Aware of AWARE?
On aware-ness.
Before I write this, I like to say that I am a “man” trapped in a male body, am not a AWARE member, and is not a Christian as well. The reason I am writing this is because I am a fan of my NUS lecturer, Nirmala, who specializes in the subject of Sex and Gender. This ex-teacher-student relationship by no means warrants my similar stance to her because she gave me a C+ grade (reason cited being I am too philosophical)for that module, which I am still bitter about until now.
If you find my line of arguments reminiscence of C.S.Lewis, you are right. I am reading “Mere Christianity” written by him at the moment but that does not make me a Christian.
In fact, I am going to make it ironical by applying his trains of thoughts to make my secular points across. The argument below is based on common sense of two hypothetical scenarios thrown in lights of comparison. Wow! Common Sense! Something I find missing nowadays.
On lesbianism
Lesbian-ism, like Buddh-ism and rac-ism, very much deserves a "ism" behind them. Imagine now, we have two females in a relationship in the same parallel universe with a heterosexual couple. Suddenly, “Butch” the abusive gal turns violent on “Mutch” the victimized female in the lesbian relationship. Right about the same time for the heterosexual couple, the man whose profession is a butcher, with his waving chopper in one hand, starts to chase after his the other female half. The key victim is the subjugated female who is abused by the other party in the relationship regardless of whether or not the other abusive party is a male of female.
On sodomy
For sodomy, we have two cases, namely couple A and couple B. We have a loving couple A engaging in sodomy but both enjoy a blissful and happy relationship viz-a-viz couple B who are engaging in missionary position all the time but whose wife is constantly abused by the violent husband. I want you to pick the one that deserves attention by AWARE. Have we all realized the invalid-ness of sodomy as an AWARE issue?
On homosexuality
Homosexuality is a more tricky issue for I suspect the gay rights activists are jumping on this bandwagon of free publicity. A half page print on Straits Times is worth around $20,000 liquidated value.
To mingle the gay issues into AWARE will dilute the core objective. Why do I say such? Please note, I am for or against homosexuality but I just regard their interests as separate interests from AWARE. For instance, their fight for rights to sodomy is relevant but it is irrelevant to AWARE.
To deprive one marginalized group voice of participation is to deprive a diversified representation of a common voice is not applicable here. Sorry, Nirmala, I do not agree with you here.
Gay as a marginalized group has a separate self interest, and they are not relevant here in the AWARE saga. Gays in Singapore should band together to form their own group to fight for their own gay rights and not complicate AWARE’s plight. I find their presence insidious in any AWARE meeting. They are furthering their own agendas similar to a indoctrinated Christians voters who are bound to vote against sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism and they for. For simplicity sake, I would recommend the gays to form a group under the acronyms, “HAPPY” and thrash it out with their own opponents’ proponents.
On Management
NGO, NPO, or grassroots should remain as they are. Once you start to bring in any MNC measures of management, it spells bureaucracy and prevents a bottom-up voices. It is never about top-down efficiency, as we are not dealing with units of labors but rather, people are what we are resolving. Being high-handed and adding additional touch of politics is not going to be any good for AWARE per see.
On Capital
On a lighter note, if we assume there are more than 1000 new members now, we are looking at $40,000 capital injection. And based on the ‘old’ model of burn rate, AWARE can run for 2 more months with all the easily cheated, good-hearted and good-natured probono folks back in the scene. Why not to volunteers when they can cut down AWARE burn rate for a good cause at their expenses of real-time karma?
On AWARE
From a laymen point of view, AWARE job to help women who are subjected to abuses? To provide physical and psychological shelter, food, clothing to the well-beings of abused women. To help these women to achieve financial independence and mental balance to overcome their hurtful past? And for fuck sake, make these rules flexible if they are seeking help in AWARE with a son they escaped with; be flexible with your rules and handout-training manual (I assume they are not bibles). And perhaps we might have less cases of dumping babies in the dumpster or toilet bowl.
On Entertainment
In the words of the new AWARE member I’ve just spoken to, “it is the best $40 I’ve ever spent. The 7 hours saga is even better than our reality TV series ‘X-factor’.” The “bitchiness” is guaranteed to garner viewership.
On a lighter note, maybe we can make a reality TV series to elect the new board members for AWARE or should we just stick to the spirited old founders (who require minimal persuasion to join), who were not short of their own internal politics but still get the job done? I for one, nominate Clara Chow to be on board. One thing for sure, we will not see educated woman shouting like fishmongers, “shut up and sit down”. And yes, I need to see more plain ordinary “Jane”s to represent a diversified voice to represent a multiplicities of possibilities for AWARE who already lost their original vision, with too much directions and protocols.
To All the fishmongers out there, please take my comment as a compliment for your shouting still facilitate a function known as transaction, while these highly educated ones do not serve any.
