In the midst of my frantic revision for exams, I came across the article about some comments people have made to a girl who wrote in to an online forum to express her disappointment at locals who did not help her when she was molested in Clarke Quay. I am very upset, so upset that I have found time I do not have to write this blog entry to express MY disgust with the people involved.
First off, the girl did nothing wrong in standing up to her attacker. Why should she have walked away like so many people have suggested? If anyone should be embarrassed, it is not her but the molester who should be ashamed. Too many men take liberties with girls in this country and get away with it because the girls have chosen silence and avoidance. Molest and rape are acts that take away control from a women. When we do not stand up for ourselves, we condone these men to continue molesting others. We are telling them to go on and do it, because we girls won’t say a thing. Gradually, it only emboldens our attackers and make them feel like they were born to do this; they’re so good at it that they are never caught. Maybe they become twisted enough to even think perhaps we girls are not speaking up because we secretly liked being groped. They start to think they’re god’s gift to women when they are the lowest scum of the earth.
We have to stand up for ourselves. It was common occurrence during my secondary school years to see schoolmates being touched inappropriately and deliberately on crowded buses. Molest is not as rare as you think in our so called civilized country. It has happened to me, to friends and to strangers. What a molester claims to be an innocent or accidental hand that bumped into my rear repeatedly because there’s a lot of people on the bus is a whole lot of bullshit. I’m thankful for the senior who noticed and came over and shielded me before asking his friend to inform the bus driver of the incident. You underestimate how much a kind gesture like that comforts someone who has just been violated and feeling vulnerable. Having someone help me in that situation made me feel like I was not alone and that I did nothing wrong. It gave me strength and conviction when I was scared and confused. Despite his claims, I knew he deliberately touched me as much as he tried to make me doubt myself. In the end, that support made it so that I filed the complaint officially with the bus company and raised awareness that such crimes were prevalent on the school route. More and more girls came forward after that and guess what, we were no longer victims once we spoke up and stopped our attackers.
The girl in this case was not as fortunate as I was. The people who were there, men and women alike should be ashamed of themselves for not offering help. I’m not asking you to punch the alleged molester for the girl and incur an assault charge. I’m just saying why was it so difficult to go up to the girl confronting a man on her own and just ask if there’s a problem? Is it not common decency? Do you think only knights in shining armor and not commoners like you have it in your heart to help girls? Why is it in Singapore we have this attitude like it’s none of our business, or it’s not our job, or someone else will do it? This is a rotten, soulless, selfish community we have turned into. Why must we first consider if we are ‘obligated’ to before extending a helping hand?
Some comments have said the girl did not have any ‘right’ to expect help and shouldn’t feel indignant that she didn’t get any. I think we are of the understanding that civilized society protect their women and young. Perhaps this foreign girl thought Singapore was one such civilized country to assume someone would have intervened, if not to help her but to at least break up the confrontation? Would a rational outsider looking on not be concerned to see a women standing up to a man she does not know and claiming she was molested? Tell me, why would you not be concerned and ignore the situation? I don’t understand. Sure she had no right to ‘expect’ any help, but she has every right to be disappointed that she was in a bar full of people and not one person stood up for her. She also has every right to go online and tell everyone how disappointed she is. I personally am more to the degree of being appalled and disgusted. ‘Disappointed’ is her putting it courteously when we have been utterly ungracious to her. We have in fact failed her spectacularly as her hosts in our country.
Which reminds me of the other comments that we didn’t help her because she’s a foreigner. Do you not think that because she is a foreigner that she was even more alone and needed help even more? This country’s dislike of FTs has now reached a boiling point where it is now indiscriminate hatred. We blame every last thing wrong in our lives on the FTs in our country. I’m not going to go into another lengthy discussion of why exactly we need them and how much they have contributed to our economy because locals simply refuse to see the truth that we cannot survive without them. I’m just going to say, does being foreigners make them less human? Are you saying now that because we hate foreigners for screwing up our lives that we don’t care if one of them was being molested or raped or killed in front of you? In fact, did you think it serves them right?! What kind of person, what kind of monster has this misguided hatred turned you into?
The worse of the comments were they ones insinuating the girl dressed up ‘asking for it’. No girl wants to be touched inappropriately without her consent. Even if yes, she was out looking to be laid, it doesn’t mean
she wants every and any random guy to touch her anywhere. Even if she was a slut, a whore, a hooker even.. No woman deserves or asks to be molested or raped. You respect yourself by respecting her even when you think she doesn’t deserve it. ‘Asking for it’? Who are you to assume or decide that and worse, to be convinced that it is your right to give her what she’s ‘asking for’? You know what, if she really wants it, she’ll say yes if you had asked instead of forcing it on her.
I thought we were in a country where we women could feel safe and respected, where we had the freedom to feel beautiful and wear what makes us feel good. Singapore is a small country and honestly everyone knows each other by just a few degrees of separation. While we have the potential to be a close-knit society that look out for each other, we have instead felt the need to jostle for space and hang the losers out to dry. Competition has all but ruined community. I can’t help but think this system has evolved us to keep the cruel survivor traits over all others.
A quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ‘The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.’
I think that can be extended to women as well. The degradation of our society’s values has everything to do with how we have brought up our children with the wrong priorities in life. The people in the bar who stood aside had no courage, no decency, no honor because they were probably brought up to value self-preservation first. Too many times I have heard parents tell their children that it’s ‘not their problem’ when they come back from school with a story that their friend was punished by the teacher when he has done nothing wrong. ‘As long as the teacher wasn’t scolding you.’ Are you guilty as a parent of doing this with your children? Children demonstrate that it is inherent within our nature to stand up for each other in the face of injustice. We have simply conditioned the goodness out of our children in the pursuit of good grades in this country.
We ask, what is wrong with people these days?! Perhaps we should look at ourselves first and see just what is wrong inside. This country has a spoilt attitude in that we blame others for everything. From online comments, you’ll see a disturbing trend of people managing to lay blame on the government and FTs for every last, totally irrelevant thing. I think when we consistently blame others and cannot take responsibility for ourselves, that the human character loses the battle more every day. Is it not a breaking point when as this case has shown, that our society has lost the basic decency of helping someone in need when it doesn’t cost you anything? To have stood aside and allowed for a girl to be victimized like that, the whole roomful of people are as bad as the molester. Worse still are the people who have further disgraced our country and the general human kind with their thoughtless comments attacking the girl.
I really want to apologize to the girl for my country’s inexcusable behavior. I’m sorry she didn’t meet Singaporeans with big hearts that night and even more apologetic for the undeserved abuse she suffered online. She’s a victim and not the perpetuator. We just seem to have lost sight of that in the whole debacle. I want to thank her as well though, for feeling strongly enough to have written in to the site. My country likes to pretend that we’re awesome and squeaky clean and everything good when we increasingly haven’t been in a long time now. I think it’s time we had a good look at our not-so-perfect, close-to-entirely-rotten selves and reflect.
