Articles

Singapore's
Sexual revolution
New generation moves away from puritan past; society worries about social impact.
By Seah Chiang Nee
Dec 1, 2003

ALMOST half the singles here admitted in a recent survey to having had sex, 50% with multiple partners - a sign that Singapore is no longer the puritan society it once was.
Most were aged between 20 and 30 years. Some 39% replied "no", according to the Straits Times survey of 335 men and women.
"To many youths, sex is no big deal. It’s for the thrill. There are no strings attached," marketing executive Adrian Lee, who lives with his girlfriend, told the paper.
For previous generations, sex was for procreation; today it is for recreation, said sociologist Alfred Choi.
"It has been de-linked from marriage in places like Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan."
Another revelation: Six in 10 Singaporean men had multiple partners, compared to four in 10 women. About a quarter of both sexes said they had cohabited.
Another survey had found that teenagers were also experimenting with sex at a younger age.
Exposed to the Internet, Singapore’s young generation is entering what is - at least by the city’s own puritan standards - a sexual revolution.
A spate of newspaper reports and statistics in recent weeks has revealed the extent of how far things have gone, to the concern of its conservative citizenry.
What is happening is a trend; or rather a Pandora’s Box opened up by Web pornography and imported lifestyles that are accessible to most teenagers.
The government has few reasons to blame the licensed media for the cause. Most TV, newspapers and magazines in Singapore generally adhere to the law or resort to self-censorship.
Neither does the fault lie with lax laws or implementation. Singapore has probably some of the toughest morality regulations among the world’s modern cities.
Liberal youths who believe in a permissive lifestyle are undergoing changes, never mind the consequences. Given the choice, they would want total de-control.
The large conservative part of society, however, sees the changing values as having left behind a trail of broken marriages, AIDS, unwanted babies and even a few murders.
(In the latest case last Thursday, a 43-year-old woman killed her live-in boyfriend because she found him visiting prostitutes.)
The number of divorces rose by 15% from the previous year, many of them caused by a rise in promiscuity. Among non-Muslim couples, the rate has risen substantially, more than double last year's figure. Divorce is often an extension of premarital sex.
Nowhere are the changes shown clearer than Singapore’s nightspots, where singles frequent. Out of seven bars, six told the Sunday Paper there was an increase in women and drinking, which often leads to a pick-up - and sex.
"Some women work hard, party hard and drink hard. It’s part of their lifestyle," one executive said. And it’s no fruit juices and mocktails either.
Among those interviewed by reporters was a 20-year-old woman who said she often ended up drunk and in some stranger’s bed.
The "smart" island is linked by an underground fast-speed cable system to promote the use of the Internet for business and education.
The computer has long become a common sight in the classroom. Many teens are savvy enough to put up a simple website. But the flip side is their exposure to a dark new world of pornography, sadism and perversion.
The authorities have put in software to block these sites but the students have a way of getting around it.
A recent check into computer usage in three schools turned up a surprise.
At the only all-girls’ school, pornographic websites were the most popular, while in the two boys’ schools, the main interest was on games and football.
The forbidden surfing was taking place during lessons under the noses of the teachers, who were unaware of it.
The shocking changes in sexual mores are taking place among Singaporean women - and girls.
One example was a 15-year-old girl who was - it was told in court - having sex with up to 80 men by using an Internet chat room to prostitute herself. Nine men had been arrested for having sex with the underaged girl, and seven had been jailed.
More teenagers are turning up for abortion. In the last reported year, the number hit 2,610 (an average of seven a day), a 5.5% annual rise.
A columnist recently advised parents that if they wanted to protect their young daughters from sexual dangers, they must "first accept that girls can be as frisky as boys".
Some had lured men via online chat-rooms, lied about their age, and offered sex sometimes for money, then ran crying to their parents and the police.
The use of "pain" as a deterrent appears to sociologists to work at best only for a while. The authorities had used it to convince 13-year-old students not to do it by showing them horrible images of sexual diseases.
Even AIDS and other serious sexual diseases have not persuaded many people to take precautions.
A total of 201 more Singaporeans were infected with the AIDS virus between January and October this year, compared with 189 in the previous year.
Yet only one third of Nanyang Technological University students who had sex had used protection.
In the face of all this, the government is likely to slow down its policy of censorship relaxation.
In recent years, there had been some small steps of loosening up but the city still has a hard-earned reputation for probity and moral conservatism.
Meanwhile, a counter-movement appears in store. A pro-virginity group has convinced more than 6,000 Singaporean teenagers and young adults to sign a pledge not to have premarital sex.
"Our message is this: If I have premarital sex, I am not a person of good character," said Joanna Koh-Hoe, one of the organisers. "In fact, any sex outside of marriage is immoral whatever the age of the person."
The group is planning to organise a march along Orchard Road on Valentine’s Day next year to spread its message. The police are unlikely to stop it.
(This was contributed to and was first published in The Sunday Star on Nov 30, 2003).

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