according to the norms outlined by the state (Foucault, 1979, p. 172).

Therefore, the disciplinary function that these spaces play is complex. On one hand, the use of legislation and policy in normalizing heterosexuality within public spaces have led to new and creative means of sexing spaces such as Park A (Ashford, 2007). However, the promotion of surveillance through Singapore’s policing efforts have also equipped gay men with the necessary techniques to reduce the risks associated with cruising in public spaces, by sharing their observations to other members within this online network (Ashford, 2006; Haggerty & Ericson, 2000). Characterizing a form of ‘illiberal pragmatism’ towards resistance (Yue, 2012), these findings offer an alternative perspective towards research on cruising in Singapore, by presenting it as a way of deconstructing the heteronormative meanings inscribed within public spaces.

Conclusion

By exploring cruising in Singapore, this article has discussed the complexities behind the use of public spaces, and its close associations with one’s sexuality within the city-state. Here, the use of online spaces have showcased the importance of reimagining space as not only being ‘sexualized’ (Oswin, 2010), but also how they are closely linked with the ‘sexual self’ (Hubbard, 2018, p. 1296). In retaining colonial legislation such as Section 377A, and the state’s repurposing of colonial identities to define its social policy through ‘Asian values’, these measures have inadvertently constructed heteronormative spaces that readily exclude the gay community (Chua, 2014; Teo, 2011; Yulius et al., 2018). However, when framed as the queering of public space, the gay community’s newfound participation within the public sphere through online spaces, symbolizes a larger effort of decolonizing the use of public spaces outside of its heteronormative conventions (Ashford, 2009; Ball, 2016; Hunt & Holmes, 2015; Low, 1995).

In doing so, this article has attempted to address concerns raised on the use of ‘illiberal pragmatism’ within research, by re-engaging with narratives on gay resistance movements in Singapore, and being more critical of the colonial histories that underpin its perceptions of homosexuality (Yue, 2012). Furthermore, these findings have also situated cruising within other modes of governance that have served other functions such as normalizing surveillance efforts as part of a broader policing framework (Ganapathy, 2000). By sharing individual experiences of homosexuality within the public sphere, forum members highlight the continued ‘pragmatism’ that the gay community embodies, whilst also realizing how resistance can be realized in new ways (Chua, 2014; Luger, 2015). That said, the findings above also illustrate how efforts to resist state surveillance in Singapore can simultaneously produce a ‘functional inversion of the discipline’ to create productive citizens (Foucault, 1979, p. 210).

In a similar vein, these findings highlight the need to reconceptualize the concept of resistance in Singapore, to include those embedded as ‘daily practice’ (Dalton, 2008, p. 104). Whilst forum members have incorporated State-promoted surveillance efforts within their own cruising behaviour, the use of online forums observed in this article also illustrate the importance of recognizing how technological advancements have altered patterns of communication within the local gay community (Ahlm, 2017). In transforming the ways in which space is conceptualized, the amalgamation of both physical and digital spaces in this article allows for a new aspect of resistance to be explored. By focusing on how online spaces enable gay men in Singapore to construct new ‘counter-publics’, this article takes into account the fluidity of both identity and the meanings associated to public spaces such as Park A.

With the above considerations in mind, this article offers a different insight into the world of cruising within queer research, where these findings differ slightly from those observed in the Global North. Although similarities can be drawn with regards to the use of online spaces to make cruising safer for gay men (Ashford, 2007), the observations made in this article reconciles with the ever-growing need to reconsider how queer experiences of space and sexuality should ‘escape the confines of an Eurocentric world-view’ (Hubbard, 2018, p. 1298). By understanding how heteronormative spaces are deconstructed and negotiated online through the use of surveillance, this article has provided a new perspective towards understanding how colonial histories have shaped everyday resistance movements, broadening this scope to include the expressions of sexuality in Singapore.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ahmad Salehin

Ahmad Salehin’s area of research includes gender and sexuality in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and explores the potential roles of technology in facilitating communication within minority communities.

Laura Vitis

Laura Vitis’ research focuses on how technology is used to facilitate gendered, sexual and intimate partner violence. In addition, my work also examines the regulation of and resistance to technologically facilitated violence, youth sexting and the role of risk in the Sex Offender Register.

Notes

1 377A criminalizes anal sex between men.

2 Synonym for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals in Hong Kong.

3 A gay social-networking application for sexual encounters.