Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
“Racial and Religious Hate Speech in Singapore: Reclaiming the Victim’s Perspective”
(draft of forthcoming article in the Singapore Law Review, 2009)
A post that’s NOT “full of vile and obscene invective”
The Thio Li-Ann vs. Alfian Sa’at spat has left a sour aftertaste to the s. 377A controversy. Suffice to say, my estimation of a person falls dramatically when:
- You’re a highly-educated Singaporean who professes to be a ‘liberal’, and yet have “never heard of” Alfian Sa’at.
- You construe one silly, juvenile e-mail with choice epithets like “you are fucked up” and “I’ll piss on your grave”, as ‘harassment’.
- You make a police report about it.
(I still have a heck lot of respect for her as an academic, though.)
I think the main reason why people are so wary of lawyers in general is the suspicion that, given our better grasp of the law, we can always invoke, say, s.1958B(32)(iv) of the I Hate Your Guts (Amendment) Act, to screw someone over that we don’t like. So, when we talk legalese, you take our word for it, while cursing silently behind our backs. You know that there’s probably a catch somewhere, that the law can’t really be that much of an ass — but why take the chance?
Argh… It’s Everywhere!
Being reliant on public buses to get around, I’m thankful that I live in an area that’s serviced predominantly by SMRT buses. Why, what’s wrong with SBS Transit buses, you ask?
Just this one incredibly annoying thing known as TVMobile.
Thio Li-Ann’s Speech in Parliament: Homosexual Sex and 377A — A Rebuttal
Prologue
Self-professed liberals have difficulty grasping this basic tenet of democracy: that whatever your argument, there is bound to be disagreement. “I refuse to engage you… you must be stupid not to see my reasoning” — that line, which I have seen ad infinitum, ad nauseum, reeks of a cop-out, a more urbane, unctuous way of saying, “Lalalalala… I can’t hear you… nanny-nanny-poo-poo!” If indeed we yearn for a true deliberative democracy, an effervescent civil society of free and equal citizens… then learn to accept that deliberation is a process, and that it is most effective when approached with maturity, thoughtfulness and prudence on all sides (notwithstanding that a real democracy entails giving all citizens a strong prima facie right to offend and insult one another, as I’ve argued before).
The Heart of the Matter
So let me go on to what I had intended to talk about: Thio Li-Ann’s speech in Parliament. First, some prolegomenal remarks on the blogosphere’s response. Most bloggers prefer to indulge in lampoonery, although they oblige by way of ‘logical analysis’ by pulling out a number of well-worn arrows from their quiver of “logical fallacies”, the old chestnuts like “strawman”, “false dichotomy”, “hasty generalization”, and so on. I’m afraid, however, that these labels don’t mean a thing if not backed by substantive arguments which rebut her arguments.
