Malay LGBT community in Singapore

=Pre-British era (before 1819)=



There exist no known written records of same-sex love in the Malay community in pre-colonial Singapore and, as a corollary, of any "movement" in reaction to perceived or real oppression of such activity. However, anthropologists like Michael Peletz note that between the 15th and 18th centuries, Southeast Asia was characterised by gender fluidity, egalitarianism and considerable female autonomy. Furthermore, there were culturally sanctioned positions for transgender individuals all across the region where one finds a tradition of cross-dressing and other forms of gender-transgressive behaviour. Associated with these is a rich local lexicon and a variety of rituals. A vast corpus of works by colonial civil servants, missionaries and travellers in the 19th and early 20th centuries yielded accounts of the natives' sexuality, which in many instances shocked the Judeo-Christian morality of their Western colonial masters.

The Dutch noted that Dyaks, Acehnese, Bugis, Balinese, Javanese, Batak, Minangkabau and Chinese in the vast Malay archipelago shared a passionate addiction to vices such as pederasty and homosexual sodomy. The following is a description from physician Julius Jacobs after his visit to Bali in the early 1880s, where he observed many dance performances by young boys dressed up like women: "One knows that they are boys, and it is sickening to see men from all strata of Balinese society proffering their kepengs (Chinese coins) to have the chance to dance with these children, sometimes in the queerest postures; one is still more revolted to discover that these children, sometimes after exercising for hours in a perpendicular position, are compelled, utterly exhausted though they may be, to carry out horizontal maneuvers with the highest bidders, after being fondled by this man and kissed by that." The Hikayat Panji Semirang (Tale of Prince Semirang), an epic poem which dates from the 14th century, tells of the adventures of a sexually fluid hero, Panji Semirang. It was well known and beloved throughout Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia. Another traditional Javanese literary work, Serat Centhini, written in 1814, is the Southeast Asian version of India's famed Kama Sutra. This stylised sex manual has detailed descriptions of sodomy, fellatio, mutual masturbation and transvestism. The poem shows that male homosexuality was an unproblematic, everyday part of a highly varied traditional Javanese sexual culture.

Prior to the arrival of British traders and colonists in 1819, Singapore was largely populated by small, dispersed settlements of Orang Asli (aborigines) and Malays of the Johor-Riau archipelago who engaged mainly in subsistence farming, fishery and trade. These people and the island came under the jurisdiction of the Sultanate of Johor which had no formal legal system. The highest authority lay in the hands of the Yang di-Pertuan of Johor who was also known as the Sultan of Johor. He was advised by the Majlis Orang Kaya (Council of Rich Men). Amongst the council members was the Temenggong of Johor who lived in Telok Blangah, Singapore and who administered the island based on the level of authority bestowed upon him by the Sultan of Johor.



We can retropolate from the culture of contemporary Malays that there was probably much tolerance towards men who indulged in surreptitious homosexual activity, as evidenced by the absence of any vocal or physical violence against such people, outside of the framework of the imported Islamic sociopolitical system. Neither did non-heteronormative Malay men have to band together to form a movement because it was never warranted in the absence of overt oppression.



Effeminate men are derisively called "bapok" or "pondan" (see main article: Singapore gay terminology), but apart from being teased and regarded ceteris paribus as having a lower status than their more masculine counterparts, there is no hatred directed against them, as is so often the situation in the West. "Third gender" or transgender individuals, who are called "mak nyah", have their own niche in traditional Malay society which acknowledged the existence of alternatives to heterosexual practices. They were recognised, tolerated and even incorporated into community life, occupying a stable, albeit marginalised position within society. This situation is similar to the traditional cultures of the larger Malayo-Polynesian and Austronesian regions and is also seen in the bissu, calabai and calalai of the Bugis as well as the to burake tambolang of the Torajan people in Indonesia's South Sulawesi province, the fa'afafine of Samoa, the fakafefine or fakaleiti of Tonga, the whakawahine of the Maoris, the akava'ine of the Cook Islands Maoris and the mahu of Hawaii. In the past, transgender religious leaders amongst both the Torajan and Bugis people played important roles in their communities. Bissu and to burake led spiritual ceremonies or harvest rituals in villages. The people would admire and honour a village with a to burake.

Some tribes in the southeast of Papua, similar to tribes in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, practised “ritualised homosexuality”. This practice required young men to perform oral sex on elder males as part of their rites of passage to manhood. They believed that semen was the source of life and the essence of masculinity, important for boys to become real men.

In East Java, the traditional dance performance Reog Ponorogo depicts intimate relationships between two characters, warok and gemblak. The main male dancer, or warok, must follow strict physical and spiritual rules and rituals. Under these rules, a warok was prohibited from engaging in a sexual relationship with a woman. But he was allowed to have intimate relationships with young boys’ characters, or gemblak, in the performance. Although warok and gemblak were engaged in same-sex acts, they did not identify themselves as homosexuals. In other Javanese traditional drama performances like ludruk and wayang orang, a man playing a woman’s character or vice versa is not unusual.

Other salient examples of the traditional tolerance for gender diversity in neighbouring Malaysia have been quoted by academic Julian CH Lee in his book, "Policing Sexuality", published by Zed Books Ltd in August 2012. The sida-sida were gender fluid Malay courtesans during the 1500s to the 1800s. The manang bali were gender fluid Iban shamans of Sarawak. So, these were men who became women in order to be healers, village leaders and intermediaries, and they were respected in society. They were not only tolerated, they were also celebrated and looked upon with great esteem because of their contribution to society. So accepted was gender diversity in Malaysia that as late as the 1960s, known "specialised homosexual villages" existed in Kelantan, with one even abutting on the Sultan's palace. At least one Malaysian monarch was known to be openly homosexual. Captain Alexander Hamilton, an English sailor who visited Old Johor in 1695, wrote about the behaviour of Sultan Mahmud Shah II. His accounts were corroborated by the Dutch delegate to Johor in 1699. They noted that the Sultan was partial to handsome men. Hamilton in his book, A New Account of the East Indies published in Edinburgh in 1727, recounted the following story:

"In anno 1695, their King was a youth of twenty years of age, and being vitiously inclined, was so corrupted by adulation and flagitious company, that he became intolerable. I went to Johor Lama at that time, to traffic with his subjects...

He was a great sodomite, and had taken many of his orang kaya or nobles' sons, by force into his palace for that abominable service. A Moorish merchant, who was a freighter on board my ship, had a handsome boy to his son, whom the King one day saw, and would needs have him for a catamite. He threatened the father, that if he did not send him with good will, he would have him by force. The poor man had taken a house close by our ship, and immediately came with his son on board, imploring my protection, which I promised him."

"He continued his insupportable tyranny and brutality for a year or two after I was gone, and his mother, to try if he could be broke off that unnatural custom of converse with males, persuaded a beautiful young woman to visit him, when he was a bed, which she did, and allured him with her embraces, but he was so far from being pleased with her conversation, that he called his black guard, and made them break both her arms, for offering to embrace his royal person. She cried, and said it was by his mother’s order she came, but that was no excuse." 

=See also=
 * Singapore gay history

=References=
 * Norhazlina bte Md Yusop, "Same sex sexuality and Islam in Singapore", ScholarBank@NUS Repository, 8 April 2010,.

=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.