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The Imaging of IWD 2012 in Singapore || by Leow Hui Min

2012-03-27T11:27:39Z

In the days leading up to International Women's Day 2012, the Etiquette Team was busy preparing for Sugar & Spice. We were also trying to ignore everyone's attempts at co-opting a day meant to commemorate/bring awareness to human rights for women, to further commercial ventures and define their narrow views of what constitutes womanhood. Writer-student-blogger Leow Hui Min was too pissed however, to turn a blind eye to the pseudo-social-consciousness of all the guilty parties involved...

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‘If variety is the spice of life,’ demands the Mediacorp poster, ‘isn’t it great to be a woman?’

As evidence, it puts side by side a week’s worth of shoes for both binary sexes – black patent leather shoes Monday to Friday and slippers on weekends, for men, while the second column shows an assortment of boots, stilettos, wedges, and ballerina flats.

Feminist law student Intan Krishanty Wirayadi, who posted a photograph of the bus stop poster on Twitter, captioned sardonically: ‘women=shoes’.

This is not the only such poster from Mediacorp. The other design in its March campaign for International Women’s Day 2012 features the same tagline, with nondescript briefcases contrasted against brightly coloured clutches and purses.

In an interview with Campaign Singapore magazine, one of the designers involved in the campaign, Terrence Tan, justified the choice of style by saying: ‘We want to celebrate [the modern woman’s] strengths, complexities and beauty in true feminine style, by expressing it through something dear to most ladies – shoes and handbags.’

Shamefully enough, this is the state of the majority of IWD advertisements in Singapore.

Either they reduce the feminist nature of the event to a capitalist mockery of a femme gender performance, or in all their patronising paternalistic well-meaning glory dress up otherwise serviceable dialogues on the challenges women face in swathes of pink and pastel. Or both.

Either way, womanhood is coercively depicted as femme and feminine, in an infantilised, heteronormative manner, with Woman as frivolous childlike spendthrift or Woman as eternal mother; and no heed is paid to what should surely be at the core of any conversation on women’s empowerment: the societal structure that enables oppressive power dynamics.

Take, for example, the Singapore Chinese Chamber’s ‘networking forum’ for women business leaders, the header of whose poster features sultrily posed dancing women decked out in tiaras and long gloves. This itself betrays the classist assumptions behind the genteelly euphemistic word ‘lady’. Within a patriarchal framework, ladies – of the right colour and class, of the right qualities – are to be respected, so long as they submit; everyone else is disposable.

Meanwhile, the introductions to the keynote speakers for the event label them by “德—智—群—美” – or ‘morality, wisdom, popularity, beauty’. Womanhood is clearly delineated, boxed up. This is what separates the lady from the mere female, then.

Another poster whose good intentions collapse like a soufflé disaster – the National Trades Union Congress’s ‘We Support Women Back2Work’ IWD celebration, which featured the ‘“A Happy Woman” Fun Walk’ to boot.

Why should working women, or women excluded from working, be happy? Women in Singapore earn 73 cents to the dollar. The proportion of married women in the workforce is 71% that of married men. A Straits Times poll has shown that one in four economically inactive women stay out of the workforce at their husbands’ demand. The entreaty to ‘be happy’ dismisses the reality of these concerns and forces women to paper over their feelings with false optimism to make a patriarchal labour market feel better – a sure risk factor for clinical depression, which is another condition for which women are enjoined to act happy.

Singing birds and sunflowers dilute the message with stereotypical mise-en-scène, whose purpose seems none other than to remind the viewer, and aggressively, too, that the woman is delicate and ornamental. The phrase ‘We Support Women’ comes across not so much as a statement of solidarity as gentle paternalism. And forget the depilated, sanitised, lipsticked slim figure in a glittery sheath dress; what dazzles me is also her sheer whiteness.

Who is speaking for whom, in these posters?

A trend that emerges is the situation of the woman not as an individual but as a domestic figure marked by her position in the family. ‘Whether you’re a mum, a daughter, an older sister, a best friend,’ shoe retailer SOLE 2 SOLE urges, ‘you’ve made a difference in someone’s life & you deserve a treat!’ The more commercial advertisements which capitalise on IWD never fail to use the concept of pampering – itself a loaded word which connotes feminine pliability and sensuality and decadence – often as a reward, contingent upon a woman’s service.

John Watson begins his narration of A Scandal in Bohemia: ‘To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.’ Similarly, in these posters, all women are the woman, the archetypal girl-woman, shallow and subservient, decorative, lacking agency.

‘The Lady Warrior cocktail, our special tribute to women,’ says restaurant Ku Dé Ta – a tribute to what, precisely? A frothy pink cocktail accompanied by luxury marques – what sort of homage is this, besides a bouquet for a statue stuck on a pedestal and feted with platitudes?

‘Rejoice, women of the world!’ exclaims traditional Chinese apothecary Eu Yan Sang, because you (cis) women (defined by your uteri and other messy innards) are entitled to a menstrual-relieving, complexion-improving, youthfulness-promoting elixir that will keep you in your child-producing, physically attractive biological niche for as long as the patriarchy is pleased to confirm you therein.

It seems that every year we are plagued with IWD ads that miss the point – that continue to be self-aggrandising, that perpetuate essentialist notions of sex and gender both biological and social. Empowerment cannot happen to a community that is not already disempowered, but the posters produced from within the system are inherently unable to show up the power imbalance. And so we have, year after year, handbags and shoes and shopping, oh my.

For an IWD poster I really liked – this one’s from We Are EQUALS, the feminist organisation that brought last year’s IWD ad with Daniel Craig in femme drag.

It uses a crochet motif against a purple background, but that doesn’t come across, in this case, as demeaning – Stephanie Lai talks about feminism and the subversion of imposed gender roles via the active desire to craft, in ‘geekiness and the reimaging of craft’ at Geek Feminism. No; there is a firmly tongue-in-cheek tone in the slogan in this poster, and yet also the intimation of a tiredness that this still needs to be said:

A woman’s place is in the home… [& the classroom & the boardroom & the newsroom & parliament] – and everywhere else, the whole wide expanse of the world, that is ours.

Leow Hui Min Annabeth is a student, writer, critic, and aca/fan (but aren’t those all the same?). Her work is particularly interested in postcolonial feminist presentations and interpretations of gender, race, and culture issues in contemporary media and popular culture.

Beyond Borders Mar/Apr 2012 :: Lina Tan and Rafidah Abdullah

2012-03-20T10:00:38Z

The role and responsibility of today’s media has never been more critical in making the diversity of women’s voices visible. While the media, (and corporate governance) has historically been dominated by men, it is indeed true that the under-representation of women in television and film could be attributed to the scarcity of women executives in top roles of image creation. In a 2011 newspaper article, the percentage of females in boardroom in Singapore is 6.8% while 61% of Singapore firms do not have a single woman on their Boards. Some media analyst believe that if more women had positions of authority at executive levels, the media would have more chance in the positive portrayals of women, and raising the level of public discussions within society.

