Quiet politics: Queer organizing in corporate Singapore

Abstract

How could queer activism for social change be possible in an authoritarian but neoliberal environment? What does neoliberalism imply for queer struggles in non-Western contexts where liberal democracy is absent or non-existent? This article introduces the concept of ‘quiet politics’ to establish a new theoretical lens for understanding queer organizing under global capitalism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interview data on the rise of corporate diversity activism in Singapore, it analyzes how queer employees navigate the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism in multinational corporations. The concept of quiet politics helps us understand the nuanced ways in which queer subjects ‘quietly’ mobilize themselves through a negotiation of neoliberalism, queer politics, and the authoritarian government that persecutes homosexuality. In doing so, this article challenges the Western notion of queer liberalism and sheds new light on the complex entanglement of neoliberal capitalism, corporate diversity, contentious politics, and queer activism from a global perspective.

Introduction

In recent decades, feminist and queer scholars have examined the effects of neoliberal reforms on sexual politics (Duggan, 2003; Eng, 2010) and criticized how neoliberalism has permeated the everyday life of queer subjects, infiltrating even progressive queer organizing (Ward, 2008). Addressing this question in an influential essay, Eng et al. (2005) introduced the concept of ‘queer liberalism’ to capture the convergence of neoliberal economic and cultural shifts with the particular version of liberal gay and lesbian politics of inclusion that has developed as a result of neoliberal policies. The concept of queer liberalism builds on what Duggan (2003) described as the emergence of homonormativity, that is, political and cultural formations in which the meanings of freedom and liberation are recoded in narrow terms of privacy, domesticity, and purchasing power, thereby contributing to the dangerous tendency for queer liberal politics to reproduce normative notions of class, race, and nation (Eng, 2010; Puar, 2007). The rise of queer liberalism, exemplified by the mainstreaming of both queer consumer lifestyles and the petitioning for LGBT rights and recognition before the law, reflects the pervasive neoliberal demand that ‘the nuclear family and its associated rights, recognitions, and privileges from the state’ be valorized at the expense of any radical critique of dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions (Eng et al., 2005, p. 11).

Discussions of queer liberalism help to make clear that increasingly widespread notions of equality, inclusion, and diversity are coming to be viewed as consistent with the political and economic interests of neoliberal corporations and the state. The framework of queer liberalism, however, leaves less analytic room for the multiple formulations of neoliberalism wherein queer subjects experience and negotiate them. Queer liberalism, like neoliberalism (Rofel, 2007), is a socially constructed process embedded in larger political economies of the state and market rather than a unified and internally consistent force (Liu, 2015). A more nuanced approach is required to account for the manifestation and operation of queer liberalism within historical and political contexts that Western notions of liberalism fail to capture.

This article develops a critical approach to the Western theories of queer liberalism and examines how queer subjects experience, navigate, and negotiate the neoliberal economic order. I examine a new mode of mobilization driven by queer subjects in a contradictory environment where political illiberalism and economic neoliberalism collide. In authoritarian Singapore, the queer communities have been trapped between the limited freedom that they are allowed in terms of political organizing and the continued criminalization of homosexuality due to Section 377A of Singapore’s Penal Code (Chua, 2014). At the same time, Singapore’s neoliberal corporate environment has given rise to new forms of queer practices and organizing capacities (Lim, 2014). How could queer activism for social change be possible in this contradictory context? What does neoliberalism mean for queer struggles in non-Western contexts where liberal democracy does not work or exist? How can we construct a new theoretical lens to understand queer organizing under global capitalism that cannot entirely be captured by Western notions of queer liberalism?

This article introduces the new concept of ‘quiet politics’ to theorize how corporate queer organizers navigate the political and sexual strictures that they face through quiet forms of action while at the same time appropriating the globalizing catchphrase ‘corporate diversity.’ Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with queer organizers in corporate Singapore, I show that Singapore’s contradictory environment of political illiberalism combined with economic liberalism has inadvertently enabled the emergence of what I call ‘corporate diversity activism’ as queer employees have been developing novel ways of organizing in pursuit of rights and recognition outside the realm of conventional social movements. These employee-organizers have been utilizing the restricted autonomy granted to them on corporate premises and identifying legal grey areas in which they can organize events, advocate for inclusive policies, and collaborate with local queer groups. Through the exercise of quiet politics, I argue, queer organizers have been turning corporations into a new battleground for social change. The corporate diversity activism in Singapore has, within its limits, been bringing about relatively unobtrusive changes within the economic center of neoliberalism rather than openly challenging prevailing illiberalism in society.

