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Molek FMLaugh, Love & Drink!: Help Make a Revolution
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SEKSUALITI MERDEKA
THE RIGHT TO LOVE
While some parts of the world around us are starting to show wind of change – legalisation of gay marriage, acceptance of transgendered people, etc. – Malaysia is still very much unfriendly towards the LGBT community. Recently, the government was urged to act against male actors in effeminate roles by Senator Rohani Abdullah (and those roles were negative to begin with), but even before that there had been theatre plays that propagandised anti-LGBT sentiments and open intolerance for those who aren’t hetero and gender normative.
Seksualiti Merdeka, the sole sexuality rights movement in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was an annually held festival championing freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity. It was an open and out thing that began in 2008, but it only took a few years later for Malaysia’s moral police to demand a ban on it. Unfortunately due to that fact, Seksualiti Merdeka, as a festival, hasn’t been held since 2011. However, that’s not to say they’re inactive though. Co-founder singer-songwriter Jerome Kugan reveals to us that they’re “active but operating with caution.” The movement has gone underground now;
“We have to be careful about how we broach the topic of gender and sexuality rights, because we don’t want the information we put out to be perverted by hardcore moralists and religious conservatives, who attempt to negate our message of positivity and diversity.”
The existence of these “hardcore moralists and religious conservatives” often time makes us feel like we’ve regressed as a 21st century society, yet as Jerome puts it, “For some Malaysians, sexual freedom has gone too far and they use the visible presence of the LGBT community as an example, and to which they react with puritanical hysteria.” On a personal level though, Jerome’s of the opinion that it’s not so much that we’ve progress or regress, but instead we’ve been pushed into the closet; our sexuality is flourishing in the underground. Claiming that there are a lot of sexual practices happening around the country that an average Malaysian would consider deviant, Jerome tells us that it’s not up to a single party to dictate what’s right or wrong; “These things need to be discussed in an open forum.”
However institutional tolerance has definitely backslid according to Jerome, “The government has been waging a moral inquisition against Malaysians ever since we achieved independence, shutting down forums for discussion on many things including sexuality.” That intolerance for non-heteronormative sexuality has gotten worse as time passed by, which is something of a curiosity for us, LGBT has always had a representation in local pop culture; TV and film (negative as they are).
Jerome pinpoints our repression of sexuality in general as a cause of this; “Homosexuality is on a lot of people’s minds but since Malaysians are not, on the whole, allowed to discuss sexual matters in public platforms, the whole thing is swept under the table.” As he puts it, sexuality is a vital part of being human, thus it’s only natural that such would surface in popular culture. The problem is that as long as Malaysians see it as a taboo, it will remain to be depicted as such in pop culture.
“[The] taboo around homosexuality is part of the bigger suppression around our sexuality as a whole, it’s part of a bigger social problem.”
It’s ironic then, that we’d chant “Merdeka!” every 31 August when a right as basic as sexuality can’t be given to us. For Seksualiti Merdeka, according to Jerome, the act of chanting “Merdeka” is to remind them that freedom is not something that is given to us by another, “It is something that we have to learn to give to ourselves first.”
It’d be easy to just cite religion as the main reason why LGBT remains a taboo subject, and as valid of an answer that is, it might prove reductive. Jerome himself finds it to be an incredibly difficult answer to give, “If I knew the answer to that, then this fight would’ve been over already (laughs).” Despite that, he gives us the closeted individual type as a possible tantalising theory. “It’s a classic case of suppressed individuals becoming their own worst enemies,” he says. Beyond that, there’s also moral panic, “Some people believe that by allowing LGBTs to live as they are would somehow lead to the degradation of social morality,” but it’s only “when you suppress a positive natural impulse that you end up with something that is perverted.”
That is the exact misconception (often propagated by the right-wings) some have of the LGBT community – that they’re perverted – that Seksualiti Merdeka aims to fight. The truth is LGBT people exist within all layers of society, as Jerome elucidates to us, “We are law-abiding citizens who want the same rights as everyone else; to live, work and love without being discriminated against.” How achievable is LGBT rights as a gold in Malaysia then? Jerome answers with a contextual conundrum;
“LGBT rights are basic human rights – as long as Malaysian LGBTs don’t have the same rights as other Malaysians, no Malaysian will.“
