HOMONATIONALIST DISCOURSE WITHIN LGBTQ+ ADVOCACY IN SINGAPORE: PRAGMATIC RESISTANCE AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION WITHIN PINK DOT 2022’S COMMUNITY VOICES SPEECHES

Abstract

Pink Dot has evolved to become a key part of Singapore’s LGBTQ+ advocacy landscape, surviving despite Singapore’s history of erasing LGBTQ+ existence and rights as a legitimate societal issue. With Pink Dot 14, held in 2022, happening at a pivotal time after the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and just before the repeal of Section 377A, which criminalises consensual sex between men including in private settings, this iteration of Pink Dot is a crucial turning point within key developments in Singapore. Against the background of Singapore’s governance following illiberal pragmatism, LGBTQ+ advocates have navigated such restrictions using methods of pragmatic resistance. Resisting state narratives using nonconfrontational methods involve a comprehensive understanding of the dominant ideologies promoted by those in power, which societal groups consequently subscribe to. This thesis hence explores how the construction of LGBTQ+ identity within these dominant national narratives plays a persuasive role in naturalising LGBTQ+ rights and existence. Through homonationalist discourse, the four Community Voices speakers reproduce dominant narratives originating from those in power but reappropriate them to frame and advance LGBTQ+ causes instead, that call for societal change in the form of increased LGBTQ+ acceptance.