Bringing together scholarship on neoliberal capitalism, contentious politics, and queer activism, this study calls for attention to the nuanced and complex ways in which contemporary neoliberalism and queer politics intertwine in contexts outside of Western liberal democracies. First, the concept of quiet politics exposes the heterogeneity within the global system of neoliberal capitalism by considering the political and cultural context in which queer activism takes place, particularly in non-Western and non-democratic societies. Second, quiet politics as a concept emphasizes that social movements exist not only in the conventional relation between the state and civil society, but also in alternative realms such as transnational corporations. Third, the concept of quiet politics contributes to the emerging studies of queer activism from global perspectives, addressing the significance of studying the nuanced meanings and politics of invisibility, silence, and quietness as queer activists attempt to balance the tension between political surveillance and the aspiration for social change.

Queer liberalism and the politics of corporate diversity

The concept of queer liberalism has been influential in advancing critical analysis of ‘diversity culture’ in the workplace. Corporate diversity discourse has been gradually embraced by the business world as a new management strategy to increase the visibility of various minority groups (Embrick, 2011). However, those who articulate this discourse often fail to achieve their intended goals and even, paradoxically, exacerbate the problems that they have been attempting to solve by obscuring the underlying structures of inequality (Ahmed, 2012; Berrey, 2015). For instance, while the growing legal protections for queer workers in the US and elsewhere have fostered greater acceptance of sexual difference within corporations (Lloren & Parini, 2017; Munsch & Hirsh, 2010), scholars also observe the emergence of an institutionalized and advanced form of queer liberalism, a professional corporate diversity discourse, that embraces only those who can enact and embody homonormativity (Kelly et al., 2021; Williams et al., 2009). Echoing critiques of neoliberal sexual politics, Ward (2008) cautioned against the mere celebration of identity-based diversity and showed that the neoliberal co-optation of diversity culture has moved beyond corporations to become deeply embedded in the daily activities of progressive queer movements.

While useful for examining the ascendancy of neoliberal corporate power and ethos in contemporary political life, the multiple and contested nature of neoliberalism, and the extent to which queer subjects navigate and negotiate with it, has often been overlooked in critiques of queer liberalism. The concept of queer liberalism, as Savcı (2016, p. 383) highlighted, is premised on ‘the political/commercial binary,’ which equates ‘the commercial with the neoliberal corruption of queer movements’ in order to arrive at a simplistic understanding of neoliberalism as a depoliticizing and destructive force. The relationship between queer politics and neoliberalism remains unidimensional in this theoretical formulation, resulting in the unintended (but universal) consequence of ‘privatization’ of queer activism (Duggan, 2003). In effect, the idea of queer liberalism provides little analytic space for the various formulations of neoliberalism in which queer subjects negotiate the meanings of ‘diversity’ and build alternative ways to make change from within the ‘private’ territories of neoliberal capitalism.

I suggest that we take queer liberalism as a historically and socially constructed process rather than a predetermined outcome in order to better account for the manifestation and operation of queer liberalism in historical and political contexts beyond Western liberal democracies. As economic sociologists have insisted, neither markets nor global economies are monolithic but complex and heterogeneous under different political and cultural conditions (Fourcade & Healy, 2007; Zelizer, 1988). Brown’s (2009) concept of ‘diverse economies’ is particularly useful in this regard. Diverse economies describe the possibilities for alternative forms of queer life and politics in the range of queer economic practices that take place within neoliberal economic flows and decenter the universal figure of the queer liberal subject. This approach offers an analytic basis for considering the contradictory and ambivalent potential of neoliberal sexual politics by recasting the effects of neoliberalism as empirical questions rather than unavoidable conclusions.

Building on these critical insights, this article addresses queer subjects’ attempts to ‘grapple with the market economy in their lives’ (Rofel, 2007, p. 19) and navigates the contradictions within the neoliberal economic order. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the intersection of queer activism and corporations. Corporations have been studied by economic sociologists and social movement scholars as a site of social change. Many scholars see corporations as targets of social movements (Bartley & Child, 2014; Soule, 2009), while others see them as important political actors lobbying for their business interests (Spillman, 2012; Walker, 2009). Others look at corporate behaviors like corporate social responsibility and diversity policy to see how top-down institutional change occurs within firms (Dobbin, 2009). Still, beyond top-down management initiatives, few empirical studies have looked into the intricate ways in which political behaviors and meanings emerge within corporations in practice. My research joins this dialogue and examines the politics of corporate diversity by looking at how queer actors explore and utilize corporate diversity discourses to advance their agendas from the ground up.

Quiet politics

I offer the new concept of quiet politics to analyze how queer actors seek new modes of resistance and negotiation when faced with the near lack of formal political avenues for social change. Quiet politics refers to queer organizers’ concerted efforts to navigate the political and sexual constraints they face through quiet forms of action. First and foremost, quiet politics is a form of contentious politics that encompasses a range of concerted, counter-hegemonic social and political actions in which participants come together to challenge dominant power structures and enact alternative political visions (Tilly & Tarrow, 2015). Quiet politics thrives in politically oppressive environments, such as authoritarian regimes (Hildebrandt, 2013), the military (Enloe, 2000), and rural areas (Thomsen, 2021), where traditional forms of collective action or mobilization (e.g., protests, demonstrations, petitions, lobbying, and voter mobilization) are impractical. In these constrained environments, actors must devise new ways to demonstrate ‘the weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 1985) by taking advantage of creative opportunities and unconventional strategies to effect change outside of the traditional spheres of progressive social movement organizations or non-governmental organizations.

