Oh, Really?

“ ‘Have three- or more if you can afford it’ was meant to redress the problem of falling birthrates and forestall the impending problem of an ageing population in the 21st Century as forecasted by the government. That her body is not totally under her control is something the Singapore woman realises with overwhelming clarity.”
-- Lim Yi En, Women in Bondage: The Stories of Catherine Lim

Excuse me, what?!

M explained to me that from a biological viewpoint, this makes perfect sense, and after listening to her point of view, I have to say that I agree with her –the woman’s most obvious and powerful biological difference is her pregnancy.


But at the same time, I can’t help feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the notion that a woman’s strongest and most contentious asset is her ability to give birth. I mean, what about the other products that women lay claim to – their labour, their intelligence, their achievements, their art?

I, for one, refuse to believe that the only control I have over my “body”, physical or otherwise, is the choice to get pregnant. The opinion in question is possibly a highly offensive one and ironic in the sense that the supposedly liberated stance of telling a woman she is under control ignores and marginalises her other achievements in the first place. This is my quarrel with local authors – that their attempt at feminism still stems from a parochial idea of the woman and her worth.

Is it not potentially damaging to continually point to a stigmatised sort of liberation when the yardstick is past its use-by date anyway? That some Singaporean writers’ idea of a woman in power is still one who uses her sexuality to sleep her way to the top?

I suppose I believe that feminism is about modernising your own ideas before attempting to modernise your audience.

And in my world, telling me that I am controlled because my uterus is hostage to the government makes about as much sense as controlling a man’s “worth” by forcing him to wear a condom.