The continued aspiration of Malaysian women in the creative industries in the past decade, as well as the perception and the use of the media by women audiences in light of experiencing empowerment, has witnessed an affirmative shift in Malaysia’s media landscape.

In August 1999, Lina Tan, 44, founded Red Communications. The media company has created a variety of television infotainment programmes most notably the Malay language, 3R (Respect! Relax! Respond!) that has won The Best Infotainment Program at the Asian TV Awards in 2002. The success of 3R has witnessed 169 episodes since airing in 2001. The half-hour television series, in its 14th season is aimed to empower young women on issues of gender discrimination, sexuality and technology through gender debate through the sociocultural context of Malaysia. Lina has also produced commercially successful films such as Gol & Gincu (Lipstick & Goalpost), KAMI (We) and Pisau Cukur (Gold Diggers).

Gol & Gincu and Pisau Cukur were written by Rafidah Abdullah in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Rafidah, 36 is one of the original hosts of 3R and occasionally writes for the series. Her screenplay, Gol & Gincu has even been linked as a possibility to young girls taking up futsal! Rafidah has continued writing for television programmes such as Satelit (Satellite), Generasi (Generation), Table For Two, Impian Illyana (Illyana’s Dreams) and KAMI (We). Her third screenplay for the big screen, Istanbul, Aku Datang (Istanbul, Here I Come) is awaiting release in theatres and Rafidah is currently working on her fourth screenplay. Rafidah and her 3R hosts have been appointed as the UNICEF Ambassador of Malaysia.

I chatted with Lina Tan and Rafidah Abdullah over e-mail, about their creative journeys…

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Lina Tan

Has producing always been your background?
Yes. I started as a junior producer immediately after studying in Universiti Sains Malaysia. However I was producing only TV commercials for 3 years until I decided to work on TV programmes later on.

Tell us more about the concept of 3R, and what led to its development as a television series? Was it important for the creative team to keep the concept secular?
It was at an HIV/AIDs conference that I was talking to Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir about the topic of how women was being represented in the media. We wanted to see more intelligent women discussing issues other than fashion or beauty or flower arranging, etc. We thought women are interested in other things too besides those things and felt it was important to see real women on TV not just model looking types.

One of the things we wanted to do was target a wide variety of women and be aspirational. It was one thing to talk about issues but to keep it relevant for everyone. I roped a lot of people who had done solid social campaigns for human rights to help in the development of the content. Therefore the base of our content was always women / human rights but how we delivered the message was done to address a mass audience.

What makes it different from other Malaysian magazine series like TV3’s Nona and NTV7’s Bella for instance?
Nona was already on when we came up with 3R. In fact that was kind of the only women targeted show in Malaysia then and hence we knew what we did not want to do. Firstly we did not want to cast models or celebrities as the host. Our criteria was intelligent women and to ensure we had diversity. Secondly while our message was serious, our content was treated differently every episode based on the topic we were discussing. Eg if it was a topic like “How come I am still single when all my friends are getting married” we would use role-plays and funny skits to get the message across but if it was something more serious like domestic violence, we would re-enact dramas and ensure our interviews are laced with a lot of what to do and how tos. No magazine show had used role-play back then (this was 12 years ago when we started) to highlight issues so I guess this format worked well with our target audience especially the younger set. Also we went for a younger target audience 16 to 25yrs old so all our issues were geared toward the youth and issues that they would face from family to identity to relationships.

What were the initial responses to 3R?
We were initially given an airtime, which was fringe prime, at 7pm on a Sunday. The channel used to show cartoons I think at that time. Our first year was a slow ratings climb as people were not used to having none celebrities plus such in your face young hosts. Because we had no television show reference, we just experimented with every topic we did. By the second year, we decided to be more bold and edgy and we even took in a sanitary napkin sponsor who at that time (this is the year 2003) was banned from advertising on TV as it was considered too private and shameful by a local political party and we did a whole episode on having your period and what’s so shameful about that. That episode was a big hit, even went to win an award in Asia TV awards and we really took off. The next year our ratings just climbed and the stations and advertisers really took notice. We got a slightly better time slot from 7pm to 7:30pm on Sunday and advertisers poured in.

Then in year 3 onwards we started getting into problems with censorship as the show became popular, the moral authorities started to scrutinize us and we got censored in some episodes like an episode where we tried to debunk all the myth of what young people think about sex. The cruncher came when we got one episode about discrimination against gay people banned. Our message was that society discriminates gay people to a point that they feel pressured and it does more harm than good and that they are tax paying normal humans too but the censors felt we were being too liberal and ‘promoting’ gay culture. The norm for Malaysian media is that we are only allowed to talk about gay people if it is in the negative way.

We know that advertising is essential to most, if not all, television shows. Is 3R difficult to market and because of its focus on empowering women, did it have a smaller option of ‘potential’ advertisers? What was the strategy with this side of the business?
Yes for us especially as we funded the entire show for 11 years with only advertising money. Funnily was we had not much problems getting sponsors as we were targeting a strong segment but we had to balance sponsors expectations so that we don’t over-brand the show as its quite a turn off. We had some really loyal sponsors like Kotex, Guardian and Dove and some non-traditional ones like Ford cars. We were conscious and idealistic at the beginning that we did not want traditional ‘female’ products like soap powder that only targeted women when both men and women need to wash plates. So we went for sponsors that would not normally think of women as their target audience even though 50% of the population uses it like telcos, banks and a car manufacturer. TO me it made sense but sometimes corporations think being associated with a female product make them have less mass appeal. I am glad that not all corporations felt that way and it was good that some of them had female CEOs who understood the need to support a show like 3R.

What are some of the many projects you are working on at the moment? Any chance of Red Communications franchising the 3R concept to neighbouring countries?
Yes we have been to Phillippines – we did 3R for 2 years quite successfully sponsored by Kotex and also in Vietnam. Winning the Best Infotainment Award during the Asia TV Awards in 2005 was great as it really threw us into the spotlight and from there the region took notice and we had inquiries from around TV stations around the region.

Rafidah Abdullah

I just screened Marleen Gorris’ Antonia’s Line and Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone for my film students as part of Women’s Cinema and they remain as my favourite films. Do share your top 5 feminist films - what would they be and why?

Whale Rider (New Zealand).
Twelve-year-old Pai is the sole heir to a Maori chieftainship, and seems to have been born for the job – except for the fact that Pai is a girl. Her grandfather, Koro, who is the current chief, is adamant that the leadership can only be held by a male, and even starts training the village boys in traditional weapons and customs in hopes of finding a worthy successor among them. When Pai manages to best them all at every task, Koro becomes enraged and blames Pai’s continued defiance for the troubles of their tribe. Pai, who loves her grandfather very much and cannot understand his rejection of her, tries to mend the rift between them. Yet, she cannot give up her conviction that she is destined to lead her people. The day comes when this absolute conviction causes her to risk her life. Whale Rider is a film to make you weep for the sheer stupidity of gender injustice. Though the mystical ending here makes for an uplifting film, one is still left wondering how much wasted potential there is in this world. How many Pais are there out there, who do not have divine powers on their side to open up the prejudiced eyes of men?

