(Un)tethered masculinities, (mis)placed modernities: Queering futurity in contemporary Singapore

• Main Author: WOODS, Orlando
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Queering futurity; (un)tethered masculinities; heteronormativity; Chinese families; Singapore; Asian Studies; Gender and Sexuality; Sociology of Culture
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3322; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4576/viewcontent/UntetheredMasculinities_2021_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper considers how socio-political prescriptions can bring about the queering of futurity in Singapore. In Singapore, state-sponsored narratives of progress view futurity in terms that are bound to place, and reproduced through the heteronormative family unit. These factors have caused constructions of masculinity to be tethered to the family, and placed within public housing. Recently, this narrative has become an increasingly inflexible and marginalizing construct that can cause straight males to be queered by their prescribed futures. In contrast, gay males are more likely to be untethered from their families, and thus occupy “unplaced” positions in Singapore’s social structure.