Assimilating Histories

Bangsa merujuk kepada sekumpulan manusia yang biasanya menetap suatu kedudukan geografi dan mempunyai persamaan dari segi bahasa, budaya serta pengalaman sejarah. -- some of the useful concepts I picked up from SPM Sejarah in a textbook sea of rubbish.
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There is an entire shelf of books in the library with titles like "Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis", "Sexual Culture" etc. Hence I've been indulging in a little bit of light reading of late when I should in all seriousness be studying relativity.

Of the very small sampling of LGBT writings I have had (our malaysian gay blogs notwithstanding), I noticed that the AIDS epidemic/pandemic is a recurring theme of angst and grief. In one of my favourites, The Queer Nation Manifesto, I found the following excerpt that wailed against the apathy of the US government agencies during the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

"I'm angry. I'm angry for being condemned to death by strangers saying, "You deserve to die" and "AIDS is the cure." Fury erupts when a Republican woman wearing thousands of dollars of garments and jewelry minces by the police lines shaking her head, chuckling and wagging her finger at us like we are recalcitrant children making absurd demands and throwing a temper tantrum when they aren't met. Angry while Joseph agonizes over $8,000 a year for AZT which might keep him alive a little longer and which does make him sicker than the disease he is diagnosed with. Angry as I listen to a man tell me that after changing his will five times he's running out of people to leave things to. All of his best friends are dead. Angry when I stand in a sea of quilt panels, or go to a candlelight march or attend yet another memorial service. I will not march silently with a f---ing candle and I want to take that goddamned quilt and wrap myself in it and furiously rent it and my hair and curse every god religion ever created. I refuse to accept a creation that cuts people down in the third decade of their life."

In "On the Meaning of Friendship Between Gay Men" I found the following:

"As for Greg's illness, it was said to have been cancer, although a friend in San Francisco phoned to tell me - to warn me, really - that it was due to a new and lethal gay-related disease. The syndrome was so recent that the term AIDS had not yet been coined; Greg's case was among the first in the nation. I was also told that I could expect to be interviewed by the Centers for Disease Control....I lived with an immense fear of AIDS for the next few years, until researchers finally established its mode of transmission."

And grief in "The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up".

"The morphine level was set high enough to make it easy. But not breathing is not something most of us, let alone those of us as bright as Peter, readily do......And so after a quiet, peaceful while longer, his sister gently leaned down and softly said, 'Peter, it's okay. It's okay. You've done enough. You can go now.' And he did. He was forty."

And I was weeping in bed on that page.And I realize I shouldn't reduce thousands of people's struggle with the disease to "mere" emotional kitsch. Those works above described (partly at least) the experience of the American gay communities and individuals with the epidemic. How, on the other hand, did the disease affect our(*1) Malaysian LGBT scene/subculture/community and the "public" (are we not part of "the public"?) perception of "us"? What were the similarities between our encounter and reaction to the disease and those of the Americans?

(Start purple bullshiting:)
The gay LGBT rights movement is already budding in Malaysia. I would say we are very much behind some European countries in state recognition of LGBT rights(*2). But the term "behind" is problematic in a country whose muslim majority thinks Islamic customs must prevail when in conflict with the western modern human rights traditions. With the fight having been fought so many years in those "western" countries, we might find it convenient to adapt their rhetoric on rights, equality and adult privacy into our plight for greater freedom. Yet, will such rhetoric resonate with our local opponents who are often armoured with the notion of incompatibility between human rights and eastern culture or social stability? Is it necessary to explore strategies different from our western (imagined?) comrades, which hopefully would better promote our cause, or will our histories (thanks to globalization and our history of colonization?) prove so intertwined that we find ourselves treading again the western footsteps, as with women and labor rights?(*3)

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Notes:

*1 - Curious how I use "our" when I only know not more than 5 gay men. I suspect I know more lesbians (or otherwise-queer female-bodied individuals) than I do gay men. (I dare not count!)

*2 - It must be emphasized that the so-called LGBT rights are just the same set of rights and privileges enjoyed by heterosexual Malaysians - freedom of expression and from harassment, whether by the state of individuals - which the LGBT people have systematically been denied.

*3 - I sometimes wonder whether Malayan women would have the right to vote, given the current ultra-religious climate, if the British had not "come" here.