Love For Share (Indonesia)
Though the official international title for this film is Love For Share, its native title is much more direct: Berbagi Suami, literally “dividing a husband”. This is a film made up of three marginally intercrossing stories within the city of Jakarta, featuring three women from different ethnicities and social classes, who only have in common the fact of their husbands’ polygamy. Pious Salma, a gynaecologist, believes that polygamy is a divine male right, though she struggles in her heart to accept a life where she is not the sole claimant to her husband’s love, time and energy. Elsewhere, Javanese village girl Siti moves to Jakarta and stays with a distant relative. Subsequently, she is taken as his unwilling third wife. Sharing the household and marital duties with her co-wives, day by day Siti sees her own dreams slip away. Finally, sexy Chinese girl Ming, who works in a popular roast duck restaurant, has an affair with her boss, culminating in a secret marriage. Thereafter, he promises that he will leave his overbearing first wife, and so Ming waits, and waits, and waits. Though the synopsis here sounds grim, the film is actually filled with much humour. The women are compassionately drawn, and become astute enough to see that they cannot rely on men for their happiness. Perhaps the biggest contribution of the film is that through its frank portrayal of the impact of polygamy on wives and children, it opened up a much-needed discourse on the place of polygamy in the modern Malay-speaking Muslim world.

Offside (Iran)
Iran and Bahrain are squaring off in a World Cup qualifying match, and in Tehran a handful of girls are desperately trying to sneak into the stadium to watch the game. Sneak in, did I say? Are they too poor to afford tickets? Why no, the simple fact is that in Iran it is illegal for women to attend sporting events, lest their delicate ears are assaulted by the choice language of testosterone-driven male supporters. Small matter for these ball-sy girls, who all try to get past the military guard by disguising themselves as boys. Except that they don’t manage to get past the guards after all. Corralled up on the roof of the stadium, where the action is tantalizingly, agonizingly just out of sight, the girls wait out the game in frustration, accompanied by the hapless soldiers charged with their keeping. The genius of Offside is that it doesn’t preach or point fingers, it simply lays bare the absurdity of patriarchy not only in the eyes of women, but also in the eyes of the young men whose duty it is to enforce it. You get the sense that these lads do empathize with the girls as much as they are able, and secretly would prefer to let them be, if not for the fear that there will be hell to pay should they turn them loose. As it turns out, there are no winners or losers in this round, only heart-bursting hope for the young people of Iran.

Fire (India)
Two women, trapped in dreary lives, married to self-consumed men blind to their needs, find solace and deliverance in each other. Barren Radha, driven by guilt over her ‘failure’ to procreate, agrees to a celibate life with her increasingly religious husband. When an intelligent and rebellious new sister-in-law, Sita, enters their family, suddenly the passions lying dormant within Radha come blazingly alive. This film is a bitter indictment of the soul-destroying prisons constructed by tradition and patriarchy, in which a man is his own worth, but a woman’s value is only what she contributes to her husband’s family. Though the dictates of society may oppress the male as well as the female, for the latter there is no outlet or escape – save, perhaps, what society doesn’t see. The characters are wonderfully drawn, all with very different ways of dealing with the need for love and human contact. The ending, bone-chilling in the actions of Radha’s husband and mother-in-law, recalls the harrowing and fatal ‘kitchen fires’ that become the fate of so many Indian wives. Can the women survive this trial by fire, and finally snatch their bit of happiness?

Spirited Away (Japan)
Having just moved to a new town, ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents become lost and find an abandoned fairground. Chihiro’s father insists on exploring it, and while Chihiro walks around on her own, her parents are tempted into savouring food at an unmanned stall. When Chihiro returns, she finds that her parents have been transformed into pigs, and the fairground starts swarming with gods and spirits as darkness falls. Chihiro learns that they are accidentally trapped in the spirit world, and she has to find a way to free her parents from their enchantment and lead them home. On the face of it, this animated children’s fantasy isn’t so much a feminist film as it is a film made with feminist intentions. Writer/director Hayao Miyazaki wanted to make a movie for some family friends who happened to be ten-year-old girls. In the course of his research, he read the girls’ comics that they left lying around, and found that the books offered nothing but stories on crushes and romance. Convinced that this is not what the girls “held dear in their hearts”, he decided to make a movie in which his young friends could be the heroines, where the protagonist is an unexaggerated, ordinary girl. Indeed, Chihiro (whose name is later changed to Sen) could be any young girl, though the circumstances that she falls into are anything but ordinary. But therein lies the feminist message of this film. This is a story that celebrates so-called ‘feminine’ traits such as kindness and compassion, and shows that these qualities are not inferior to so-called ‘masculine’ ones such as toughness and aggression, that are more usually associated with adventure stories. If Chihiro were a boy, would she make the choices that she makes, and succeed in freeing herself and her family? It certainly makes for an interesting discussion!

You graduated in 2002 from Goldsmiths College, University of London with a Masters in Screenwriting, what got you into writing?
I have always written stories, even as a young child. Growing up, though, I was not encouraged to pursue it as a career, which was why I read law at university. When I started working in the television industry, I was asked to write scripts but I wasn’t confident since I had had no training. I could write simple scripts but I didn’t dare write a screenplay. When I found out about the (British UK) Chevening Scholarship, I decided that this was my opportunity to learn scriptwriting properly.

What are the stories you write mostly about?
I write mostly women’s stories, that is, stories where the principal characters are female and that reflect a feminine viewpoint. As for what they are about, I guess they are mostly about the different challenges that this world throws at women (which are not necessarily faced by men) and how they handle that, and how they find their way to their happiness, which may not be a way that they would have ever thought of before life (or the script) happens. And I try to write stories that I hope can be universally enjoyed, but with a Malaysian flavour.

You’ve been known to inject feminist themes into your scripts and one way to breaking the female stereotype often perpetuated by classical cinema is certainly to invest in character complexity. In your opinion, are we still a long way from passing the Bechdel Test?
We are. I just saw a local (Malaysian) movie the other day where the ONLY female character is a dead one. Which is not to say that EVERY story must be required to pass the Bechdel test, but what gets my goat is that a film with only women in it would be considered gimmicky and an anomaly, whereas a movie without any women would scarcely raise a comment. It also annoys me when reporters ask me why I write movies that are anti-men; first of all they are hardly anti-men since there are positive as well as negative male characters, and secondly why aren’t other filmmakers hassled about making films that are anti-women when they have negative female characters?

No censorship, budget is not a constraint – what feminist film would you write…?
I would write the gender-bending mythical epic Hikayat Panji Semirang, and cast a kick-ass androgynous actress in the lead role. And yes, it will have all the simmering ‘homoerotic’ tension of the original text. Of course!