Second, quiet politics creates a liminal and limited space for marginalized groups and individuals to engage in counter-hegemonic actions under strict illiberal constraints on political organizing. Because traditional forms of social movement organizations are restricted in authoritarian Singapore, for instance, queer groups must be resourceful in pursuing alternative forms of resistance in ‘unexpected places,’ such as corporations (Bedford, 2009, p. 202). Raeburn (2004) offers insight into the rise and trajectory of lesbian and gay ‘workplace movements’ in major US corporations. Raeburn’s primary focus, however, is on visibility politics (i.e., increasing the presence of queer employees by coming out and speaking out) and does not account for the politics of invisibility and silence practiced in illiberal political contexts in which visibility is often problematic with respect to the safety of individuals and survival of social movements. Chua’s (2014) notion of ‘pragmatic resistance’ describes the development of mobilization strategies by queer activists to exploit opportunities to advance their cause while avoiding direct confrontation with, and hence potential retaliation from, the authoritarian state. The emphasis of pragmatic resistance is on movements’ constant negotiations with legal and cultural constraints in creating public space. The concept has not yet been applied in such ‘private’ territories as corporations. In the context of Singapore, quiet politics takes place in corporations, revealing a new interaction between queer activism and neoliberal capitalism and highlighting the complex role of corporate actors in queer organizing.

Third, the concept of quiet politics uncovers the politics of invisibility, silence, and quietness. Unlike workplace movements in the West (Raeburn, 2004), quiet politics does not encourage a public presence and agenda through protests, rallies, and campaigns, which are often regarded as a preferable mode of mobilization. Instead, quiet politics cultivates invisibility, silence, and quietness as the major foci of its alternative mobilization. Currier (2012) describes the mobilization of both visibility and invisibility by queer movements, especially in the global South, as they seek to maintain socio-cultural relevance in the face of political oppression. While Currier focuses on the fleeing nature of invisibility as practiced by activists who ‘retreat temporarily from public interactions’ to recharge during difficult times (p. 11), quiet politics draws attention to the persistent use of ‘intentional invisibility’ and the strategic arrangement of silence and quietness in social movements. Quiet politics is not just concerned with the movement’s public visibility in terms of attracting and maintaining public attention. Equally essential is whether and how the movement is recognized by authoritative power. In a situation when activism can be jeopardized by recognition, quietness becomes critical to the movement’s survival and success.

In sum, quiet politics highlights the ways in which queer subjects enact ‘unusual politics’ (Chua, 2014, p. 7) and forge ‘a different kind of political creativity’ (Rofel, 2013, p. 160) through covert forms of action. In this regard, quiet politics resonates with the nuanced ways in which sexuality is coded, interacted, and understood in non-Western contexts. Liu and Ding (2005) used the idea of ‘reticent poetics’ to describe how sexual oppression can take non-conflictual and non-declarative forms and lead to self-discipline of queer subjects, while Decena (2011) introduced the metaphor of ‘tacit subjects’ to describe how queer subjects can negotiate their stigmatized sexuality with the structures of power in indirect and implicit presentation of the self. Quiet politics captures how social movements ‘quietly’ traverse the complex dynamics that exist between the ‘reticent’ repression and ‘tacit’ tactics. This article thus focuses on the practice of quiet politics by queer organizers in their workplaces, their navigation of queer liberalism in the illiberal context of Singapore, and the complex ways in which queer politics and neoliberalism intersect in the corporate world.

Quiet politics in illiberal neoliberalism

Singapore offers a fertile ground for investigating the concept of quiet politics, as the country’s queer social movement has been trapped in a double bind, with its members’ political and sexual freedom severely restricted.

In particular, despite fitful efforts to repeal it, Section 377A of Singapore’s Penal Code, which criminalizes same-sex sexual conduct between consenting adults, remains in force. Section 377A is only one aspect of a legal regime that denies any legal protections on the basis of sexuality and that empowers various government agencies to regulate the public presence of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals through the issuance of detailed administrative guidelines. Singaporean media, for instance, have been forbidden to promote, normalize, or justify ‘a homosexual lifestyle,’ while public school children have been taught that homosexuality is criminal behavior (Chua, 2014). Further aggravating these legal and social conditions is the tight control that the government maintains over speech, assembly, and association (George, 2012). Thus, the public discussions of issues deemed contentious, such as local politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation, are only permitted subject to administrative discretion and stringent regulations, as is also the case regarding the formation of organizations and the holding of public assemblies in relation to these issues (Chong, 2010). Overall, the queer social movement in Singapore faces significant official barriers to conventional forms of collective mobilization (e.g., protests, demonstrations, petitions, lobbying, and voter mobilization).

