Just repatriated - sorry divorced - from Singapore I notice that the book on divorce to which I was asked to and did contribute a very personal text, has been launched - it was presented in today's Hbl by Pia Ingström.

About to leave a Singapore that I have called my home for two years and learnt to admire in many respects and criticise in some, returning to a much colder corner of the world, I take this opportunity to envision where Singapore could be in the future, a future that might occur in a century or a decennary. An incurable optimist by nature, I will call it tomorrow. And I’ll wear my gender equality glasses.

Spending a moment in a bookshop in Bangkok’s airport Suvarnabhumi waiting for my connecting flight to Singapore, I spotted this book that immediately caught my attention, The Third Sex, by Richard Totman.

The book is a study of the kathoeys of Thailand, boys that from an early age know that they want to grow up to be women, not men. Not the first sex they were biologically equipped to be, not the second sex they socially identify with, but a third. Totman lived with the family of one of these kathoey boys for some time so the study is even empirical.

Asked whether I could write down a few reflections on how it is to be married to a strong and independent woman I thoughtlessly agreed. But when I sat down to start the writing I realized I have noting to compare to – I never was married to a dependent woman – never wanted to be either, could probably have found one though if I’d really wanted to.

Singapore's feminist organization AWARE has become increasingly aware of the need for but lack of male support for gender equality efforts - in this society 'proudly calling itself patriarchal' as the government puts it (there isn't a single female minister in the cabinet either). So when I came up with this idea of starting a men's group for gender awareness & development, it was like trying to break an open door - I got a lot of support from the beginning.

A few excerpts from my email correspondence during the preparation process:

The marriage rate in Japan is decreasing; at the age of 29, only 30% of well-educated women are married, as compared to 75% in 1980. And almost 30% do not want to marry at all. That leaves 40% who are still considering.. And the divorce rate has been rising steadily for decades.

Today I'm going to be interviewed by a (female of course) journalist from a Chinese-speaking newspaper about the White Ribbon Campaign, together with Connie Singam, the chair of AWARE. She sent us (in very bad English) the questions she's going to ask us, for my part:
1) This is the first time the Male Chapter is leading the campaign, how do you intend to do this ?
2) Why is it important to have the Male Chapter to lead this ?

And this is what I'm going to tell her:

I happened to see Persepolis, a cartoon movie made by and / or based on the book by Marjane Satrapi. The movie is on at Kino Engel (in Helsinki, that is) currently, but Allah only knows for how long - so go and see it.

It's a very important movie. It's a profeminist movie. It's a political movie. It's a very enjoyable and fascinating movie. It's a humorous movie. It's a serious movie. It's a movie you won't forget.

I cannot resist the temptation to quote today's (Thu Nov 1) The Straits Times on the emotional abuse of Malaysia's Muslim men:

Malaysia's Muslim men are suffering sleepless nights and cannot pray properly because their thoughts are distracted by a growing number of women who wear sexy clothes in public, a prominent opposition cleric said.

Absolutely no, I'm no profeminist, men's activist or masculist or whatever those misogynists or unlaid bachelors or fags prefer to call themselves. But I think men should be treated equally when divorcing and I think the sentence should not depend on the perpetrator's sex. Maybe this is the way we as men should start discussions on gender and equality in the future - analogously to how most women assure they are certainly not feminists but then start to argument for a more or less feminist agenda.

The so called Male Chapter of AWARE has started to plan the WRC Campaign for 2007. Of course I'm attending the meetings where the campaign is supposed to be planned but as a foreigner I cannot and don't want to take very much practical responsibilities - I thought. But maybe I'll have to reconsider..

The behaviour exhibited and the language used on dating sites could be expected to indicate at least to some extent the status of gender equality in a culture. One of my expat (expatriate, ie euphemistically called foreign talent) colleagues notified me about an expat site where you can find some discussions on the unbearable lightness as well as the difficulties of being an expat in this culture, plus a lot of useful hints & advice. When clicking around the site I found this dating department - and of course I had to check it out ;-)

Trying to stay in touch with what happens over there, I was made aware the other day that publisher Schildts is about to publish a book Den flygande feministen och andra minnen från 70-talet (The Flying Feminist & other memories from the 70ies), a book I have at least indirectly contributed to.

Pardon the language again - I wrote this text about a local (moslem) man who was married to 10 women and had 64 children with them. The poor guy was jailed the other day after raping 6 of his daughters:

I måndagens tidning fanns en grej om en (muslimsk förstås) man som var gift med 10 (tio) kvinnor och som med dem hade 64 barn - hela 'familjen' bodde i två 7-rumslägenheter i samma hus, vilket gör 5 pers per rum eftersom mannen naturligtvis hade eget rum.

Sorry about the language - I'm writing these essays on gender issues to the Ny Tid weekly and because this latest one is on gender equality in Singapore I thought I'd cite it here - no time to translate though..

Singaporeansk jämställdhet

AWARE's Male Chapter had called for a meeting Monday Feb 26 to plan this year's activities including ideas for this year's White Ribbon Campaign.

Guess how many men turned up ? Right - me ! And Susanna. Plus, of course WahKiat, the chairperson. So we sat there discussing men and their commitments to gender equality - for an hour - & then left.

Singaporean women on an average earn only 2/3 (67%) of what men earn - as compared with 80% in Finland.

Only 15% of the MPs are women - as compared with 38% in Finland.

Statistics on gendered violence are not available in Singapore and neither any research reports.

On the other hand verdicts for rape are very hard, usually several years imprisonment plus often caning.

Before I left for Singapore, Kim kindly sent me a link he'd found on the net, to a text called Disneyland with the Death Penalty, which I read with delight.

This is my first attempt to write to this Bert's PFM blog - the idea being that I'll write about and comment on gender & profeminist issues in Singapore - every now & then when I have the time and / or feel like doing so. Writing in a blog is in a way easier than to spread texts in forum groups - for me at least ;-)