Beyond Borders Feb 2012 :: Amy Wheeler

2012-02-14T02:19:22Z

In this month's issue of Beyond Borders, we are happy to have had the opportunity to interview Amy Wheeler, playwright and Executive Director of Hedgebrook. Hedgebrook supports a growing global community of women writers from all over the world with residencies at its retreat on Whidbey Island, and programs to connect their work with readers and audiences of all ages. Having provided 1,300 women writers from all over the world with time, space, solitude and as Virginia Woolf once called it, rooms of their own since 1984, we ask Amy a couple of questions about her relationship to the retreat as well as about her personal practice.

(The following images were shot on the Hedgebrook premises.)

Name, Age, Occupation, Location
Amy Wheeler, 40’s, Executive Director at Hedgebrook, Whidbey Island, WA USA

Thanks for doing this Amy! Perhaps you can start by telling us a little about how you ended up being the Executive Director of Hedgebrook.
I came to Hedgebrook first as a playwright. I was selected for a Hedgebrook residency in 2002, then joined the Board in 2003. Changes were afoot, and I felt a writer whose life had been changed by this place and its mission needed to be at the table and in the conversation about the future vision of the organization. I served on the Board until mid-2006, when I threw my hat in the ring, interviewed and was hired as Executive Director. I had not done this work before; I was supporting myself as a writer and teacher. But it felt like a calling, and answering it has been one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve ever made.

So it has been six years already! Perhaps you could tell us what some of the ideologies that underscore the workings of Hedgebrook are? And do they overlap with any of the ideologies that underscore your personal creative practice?
My plays and my work at Hedgebrook are in perfect harmony right now. I feel like everything I am doing to helm this organization is also at the heart of everything I am trying to say through my writing.

There is a planetary shift happening…we sense it, we see it, we feel it…it’s happening in the environment and it manifests in our politics, economics, spiritual practices, science...everything. We are waking up to the fact that Mother Earth is not happy about how we’re treating her.

It is critical that women’s voices are heard and heeded during this time. Women need to nurture ourselves, our children and each other; and we need to help men learn to be nurturers. The paradigm is shifting, necessarily and urgently, from a warring culture to a compassionate one. The “radical h

ospitality” we show women writers at Hedgebrook has a profound impact on them, their writing and their voices. They leave this place as transformed beings. One alumna summed it up this way: “I’ve always written, but after being at Hedgebrook, I can call myself a writer.” Her words are echoed by each of the 1,300 who have come here over the past 24 years; because they have been just that, and only that, their full time with us. Women spend so much time taking care of other’s needs, fulfilling their desires, making room for their work and visions. We cannot underestimate the profound effect on a woman of having her needs met, and getting the message that the only thing she needs to focus on is what she has to say.

I totally agree that there is a planetary shift happening and that we need to start listening to what women have to say. Speaking of which, we hear you have some interesting ideas about calling out non-inclusive theatre companies by “throwing a better party”? Tell us more about this?
We’ve adopted a mantra from our friend and colleague Rick Ingrasci, a writer and doctor in our Whidbey Island community, who says, “If you want to change the culture, throw a better party.” I love the idea of being more inclusive, and finding more joy, in order to do the challenging work of creating change. Everybody loves a party, right? So if we focus on throwing a really good party, we make our cause sexy and inviting and fun. I would say the Occupy Movement is, in many ways, a “better party.”

Last Fall, we partnered with the Lark Play Development Center in New York to host a conversation about creating more opportunities for women playwrights work to be developed and produced. Currently, only 16-17% of the plays produced on American stages each year are by women, and there is a national movement called “50/50 in 2020” to bring that % equal by the year 2020. We invited playwrights, Artistic Directors, Literary Managers, directors, dramaturges, agents and others into the room to talk about we can do – what actions we can take – to bring about change that will impact those numbers. Morgan Jenness (agent, dramaturg, woman-of-the-theatre-extraordinaire) said something great like, “I don’t know about you all, but I’m getting tired of asking Daddy to borrow the keys to the car” - which spurred a lively conversation about how we could get our own car, and bring the “better party” mindset to this conversation. Some really fun ideas flowed out of the evening that I’m not at liberty to share because they’re still “in process.” But expect some fun and provocative theatrical events to be happening this year!

LOVE the idea of not wanting to borrow the keys to daddy's car! Great company really makes for some great ideas. Speaking of which, having had the opportunity to meet a varied host of women writers from around the world, what are some of the most important things you have learned from this experience?

That diversity is fundamental. It is reflected in nature all around us, in the rhythms of the seasons and cycles of birth, growth, death and regeneration. There is strength in diversity. We’re all different – and our unique perspective given who we are, where we hail from, how much money we have, the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual preference, our religious affiliation, our political stance, our spiritual practice…all of these things can bring us closer, or divide us. But when these things bring us closer, we are reminded again, in a very big way, that were are all connected.

From your experience, would you say that there is any one thing that links all the women who have been accepted into Hedgebrook thus far?
The courage to tell the truth.

We are constantly confronted with appalling statistics pertaining to the visibility (or perhaps, mainstream visibility) of women working in creative fields. For example, in 2010, 86% of books reviewed by the The New York Review of Books reviewed were written by men, with men making up 200 reviewers and women, only 39. Do you think women writers will ever be able to break through the systemic barriers that prevent us from being accorded the same sort of exposure and support as our male contemporaries?
Yes! See all of my answers above! I asked Gloria Steinem (a Hedgebrook alum and dear friend) a couple of years ago if it makes her sad to realize that the full impact of her work probably won’t manifest in her lifetime. And she smiled her beautiful Boddhisattva smile and said, “Absolutely not.” She sees her life’s work reflected in the young women she meets who don’t face the same obstacles to equality that she and women of her generation faced—who maybe aren’t even aware that those obstacles existed—and they give her hope.

I believe we have to trust that change happens incrementally for awhile, then in big tsunami waves, and that there’s always a backlash that makes it feel like we’re losing ground. But in fact, backlashes indicate how much ground we’re gaining. The more an opposing force gets threatened, the more aggressive it gets…sometimes, sadly, the more violent. But all of that is evolution. And the evolution of consciousness is happening, all the time. I am a hopeful person and I believe in the goodness of people. When people do bad things, it’s because they’ve had bad things done to them. It all comes back to love. And what does this have to do with the statistics you shared? Women have to keep telling our stories, truthfully, courageously, joyously – AND, we have to keep working together, as a community, as a village, to create pathways and forums for those stories to be heard. This requires a sort of selflessness: it has to be as important to me that other women’s stories get told as it is that my plays get produced. We have to invest in each other.

How would you sum up your personal feminism/s into three sentences?
I’m writing a letter to my nieces – a bevy of beautiful and amazing girls in my and my wife’s families who range in age from 6 to 17 – and of the ten things I shared with them that I’ve learned about being a woman in this world, the top three are: 1) take your space in the world, and never apologize for taking it; 2) find and use your voice; 3) trust your instincts and follow your intuition.

