Description

“Mobilizing Gay Singapore provides an astute, illuminating, and utterly fascinating analysis of how the legal sophistication, strategic creativity, and sheer courage of gay and lesbian activists in Singapore have enabled them to challenge the heteronormativity of state and society in increasingly bold ways.”—George Chauncey, Samuel Knight Professor of History and American Studies, Yale University, and author of Gay New York

For decades, Singapore’s gay activists have sought equality and justice in a state where law is used to stifle basic civil and political liberties. In her ground-breaking book, Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State. Lynette Chua asks, what does a social movement look like in an authoritarian state? She takes an expansive view of the gay movement to examine its emergence, development, strategies, and tactics, as well as the roles of law and rights in social processes.

Chua tells this important story using in-depth interviews with gay activists, observations of the movement’s activities-including “Pink Dot” events, where thousands of Singaporeans gather in annual celebrations of gay pride-movement documents, government statements, and media reports. She shows how activists deploy “pragmatic resistance” to gain visibility and support, tackle political norms that suppress dissent, and deal with police harassment, while avoiding direct confrontations with the law.

Mobilizing Gay Singapore also addresses how these brave, locally engaged citizens come out into the open as gay activists and expand and diversify their efforts in the global queer political movement.