The People’s Action Party, which came to power in 1959 and has ruled Singapore since, has developed a particular mode of governance that has been referred to as ‘communitarian democracy’ (Chua, 1995) and ‘soft authoritarianism’ (Mutalib, 2000). Both formulations describe Singapore’s illiberal one-party political system, the authoritarian features of which include the empowerment of key state agencies to take punitive action against public dissent, a communitarian ideology characterized by ‘pragmatism,’ and the imperative of economic stability and prosperity, with some space remaining for democratic norms and practices. The government successfully managed rapid economic growth through the 1970s and 1980s and, beginning in the 1990s, made itself into a global financial and information technology center (Ong, 2006). In the process, it has rationalized its political illiberalism in economic terms (Yeoh, 2004), first by adopting an export-oriented industrialization strategy and later by embracing neoliberal economic reforms (Liow, 2012; Yeung, 2000).

Queer scholars have noted that this amalgamation of political illiberalism and economic neoliberalism gave rise to new queer practices and subjectivities in Singapore, particularly in cultural production, despite the state’s continued regulation of political and sexual freedom (Lim, 2014; Yue, 2012). That is, in the country’s illiberal neoliberal environment, a range of queer practices, including both cultural production and queer advocacy, can be ‘negotiated precariously’ (Yue, 2012, p. 4). For instance, the restrictions on public assembly have been relaxed somewhat recently, one result being the successful annual staging of the LGBT-inclusive event known as Pink Dot (Jung, 2021), but these practices are tolerated only when they are shown to be compatible with ‘respectable’ mainstream values (Oswin, 2014).

In recent years, the contradictory articulation of illiberal neoliberalism contributed to the creation of a new political platform within the neoliberal market economy but apart from conventional nonprofit organizations and cultural groups. Amid the increasing calls for ‘corporate diversity’ and ‘workplace equality’ in the areas of gender, race, and sexuality by international organizations such as the United Nations, a growing number of global firms have in the past decade begun to implement LGBT-inclusive policies, programs, and projects (United Nations, 2017). Despite the government’s continued criminalization of homosexuality, Singapore’s corporate environment has been caught up in this global trend, in large part because tens of thousands of foreign enterprises and multinational corporations (MNCs) have offices on the island, and their direct investments and ‘foreign talents’ (Chiu et al., 1998; Low, 1998) form a crucial pillar of Singapore’s illiberal neoliberal system, which the government justifies with reference to the country’s economic performance. For instance, as of 2020, there were 54,700 foreign enterprises in Singapore, accounting for 31.8% of all employment and which contribute to 63.5% of Singapore’s economy (Department of Statistics Singapore, 2021).

The consequences of this business trend for Singapore’s workplace environment have been twofold. First, foreign enterprises, particularly MNCs operating in the country, retain a certain level of autonomy regarding their internal policies and activities, which may contradict the government’s official stance on LGBT issues providing that they do not call into question the government’s legitimacy. Second, the trend toward ‘corporate diversity’ has left behind most small- and medium-sized local businesses, which tend to be less engaged in global business discourse and considered less relevant to the maintenance of a ruling regime’s authority (Haque, 2004). It is in the contingent and limited space of MNCs – space created by the contradictory nature of illiberal neoliberalism –that quiet politics has emerged in Singapore.

Methods

My findings are based on a combined six months of ethnographic research on corporate diversity activism in Singapore. Over four summers from 2016 to 2019, I conducted extensive fieldwork that involved observing various private and public occasions on which corporate actors promoted queer inclusion in organized ways.

As a foreign researcher, I initially had only limited access to the newly emerging arenas for quiet politics. With the guidance of key local informants whom I befriended during the first two years of the fieldwork, however, I gradually gained entry into the world of corporate diversity activism in Singapore. My affiliation with an American university and status as a visiting fellow at accredited local universities facilitated my access, these being forms of global cultural capital valued by my transnational professional informants. My status as a non-white, Asian, queer-identified man also lowered some of the initial emotional barriers that I faced. For participant observation, I focused on the nodes of various corporate diversity programs and activities, information about which I found through various newsletters, private listservs, and information-sharing groups on social media. I attended or learned about diversity education sessions, networking and fundraising activities, and other cultural and social events at which queer employees from various companies gathered to socialize, strategize, share experiences and information, and forge a sense of community.

My fieldwork also included 37 in-depth interviews with corporate diversity organizers who had volunteered to work to make their companies more queer-inclusive and some owners of queer-inclusive businesses. I initially contacted a few of the interviewees through such channels as references from the local queer advocacy groups that often collaborated with the diversity organizers and from community groups where I grounded myself during the fieldwork. To reach additional interviewees, I employed snowball sampling with help from the network of diversity organizers who had collaborated on corporate organizing efforts.