Amy Wheeler is a playwright and alumna of Hedgebrook and Yaddo artist colonies, whose plays have been seen in New York (including and a special engagement at the Guggenheim Museum), Atlanta and on the West Coast, as well as on film. Amy has also worked at the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the New York Philharmonic, and on faculty at Cornish College of the Arts. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and lives in a 100 year old dance hall with her wife and son and their dog Matilda.

To find out more about Hedgebrook and its writers-in-residence project, visit them online at http://www.hedgebrook.org

Sugar & Spice || Women Talk About Girlhood

2012-02-13T12:41:01Z

Sugar, spice and all things nice: What little girls are made of?

In conjunction with International Women's Day 2012, AWARE and Etiquette come together to present Sugar & Spice, a reading of poetry and prose by 7 established and emerging women writers.

Our first event for 2012, Sugar & Spice is inspired by Eve Ensler's TEDTalk "Embrace Your Inner Girl", in line with the international theme for IWD2012 "Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures", and investigates ideas of girlhood, with writers reading original pieces as well as pieces written by women they admire.

Curated by Zarina Muhammad and Tania De Rozario, the line-up includes writers such as Ovidia Yu, Dana Lam, Nurul H and Shubigi Rao. Also on the menu is a video by Zarina Muhammad and Lisa Li, documenting interviews of women above 50, addressing issues central to their childhoods.

Come celebrate International Women's Day 2012 with us on the 8th of March, at The Pigeonhole, which has so graciously lent us its space. 7.30pm, 52 & 53 Duxton Road. See you there!

3 More Women Join the Etiquette Anchor Team!

2012-02-13T11:26:44Z

Wondering what else we have been up to besides our upcoming anthology and our event for International Women ’s Day? Well besides planning for our next big showcase in 2013 (which will, for the first time, include a music category - woohoo!), we have three new women on our anchor team, volunteering their time and talent to the Etiquette cause:

Heading ead our new music arm, is Michaela Therese. Once called “Singapore’s answer to Alicia Keys” and vaunted for her performance with industry giant Brian McKnight, Michaela also boasts two sold-out concerts at The Esplanade, opening sets for the legendary James Browns God-daughter, Carleen Anderson and José James and was recently voted one of the Top 10 Live Acts in Singapore by Life!, The Straits Times. In May 2011, Michaela was personally invted to sing Jim Brickman’s songs during his concernt with him at The Esplanade. She was also the sole invited performer at UNIFEM’s annual gala dinner, SNOW™ 2011. An ingenious songwriter, a power-packed vocalist and also a committed advocator of human and animal rights, Michaela is working on an EP under her other moniker, Miss Mic, and on releasing a single-by-single album.

Meanwhile, joining Mardhiah Osman on our film team, is Vanessa Ho, a recent graduate of University College London, where she did her Master of Arts in Gender, Society & Representation. Known largely as one of the seven organizers behind Singapore’s first installment of SlutWalk, Vanessa has dedicated a large portion of her time to film and activism since she has come home. An employee at Project X, a group that spends its time and energy fighting for the rights of sex workers in Singapore, Vanessa was also responsible for a series of screenings at Post-Museum, platformed under the umbrella of her project Ob/scene, a series of gender-related events that seeks to bring onto the scene, what was once off the scene. A porn enthusiast, Vanessa strongly believes that the sex revolution is The Revolution.

And last but not least, Krishna Udayasankar joins us as an editor on our upcoming anthology. Krishna is the author of the forthcoming Aryavarta Chronicles (publishers: Hachette), a series of mytho-historical novels set in ancient India. She is currently working on her fourth full-length novel, a collection of prose-poems entitled ‘Objects of Affection, and also on a collection of short stories: ‘Made in Singapore’ which explores issues of identity and belonging amongst Singapore’s diverse migrant population. Krishna holds a PhD in Strategic Management, as well as a graduate qualification in International Business and an Honours degree in Law. She works as a Lecturer at Nanyang Business School, and is also co-author on an International Business textbook.

Etiquette is excited to have expanded its team and thrilled about the three new brains to have joined us. Stay tuned to upcoming events and be sure to mail us with you thoughts, suggestions and congratulations!

Etiquette Anthology || Call for Submissions!

2011-12-31T17:12:52Z

BE PART OF THE ETIQUETTE ANTHOLOGY!
As some of you may know, Etiquette presented its inaugural literary event, Women Out Loud, last August, at The Substation Theatre, in an event graced by a full-house that spilled from chairs and onto floors.With the same spirit of enthusiasm with which we were so warmly met, we are attempting to put together an anthology comprising the works of emerging and established women writers who are Singaporean and/or are living in Singapore.

Anchor writers whose work is slated to be featured include Ovidia Yu, Dana Lam, Zarina Muhammad, Krishna Udayasankar and Tania De Rozario.

If you are interested in being part of this anthology, read on!

THEMES
The anthology will be divided into three broad categories that run parallel to our visual, literary and filmic showcases:

Sitting Down & Shutting Up
Ever been told to behave more like a lady? Wondered exactly what this meant? Gender, not synonymous with biological sex, is often perceived as natural and binary, with opposing characteristics defined against each other. Why does being a woman involve such desperate performance? What codes of etiquette are involved and why? What happens when these codes are challenged, deconstructed and imagined away? What happens when the masquerade starts to end and the woman starts to begin?

Getting Down & Dirty
Ever killed a conversation mid-sentence by saying something completely inappropriate? There are so many issues pertaining to women’s bodies that are seen to be dirty, shameful or frightening. These range from natural attributes such as menstruation or sexual desires to acts of violence such as rape. Why have our bodies been sentenced to silence in a world where body image issues, eating disorders, sexual objectification and violence are perpetuated so largely, with women bearing the brunt of the consequences?

Truth or Dare.
A game in which the rules of everyday social interaction are temporarily suspended, Truth or Dare has been an excuse for many adolescent girls to share secrets with friends, assert sexual agency and create spaces within which truths are articulated under codes of honour and people are pushed beyond their usual social boundaries. When was the last time you did something you were not supposed to? Found yourself in a situation in which rules no longer applied? Treaded the thin line between what you revealed and what you concealed? Threw consequence to the wind?

ELIGIBILITY
This call-for-submissions is open to Singaporean women, women residing in Singapore and is trans-inclusive.

ACCEPTED GENRES
Poetry, Prose-poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction, monologue, social commentary.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
• For poetry submissions, send us 3-5 poems.
• For all other submissions, send us 1 piece of up to 3000 words.
• Multiple submissions are allowed.
• Works should not have been previously published in print.
• If work has been previously published online, please indicate publication.
• All work should be sent as Word Documents.
• Please include a recent CV and a 100-word bio as separate documents.
• Send your entries to ExhibitingEtiquette@gmail.com with ETQ Anthology (YourGenre) as the thread name.

DEADLINE
• ~~15th March 2012~~ 15th April 2012

GENERAL FYIs

• Applications will be acknowledged within 10 working days of receipt.
• Proposals received after the mentioned deadline will not be reviewed.
• Applications missing any of the required materials will be not be considered.
• Successful applicants will be notified by e-mail by the end of April 2012.
• Applicants retain creative rights of their proposed works.
• All selected works will be chosen based on the merit of the work; CVs and bios are drawn upon only once the works have been selected, in order to facilitate any grant application procedures with efficiency.
• The Etiquette team bears no responsibility for submissions lost in cyberspace.
• The editorial team’s selection is final.

NOT SURE WHAT ETIQUETTE IS ALL ABOUT?
Remember, we are looking for work that is both critical and creative. If you are not sure what Etiquette is about, remember to find out about the event and how it got its name. We are pretty sure you will have a better idea about what we are looking for if you check this out first

So, yes. HAPPY WRITING BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE! We are looking forward to your entries and are excited as hell to read all that you have to say! GOOD LUCK! And may the F-force be with you

Beyond Borders Jan 2012 :: Kimiko Suda

2011-12-31T15:07:35Z

Welcome to the second edition of Beyond Borders! We hope everyone has had a great start to the 2012!

Kicking off this new year, we are excited to have with us Kimiko Suda, co-director of the Asian Film Festival Berlin , a bi-annual festival originally run by five women, that stemmed from a growing interest in diaspora, gender, and a need to platform critically and creatively groundbreaking film. Since then, the team has expanded and we get in on the action with some questions for Suda, who was kind enough to oblige us with her time.....

(All festival pics are taken by Dong-Ha Choe)

Name, Age, Occupation, Location.
Kimiko Suda, 32, co-director of the Asian Film Festival Berlin, researcher and lecturer at the Free University of Berlin.

Tell us a little about the most recent installment of the festival.
This year’s festival theme was Imagine(d) Kinships, embracing debates about globalization, social transformation and the shifting of idea(l)s of nationality, kinship and gender roles. The festival program included 35 short, documentary and fiction films from East Asia (Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam) and the Asian Diaspora (USA, Canada, Australia). We wanted to invite Ann Hui, since we screened her queer comedy “All About Love”, but unfortunately she had to work on her new project and couldn’t make it. But we had other guests from Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Hong Kong. More than 1000 visitors came to the screenings at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Korean Culture Centre Berlin. The youngest and most lively audience received the screening of Saigon Electric (USA/Vietnam 2011), which features street dance as well as the notion of community and friendship as kinship. Vietnamese-German teenage girls in mini-skirts laughing, shouting and clapping along with the story were fun to watch.

(Above: Festival co-director Sun-ju choi with legal advisor and organizational coordinator Jee-un kim)

That is really, really cool. Did you have any fringe events to compliment the screenings – feels like there was a lot of opportunity to run satellite events!
Since we define the festival as a platform and network for film directors, festival organizers and also film scholars, we include a film lecture and discussion in each festival edition. This year the theme was “Gender and Kinship in Hong Kong Independent Cinema,” Yau Ching (director and film scholar, Lingnan University Hong Kong) and Denise Tse-Shang Tang (film scholar and sociologist, University of Hong Kong) presented a comparison of different Hong Kong lesbian video artists and a personal reflection about being a female film maker.

That is really awesome. We love projects that deal with issues of gender in critical ways. Oh and speaking of gender, maybe you could let us know how this festival evolved from the Asian Berlin Women’s Film Festival.

Basically we just wanted to have a broader choice of Asian films to be shown and we had one man (female-to-male transgender) joining our team, so we changed our name from Asian Women’s Film Festival to Asian Film Festival Berlin.

Through our growing interest in Asian Diaspora films we learned, that in the US most of the bigger cities each have an Asian Film Festival run by Asian Americans, so in some ways we took them as our role model. In Europe there is only one other film festival run by Asian women, its CinemAsia in Amsterdam. Usually film festivals, also the one including many Asian films, in Europe are predominantly run by “white guys”. We all love films but were not interested going through many years of being an assistant of a white guy in charge of the Asian film section in the festivals here in Europe, so we rather run our own festival even if we don’t earn anything with it for the moment, just the festival production costs are covered.

I totally agree with that philosophy. If you are sick of not getting an adequate platforms from which to showcase quality work, set up your own. The six of you seem like quite a power-packed team. How did you all come together?
In 2005 I met Sun-ju Choi when editing a film catalogue together. She and a group of older Korean women founded the Asian Women’s Film Festival Berlin in 2007. The older Korean women knew each other through a network of Korean-German nurses who all came to Germany for work in the late 1960s and belonged to the first group of immigrants successfully fighting in public for their right to get long term residency in Germany. When she asked me to help out with the Chinese film section I was happy to join. In 2011 we basically started to share the burden of main responsibilities such as fundraising, so we see it as a co-directorship now.

Jee-Un Kim our organizational coordinator and legal advisor is a lawyer specialized in media in her day-job, but as a board member of korientation, the registered association which hosts our festival, she has been organizing other big cultural events with Sun-ju before.

Feng-mei, Rei and I already met as students around 2003, we became close friends and Feng-mei joined the film festival in 2009 and Rei in 2011. Arnika is the only non-Asian curator, but she spent ten years in Bangkok, is fluent in Thai and somehow considers Thailand her home since most of her closest friends live in Bangkok. We met her through friends in Berlin in 2008, now she works in Hong Kong, but since I also travel through Hong Kong a few times per year for work, we meet regularly to eat, chat and discuss the festival issues.

Feng-mei moved to Los Angeles for studies and work, but somehow we developed a regular communication structure including e-mail and Skype, so we work pretty well as a transnational team.

Most of us work as research associates and lecturers, so we partly have the same troubles in daily life and find it easy to relate to each other. Besides the festival work we sometimes also organize conference panels, write articles or go on holidays together. In Germany there aren’t that many “People of Color” working in universities yet, so it’s good to build a network for personal support….I guess its close personal friendship and shared professional interests, which connects our group of friends.

Wow. It seems like a lot of your dynamic is rooted in the fact that you are such a transnational team. Given the international make-up and the range of life experiences, does the team ever have any disagreements about what constitutes Asian-ness? What do you and your team define as being and Asian film?
Geographically we include East Asia and South East Asia and the related Asian Diaspora. Maybe we could say we are mainly interested in perspectives through an “Asian (Diasporic) Eye”, rather than films done by random film directors on the topic “Asia”. Theoretically we try to think beyond those categories though, always keeping in mind, that nations are “imagined communities” as Benedict Anderson states, that Gender and Ethnic identities are constructed and constantly in a flow of transformation…

A team of media activists from Thailand together with Hong Kong-based AFFB curator Arnika Fuhrmann.

Then fluid nature of gender and ethnic identities does tend to make categorization difficult on occasion. Do you feel though that certain elements of race, nationality and gender impact the filmmaking process?
If we look at the film industries, film festivals, the power relations regarding the three categories mentioned in your question, Asian women are definitely still hardly represented in decision making positions and do not easily get funding for big film projects. So we think it is important to support especially female filmmakers with showing their films and invite them to come to Berlin. Of course there are some quite powerful female producers/film directors within Asian countries, e.g. the late Yasmin Ahmad or Ann Hui to name two examples.