Most of these diversity organizers were employed at the Singaporean subsidiaries or Asia-Pacific headquarters of large MNCs in the tech, media, finance, and energy industries, though a few worked at local enterprises and startups. I note that their diverse status in this regard again highlights the differential emergence of corporate diversity activism in Singapore’s MNCs and local businesses. Despite varying degrees of professional experience, rank, and seniority, the majority of my interviewees identified as part of the queer community (including 30 gay men, one lesbian woman, one bisexual woman, and one transgender woman) and four identified as straight allies. Cisgender men tended to be overrepresented in queer organizing in corporations, most likely due to their privilege in terms of transnational mobilities and/or economic and social capital, as well as the continuation of gender inequality at work in global firms. In terms of race/ethnicity and citizenship, 21 were Singaporean citizens, of whom 18 were of predominantly Chinese, two of Malay, and one of Indian ancestry; the remaining 16 were expatriates, including seven white natives of the US, UK, France, and Australia and nine Asians from Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. More than half of these positions were held by Singaporean nationals, indicating that the corporate diversity activism in the country is informed not only by Singapore’s illiberal neoliberal demand to retain ‘foreign talents’ but also by local efforts to effect changes in the corporate environment.

The semi-structured interviews focused on three main topics: the interviewees’ paths to corporate diversity activism, the achievements of and challenges encountered in corporate diversity activism, and the everyday experiences of queer-identified individuals and allies in corporate Singapore. The interviews, between 45 and 120 minutes long, took place in each interviewee’s chosen place of comfort – often in their offices, but alternatively in coffee shops near their workplaces or sometimes at their homes. The interviews were conducted in English, which is Singapore’s main business language. I recorded our discussions digitally and transcribed them, with each interviewee’s consent. The names and affiliations of the interviewees were anonymized to protect their confidentiality.

The emergence of corporate diversity activism in Singapore

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of large companies began to implement diversity and inclusion policies and programs intended to address gender, race/ethnicity, disability, and LGBT issues in the US and UK (Raeburn, 2004). Since the 2000s, these efforts have extended beyond the headquarters of an increasing number of MNCs to their regional offices and subsidiaries around the world, becoming a global business initiative (United Nations, 2017). The corporate promotion of diversity and inclusion is part of a broader change in the economy toward the increasing visibility of ‘diverse’ populations, including queer individuals, in the workforce and the business world at large.

Scott, an American gay man in his mid-forties who led a queer employee group at an American tech company’s regional headquarters in Singapore, was one of my informants who provided a particularly insightful managerial perspective on the rise of corporate diversity initiatives in the US and their adoption in Singapore.

First, many large American companies had begun to offer such protections for their queer employees as anti-discrimination policies and domestic partnership benefits, being ahead of state or federal government agencies in doing so, in order to ‘retain the talent.’ These companies learned, through internal surveys and research, that the promotion of diversity and inclusion could encourage ‘engagement and morale’ among workers and hence increase their productivity by allowing them to ‘be their authentic selves and bring [their] values’ into the workplace, as Scott described. Second, he had observed throughout his career in the tech industry since the early 2000s the language of ‘diversity’ becoming a kind of corporate strategy in many American firms’ efforts to increase revenues. This was the time of the ascendancy of ‘LGBT decision makers’ in the American business world to top c-suite positions, individuals who could be expected to be more willing to make business deals with companies that promoted queer-inclusive policies and cultures. Lastly, he explained, this corporate culture of diversity was adopted in the regional and local offices of American firms overseas for similar business reasons as the revenue structure of many corporations became increasingly global, with Asia numbering among the fastest-growing markets. ‘It started in America,’ Scott concluded, ‘and now it’s all over the world – India, China, Japan, Australia . . . because diversity and inclusion has become ingrained in the DNA of our company. It’s key to our culture – a business imperative in our company’s success.’

Scott’s account of this larger change in the global business culture echoed the experiences of many of my informants, but new business norms such as corporate diversity cannot be implemented successfully from the top down without internal demands from the employees on the ground in particular local contexts. What has made this global initiative possible – for it can be regarded as unfamiliar or even aberrant in the context of Singapore’s corporate culture – has been the effort of queer employees to mobilize.

Adele, a European lesbian woman in her early forties, recalled that no queer employee group had yet formed when she first arrived in Singapore in 2012 to work at an American tech company. As she came to realize the difficulties involved with ‘put[ting] a word on LGBT’ in an environment in which corporate diversity was not yet a consideration, she started to work on the issues of gender diversity and promoting a safe working space for women employees, including lesbian women. By constantly educating the company’s human resources (HR) department and leadership about such gender issues as sexual harassment, Adele seized the opportunity as the language of ‘diversity started to become a big buzzword’ in Singapore’s corporate world in the following years. She proceeded to address ‘the other side of diversity,’ that is, sexual orientation and gender identity, and in 2015 established the company’s, and the country’s, first queer employee resource group (ERG).

Following the lead of norm-setters in the tech, media, finance, and energy industries, such as Google, Bloomberg, Barclays, and BP, a growing number of MNCs with operations in Singapore have noticed a slow change to business culture, expanding into additional industries and sectors. Chen, a Singaporean in his mid-thirties, had launched a queer ERG in his British healthcare company in 2018. As a straight married man, he said, he was not initially interested in or even cognizant of ‘any diversity issues or discrimination’ despite many years in the industry. The growing visibility of openly lesbian and gay leaders within his company’s global and regional headquarters, whose stories he learned about in the company magazines and newsletters, had changed his way of thinking. He had started to see issues relating to ‘all of the various elements of diversity’ across the company, such as the underrepresentation of women and Asians in managerial positions and the rise of the #MeToo movement. Further inspired by the stories of other companies organizing queer ERGs, Chen volunteered to establish one at his firm.

According to the corporate diversity organizers and volunteers with whom I spoke, more and more queer employees and allies in various MNCs, from Fortune 500 firms to startups, and, to a lesser extent, in some local firms, have likewise begun organizing ERGs in their workplaces. Thus, as of 2019, at least 50 queer ERGs appear to have been officially established, representing the work of quiet politics.

‘Within the walls of the firm’: The conditions of quiet politics

The queer ERGs established in Singapore have not simply ‘benchmarked’ and imported the strategies and tactics of their global headquarters in Western liberal democracies, which have tended to be characterized by visibility politics involving, for instance, coming out at work, publicizing identity-based stories and events, and directly pressuring companies to make their policies and practices more equitable (Raeburn, 2004). Rather, the Singaporean groups have forged a distinctive mode of collective mobilization in the form of quiet politics in the process of navigating the country’s illiberal neoliberalism.

Andrew, an Asian American gay professional in his early thirties who had worked in the Singapore branch of a global consulting firm for the past seven years, explained the complex considerations that corporations must make under these circumstances. Care needed to be taken, in his view, when introducing global diversity initiatives, particularly in regions characterized by a hostile legal environment for ‘diversity issues.’ In the case of Singapore, where the legal and political constraints on queer organizing are entangled with the relative autonomy of the neoliberal economy, Andrew said that many companies had taken what he called an ‘embassy approach’ to LGBT issues.

By embassy approach, he meant they had immunities and privileges comparable to those enjoyed by foreign embassies, asserted some independence and could be ‘active within the walls of the firm’ in terms of protecting their queer employees – again, provided the Singaporean government does not perceive a threat to its legal and political legitimacy. Conversely, these companies tend to remain cautious about the public image that they project ‘outside of the firm,’ thus creating the conditions for the emergence of quiet politics. Another interviewee, Chris, a Singaporean gay man in his early thirties who served as the ‘diversity ambassador’ at a global tech company, echoed Andrew’s sentiments regarding this distinction between actions ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of companies. ‘It [being gay] is still criminalized outside of the company, I mean in this country,’ he observed. ‘So yes, you can be yourself at work, but, once you step out of the office, you still have to face the repercussions of being out.’

The sharpness of the divide between companies operating in Singapore and the rest of Singaporean society reflects the ambivalence of the country’s illiberal neoliberalism, and has widened in recent years, reinforcing the culture of quiet politics. An example of pushback by the government is provided by the aforementioned annual LGBT-inclusive Pink Dot event, first celebrated in 2009, which began to attract financial support from MNCs in 2011, relying heavily on this source of funding until 2016. In June 2016, however, immediately following that year’s Pink Dot – which attracted a record of 13 MNC sponsors, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced that ‘foreign entities should not fund, support or influence’ Pink Dot because to do so would be to ‘interfere in our domestic issues, especially political issues or controversial social issues with political overtones’ (The Strait Times, 2016). The following October, the government also amended the country’s Public Order Act to ‘ensure that only citizens of Singapore or permanent residents of Singapore participate in the assembly or procession’ in such public gatherings, a move that further diminished direct corporate support for Pink Dot (The Strait Times, 2017).

In 2016, several active queer ERGs were directed by various governmental authorities, including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to keep their activities ‘low-key’ under the threat that the employers of activists who failed to comply with this directive could lose their business licenses. For Rahul, a South Asian gay expatriate who led the queer ERG of a global financial firm, the government’s message was clear: ‘Whatever you want to do internally is totally okay, as long as you meet these criteria,’ which limit activities to companies’ physical locations and discussions to issues unrelated to Singapore’s domestic politics and laws.