Besides the film making the reception of a film can also clearly be influenced by gender. We had an interesting experience this year, when we screened our opening film “Bi dung so!”. Some “feminists” of the older generation, in the end of their 50ties, complained, that the film was “not empowering women”.

We liked the film because it opens up different possibilities to read the narrative, we e.g. saw the desire of a young woman in a summer night, a gay man’s longing gaze, etc., but the older women saw naked bodies and thought it sexist. So we thought we indeed should remember, that actually one situation or image can be seen very differently by each person or sometimes different generations even if having the same gender, one person feels empowered, another one intimidated or even disgusted.

That is very interesting. I mean, given how film provides for such a wide range of multiple entries, is there any ideology that underscores the films selected for your festival?
I wouldn’t think so. We just prefer films offering critical and innovative perspectives, questioning power relations and clichés and which show perspectives missing or hardly being represented in the mainstream film and media landscape.

For example what we get to see in German TV-series are Asian-German actresses playing sex workers, passive, smiling waiting to be seduced by “white men”, we don’t get to see any Asian news announcer or “daily life”-characters such as accountants, lawyers, teachers, etc.. Regarding the representation of ethnic minorities in the media Germany is lagging far behind the visual culture in Anglo-American countries.

As mentioned before, most of us work in universities besides being involved with the festival, so we are definitely influenced by certain theoretical perspectives, e.g. postcolonial and feminist/queer theory, but of course we also relate to our personal, family’s and friends’ experiences e.g. regarding migration, when we select the films.

And we see film as visual art, so we also look for a beautiful cinematic language in the films, not only content. Sometimes if we receive a film with a great topic, but shot and edited in a not so professional way, we show it in a different context on a smaller screen, invite the director and go for an in-depth discussion about the theme dealt within the film.

Who are some of your favourite filmmakers?
Ann Hui, Angelina Maccarone, Renee Tajima-Pe_a, Yang Yong-Hi, Cohen Brothers, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Hong Sang-soo, Fatih Akin. I also love Classics e.g. by the Korean director Sang-Ok Shin.

Lovely. And how would you sum up your personal feminism/s into three sentences?
Never loose your curiosity and humor.Only if you are economically independent can you choose a life and a partner that you truly want. And don’t be Hello Kitty: open your mouth and talk back if something or someone bothers you.

Argh.

2011-12-02T18:19:18Z

How to enrage a feminist at 8am in the morning, on her way to work.

Put this up by the escalator in the MRT station O_O

Beyond Borders Dec 2011 :: Elisha Lim

2011-11-28T10:03:58Z

Welcome to the first in a series of interviews with individuals beyond the borders of Singapore, who consistently and passionately maintain creative practices that comprise high artistic standards and an unapologetic feminist stance aimed at challenging the ways in which people view gender...because it is always nice to be inspired and always nice to know that you are part of a larger community of people fighting the very good fight.

For our first interview, we could not believe our believe our girly luck when we somehow managed to snag Elisha Lim of 100 Butches fame and after we managed to stop giggling about it, somehow managed to summon up a few questions

In case you have yet to hear about Lim, who refuses to go by "she ", get this: A comic artist, writer and musician, Lim was cited in 2009 by AfterEllen as a queer woman to watch, their work has been praise-blurbed by Alison Bechdel herself and they have toured 28 American cities with the iconic Sister Spit in 2010.

I personally have The Illustrated Gentleman, Lim's 2011 calendar, on me all the time. Ahem, by on me, I of course mean, in my bag. It is A5-sized, easy to write it and very, very handy. And guess what? 2012 is almost here, which means a new calendar is on its way! Yay!

But enough of gushing. It is so undignified. Here comes Elisha!

***

Name, Age, Occupation, Location.
Elisha Lim, 33, Artist, Montréal, Canada

So, Elisha Lim of 100 Butches fame! Tell us how 100 Butches actually started.
Hmm... because a fortune teller told me to.

Basically, I was working on a career in magazine publishing and she said "give it up, quit now. It's gonna flop." Hah! Imagine my face. It dropped.

Then she said - you have another talent, a talent you haven't used since you were a child, and it's going to make you famous." Lo and behold, only two years later I was doing international radio interviews about drawing comics! Hah!

The day it started was while I was living in the UK. I had a horrible soul-destroying job as a waiter in a fancy London restaurant and on the bus I saw an ad in Diva Magazine: "Lesbian cartoonist needed." What follows is almost a fairytale - and something next to impossible in this job market. But somehow: That night, I sat down at the kitchen table and drew the first 3 of 100 Butches. I drew two IJ girls, and one canadian bicycle messenger. Then I emailed them to Diva, and to my ASTONISHMENT, they were like "we want to give you a job," AND..... are you ready for this? "we want to introduce you to Alison Bechdel."

It was like, at that moment, the fortune teller proved herself to be totally, completely, eerily right.

I see I see. Maybe you can tell us how this led to the fabulous calendar you have on sale for us next year?
Hmmm... well I feel incredibly lucky. These little drawings have given me a gigantic platform for speaking my mind. But it's not automatic - sometimes I try new projects and they just aren't popular - they don't strike a chord. What I love to do, is use my modest fame for trying to strike the next chord. I try to pay attention to the trends around me, and then sort of dig into the aspects that are the most controversial and poignant.

Right now I'm very interested in transmasculinity, because it seems to have achieved such a trendy status. Last year I put out a calendar called "The Illustrated Gentleman," which was all about how butches and transguys shop for men's clothes that fit.

What I find really fascinating this year, is to dig my fingers under the surface of the trend, and find the controversy. Right now I think the controversy is transfags. That is, the growing trend that transguys are embracing sissy, fag things - like dandy pointed wingtip shoes, pretty bejewelled broaches, floral scarves, etc. At least, that's how it seems over here, I'd love to hear about Singaporean trends. Is it affected by what's over here?

This trend is fascinating to me, because it carries the potential whiff of misogyny. Because transwomen have not been celebrated or worshipped in the same way as transmen over here in North America. Nor have femmes, or high femmes. So just how come we transmen suddenly get praise and attention for dressing girly?

These are the questions I study and explore in the Sissy Calendar. The calendar features gay men who talk about the homophobic and sexist violence of "sissy" as they were growing up. It features transmen who talk about their eye shadow. And especially, it features femmes, high and low, who proudly demonstrated the feminine style and grace that they have earned, before since and after it came into style.

Ok. Also? I'm a cunning entrepreneurial Chinese Singaporean. Living over here in the West, I want to make smart business - and sometimes that's challenging as a racial minority. So I turn my art into merchandise and churn, churn, churn it out. Heh wink I'm proud to say it's working. They will be sold on the ultra selective "Bitchmart." They have won afterellen's best Lesbian Christmas guide. They have currently been written up in Montréal's newspaper "The Mirror" which is amazing - because it's not gay media.

That is awesome. And gosh, your hands seem very full. And after the year you toured with Sister Spit! What was that like? Did you meet any crazy groupies?
Touring with Sister Spit was incredible. I mean, even though I've spent most of my life in North America, I never really went to the States before, and I'm still a starry-eyed Singaporean teenager at heart, learning how to be "cool" from 90210. So when our tourvan pulled into towns like Las Vegas, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and I even had fans at every show, it was like the most surreal magical mysterious experience in my life. It was staggering.

I think I met some very touching, heartfelt fans, but I would never call them "crazy groupies" hahahaha! I think I owe them more respect than that. After all if Beyoncé ever called me her crazy groupie I would die of humiliation. Even though it's completely 100% true.

I would very happily be your crazy groupie, Elisha! I admire your multidisciplinary practice. Actually, you are very multidisciplinary. Do you have any particular ideology that underscores your work?
Wow, that's a good question. Yes, I'd say: tell the truth, and to listen as hard as possible. I try to talk about what I see. There's so much to witness every day, if you know what I mean - how people discover prejudice, how they fight it, how they follow, or how they rebel. I try to express these things that I see in an enticing, clear, unpretentious, beautifully decorated way. It's sort of like having a conversation with the culture around me, but in the most simple, raw, honest way I can possibly think of.

Who are some of your favourite authors/writers?
Yahoo! Fun to think about. Hmmm... you know what? Would it be weird to say, instead of writers, I have favourite internet artists? Like for example, I love Jad Abumrad on radiolab.org. I love Elanor Wachtel on Wachtel on the Arts. I love Ira Glass on This American Life (even though I disagree with quite a lot of his politics). These are all people that open my mind, inspire me, and teach me new things. It's everything I'd hope for from a writer.

But just to give credit to some incredible conventional writers, I'd say Zadie Smith for being so smart, Kazuo Ishiguro for being so engaging, and I'm not joking in the slightest when I say my sister Thea Lim. I think she's the smartest and most fun cultural critic in the blogosphere.

I like Thea too! I have one of her books! It really made me look at how I view my own romatic relationships with reference to the women who play peripheral roles in them. It was very honest and empowering. Speaking of which, how would you sum up your personal feminism/s into three sentences?
I think that transwomen are the most brutal targets of sexism and misogyny. I'm reminded of the cinema's mocking reaction in Forever Fever when Hock's brother comes out as not just gay but trans. I laughed along at the time. But why? I think it's so important to think sincerely about the exclusion and alienation of transwomen, whether by straight people, by queer people, by women, even by feminists. I think I would sum up my feminism with one universal sentence: "What do you have against transwomen?"

***

The Sissy calendar is available online via this site .

Help fund Jellyfish!

2011-11-28T09:36:40Z

Yes we know that that was a very weird title for a blog entry not about endangered wildlife, but that is also the name of a new film set to be shot in January 2012.

Comprising an all-female crew (do you have any idea how rare that is?!) and set in a small rural fishing community, Jellyfish follows the heart of a 13 year-old girl whose coming of age story involves a transgender woman who arrives in her village one day.

Marcia Ong, who screened her award-winning short Kristy with us in 2010, is the DOP on this film directed by Rosie Haber, who is currently based in Singapore. The project has been launched on Kickstarter and the team is hoping to receive $8000 in funding by the 24th of December (Merry Christmas Team!!!) in order to see this project through.

So if you are keen on donating to support an all-female crew or just want to learn more about the film, do check out their promo video here. Good luck to you lovely women!

“Change” premieres at The Pigeonhole

2011-11-28T08:32:36Z

Come check out the premiere of Change, a short film by Prema Menon, for whom Change represents a space of time in which "5 people intersect upon one point of connection."

Among Singapore’s foremost directors and producers of independent film for Tamil and third culture Indian audiences, Prema was one of 6 filmmakers to have screened at the Etiquette 2011 documentary-film showcase. Change was created in May 2011, was her fourth short and is something she considers a "passion project".

So so drop by The Pigeonhole 8-10pm, 30th November, Wednesday and bring your partners and friends

Address: 52/53 Duxton Road
Opening Hours: Venue will be open from 10am-11pm on the day of the screening.

Extracts from Clit-o-ris up online! :)

2011-11-16T04:07:59Z

Clit-o-ris, a collective journal initiated by artists Ipshita Thakur and Upasna Pandey are up online at clit-o-ris.tumblr.com!

Exhibited at Etiquette 2011, Clit-o-ris garnered tons of written responses, some heartfelt, some naughty, some just plain fun.

So check out some of the entries created by a whole host of women artists, reponding to one of the most fun-filled parts of our body

The Happiness Index

2011-11-11T08:55:37Z

So the Etiquette team has decided that in between events, it makes sense to continue platforming the work of artists who have exhibited with us. And on that note, what could be a more appropriate title that The Happiness Index?

Ye Shufang showcased gorgeous watercolour drawings inspired by Enid Blyton with us in 2010. This new exhibition of hers compiles 15 years of interests and reasearch, drawing inspiration for the ready-made and from every day experiences.

Shufang’s exhibition credits include solo exhibitions at The Belgrade Cultural Centre in Serbia, Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta and Plastique Kinetic Worms in Singapore. Her curated exhibitions include Feminine Imaginaire 2002 in Venice, Text and Subtext in Stockholm and World Exposition 2005 in Japan. Launched to fame in the 90s through her time-sensitive work created with agar-agar, come see how her practice has evolved in this show in which she has "taken these research ideas, pre-occupations and compulsions, and attempted to sort them out in this new series of drawings."

The exhibition opens on the 15th of November at the Private Musuem at 7pm, and Ye is giving a talk on the 19th of November in the same place, at 3pm.

Address: The Private Musuem, 51 Waterloo street, #02-06
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-7pm, Sat, Sun & PHs 11am-5pm.
Show carries on till: 26th December

Etiquette II Film Tickets on Sale now! :)

2011-07-02T13:25:16Z

In the spirit of getting down and dirty, and due to the fact that Zarina and I love doing things with our hands, we spent a glorious weekday (with another enthusiastic soul named Lisa, who also happens to be our resident website dial-a-friend-if-all-things-fail volunteer) printing, perforating, cutting, stamping & stacking tickets for all you beautiful people

Tickets went on sale at The Substation today. Do support us buy purchasing yourself a seat. Tickets are $25 for one night and $45 for 2 nights. To get tickets personally, drop by the Substation at 45 Armenian Street. Alternatively, you can drop us a mail at ExhibitingEtiquette@gmail.com to reserve seats.

Tickets for the film screening go on sale July 1!

2011-06-24T18:35:57Z

Hello everyone!
Tickets for the film screening will be available at The Substation Box Office from July 1. Drop by 45 Armenian Street on any weekday between 11.30am-8pm. Or call 6337-7800 or email boxoffice@substation.org to reserve tickets.