Even as the government tightened legal restraints on the queer community, it has continued to leave some room for MNCs’ in-house policies and practices and has initially refrained from imposing sanctions and penalties because it recognizes the significance of MNCs for the domestic economy. Steven, a European gay man who had long resided in Singapore and served in leadership positions of the Chamber of Commerce Singapore, reasoned that the government tolerated corporate diversity activism because ‘if they want to attract foreign talents and expats who want a cosmopolitan life, you cannot restrict everything.’ The government’s regulatory framework for corporate engagement on LGBT issues is thus consistent with corporations’ ‘embassy approach’ to protecting and promoting queer employees as well as with the turn by queer ERGs in Singapore toward quiet politics.

‘Playing it safe’: The processes of quiet politics

The prevalence of quiet politics in corporate diversity organizing is reflected in the three main tasks undertaken by queer ERGs in Singapore: arranging events, advocating for policies, and collaborating with local queer groups.

First, one of the most common and crucial activities in which these ERGs engage is the staging of educational sessions and cultural events intended to raise awareness of LGBT issues within a company. The early stages of this form of organization usually involve casual meetings in which interested employees explore potential needs and agendas among themselves before opening up the discussion to the corporate community at large. More established groups build the capacity to run their own events on a regular basis, such as queer awareness and ally-training workshops for queer and straight colleagues, often augmented by guest speakers from local advocacy groups, such as the organizers of Pink Dot. Often, ERGs in similar industries take turns holding networking events that promote information-sharing and raise awareness.

In any case, under the watchful eye of the government, these discussions have been handled with growing caution. This concern was voiced by Wei, an East Asian gay expatriate who had recently taken a position at the regional headquarters of an American healthcare firm in Singapore, where he was planning to launch a queer ERG. He emphasized that his diversity-related work had to be ‘really for internal purposes’ and could not include any ‘plan to go out to drive our political agenda’ and that he took pains to ‘make sure not to cause any legal issues.’ Similarly, Luis, a Southeast Asian gay professional in charge of the ‘pride team’ at his global consulting firm, noted that he had become ‘very careful’ in managing the content and tone of discussions that took place during his team’s events. He recalled that the team had once canceled an inter-company networking event scheduled to discuss and express support for Pink Dot, having ‘decided not even to mention Pink Dot in all of our activities’ so as to steer clear of ‘local political matters.’

Under these restrictions, corporate diversity organizers had developed ways of planning and organizing events that involve, in Adele’s terms, ‘playing it a bit safe.’ This caution extended not only to the contents of discussions but also to the choice of location for activities. ‘We’re always very careful when organizing events,’ she noted. ‘We cannot organize public events. It’s always hosted by one of the MNCs on their premises. [Otherwise] we book a hotel or public venue and then make it private.’ The queer-oriented corporate events that I observed were nearly all held in the offices of one of the major MNCs in which queer ERGs have a strong presence. The information for such an event, once cleared with respect to legal concerns, usually circulated on the private email listservs of queer ERG networks. Potential attendees were asked to submit in advance their names, titles, and company affiliations in order to verify their identities. Often, for the sake of security, the notices for these events specifically described them as ‘private’ and ‘not open to the members of the public.’ At these events, the attendees, having registered in advance, provide official ID to verify their identities once more before being issued a visitor’s pass and allowed to enter the company’s premises. The rituals associated with passing through the security gate to attend these events seemed to mark a symbolic transition from the ‘outside’ to the ‘inside,’ alerting the attendees to the fact that they had entered a realm governed by the rules of the company (rather than those of the surrounding society), under which the protection and promotion of LGBT rights were conditionally tolerated.

Second, queer ERGs in Singapore have been working diligently to improve the rules that govern the internal workings of companies. Their demands have included anti-discrimination policies with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity and employee benefits for same-sex partners in the areas of medical insurance, sick and parental leave, and relocation and housing. Instead of challenging and pressuring companies by ‘making noises,’ however, these groups have quietly made policy demands, without taking center stage.

Especially important in this context is an ERG’s close coordination with a company’s legal department so as to identify ‘legal grey areas’ in which to implement queer-inclusive policies without overstepping any statutory or regulatory boundaries. Thus Mei, a young Singaporean queer woman who had co-founded the queer ERG at her American hospitality company, proudly recalled: ‘Last year, our legal team and public policy team actually got together and went through new regulations on Pink Dot to see what the grey areas were, so to speak, and, you know, if they didn’t make it explicit, this is what we can do.’ One such example is negotiating equal benefits policies for same-sex couples who cannot offer legal ‘proof’ of relationships that the Singaporean government does not recognize. Thus, Adele built a close relationship with her company’s legal and HR teams to ensure that same-sex partners at her company would receive these benefits, turning to them for help in finding private insurance providers and thereby sidestepping the legal uncertainties that characterize same-sex relationships in Singapore.

Lastly, queer ERGs have practiced quiet politics in outreach and collaboration with local queer advocacy groups, through shared platforms such as Pink Dot where corporate-based and local groups can mingle.

However, the tightening regulation of corporate engagement in recent years by the government that culminated in the change of rules regarding Pink Dot has also resulted in the reconfiguration of these collaborative efforts between ERGs and local queer groups. For enthusiastic diversity organizers like Mei, the newly imposed regulations represented both a challenge and a ‘turning point’ for her group, causing it to be increasingly careful about avoiding ‘sensitive issues.’ Based on legal advice from the company’s in-house lawyers, the group decided to frame its outreach activities as part of commonly accepted ‘corporate social responsibility’ efforts. Along with food bank donations and volunteering to help the elderly, it had been reaching out to volunteer for various local groups, such as an LGBT counseling center and transgender shelters.

Moreover, while the ERGs based in MNCs cannot attend Pink Dot officially, Mei’s group had great success during the past few celebrations, encouraging wearing group t-shirts without company logos specifically designed for the event. Mei had figured out that participation ‘in individual capacities’ presented no legal concerns for Singaporean citizens and permanent residents. Meanwhile, Adele’s group, in collaboration with other ERGs, worked diligently with local bars and restaurants near the park where Pink Dot has been held to celebrate the event without actually attending it. As she put it, ‘[Although] we can’t go to Hong Lim Park, there’s something else we can do.’

The quiet nature of the relationships between ERGs and local queer groups is especially apparent with respect to financial support. Now that MNCs headquartered outside of Singapore can no longer sponsor Pink Dot, queer ERGs have found legally acceptable alternatives involving financial support for local queer groups. This move has been possible because the regulations banning direct sponsorship specified ‘events held at Speakers’ Corner’ in Hong Lim Park in order to target Pink Dot but did not mention other queer groups or events elsewhere, leaving open the ‘legal grey areas’ described by Mei.

Hence, some ERGs continue to secure company funds, ‘in the spirit of charity,’ as Luis put it, to provide various community-based queer groups with food, furniture, and other supplies. Other ERGs raised funds internally to donate at fundraising events for local queer groups ‘in a personal capacity,’ intentionally downplaying the company’s presence. In the words of Adele, ‘We don’t make too much noise about it. Like, we wouldn’t publicize; we never ask them to display our logo.’ One such event was a fundraising gala for one of Singapore’s largest queer advocacy groups held in the summer of 2017 at a luxurious downtown hotel. At the dinner, the dozens of tables were occupied primarily by members of queer ERGs, who claimed to be participating ‘in a personal capacity’ – despite the fact that the bookings for the event were carefully (but unofficially) arranged by the ERGs and the local group. This being the case, queer corporate organizers enact quiet politics as they walk a fine line between the limited autonomy enjoyed by MNCs and the repressive state.

The contradictions of quiet politics

While global corporations can provide an unexpected oasis for queer employees in an illiberal society, we should also consider how internal disparities, hierarchies, or fissures may have resulted in fundamental contradictions in quiet politics.

First, quiet politics in Singapore has primarily been undertaken by transnational corporate elites. According to Dien, a gay member of the queer ERG at a global tech firm, Singapore’s corporate diversity activism is largely driven by highly educated, English-speaking, gay- and lesbian-identified professionals who are ‘economically privileged enough to get anything’ thanks to the high incomes and fringe benefits that they receive from their MNC employers. From this vantage point, queer organizers’ promotion of diversity policies and programs provide select professional elites with economic and cultural privileges associated with achieving a specific occupational status that are not available to their peers outside of the corporate sphere. In other words, Singapore’s quiet politics provides what Ong (2006) calls ‘neoliberal exceptions,’ which allow only a restricted set of rights and recognition for transnational elites within global corporations.

The contradiction arises from the fact that quiet politics’ concentration on creating inclusive space results in unintended exclusions. A significant ramification of quiet politics is the widening gap between individuals in exercising and imagining their places in the illiberal society. The split is between those who are considered part of the ‘desirable workforce’ – those who work at large, well-funded, and well-established MNCs – and those who do not belong to this workforce. In contrast to queer employees at MNCs, it is reported that queer individuals in the majority of local businesses continue to face widespread stigma and discrimination, as well as a lack of legal protections (Winter et al., 2018). In quiet politics, ideas like diversity, inclusion, and workplace equality are proclaimed yet restricted to those at the top of the occupational hierarchy. The safe confines of MNCs for a tiny set of transnational corporate elites in illiberal neoliberal Singapore could function as physical and symbolic barriers to accessing or imagining rights and recognition for the rest of the queer community. It runs the risk of losing relevance for the queer community in Singapore as a whole, limiting its own political effect and possibilities.

Second, even among transnational corporate elites, there exists a disparity in everyday involvement between Singaporeans and expatriates. Many ERG leaders stated that there is a disparity in engagement between locals and expatriates at their gatherings, advocacy activities, and networking efforts. They attributed it to the differential costs of coming out and the fear that locals will be unintentionally outed to their families, friends, and future employers. Chen, a Singaporean ERG member in an American tech firm, observed that many of his Singaporean co-workers were hesitant to join ERGs: ‘they’re afraid that if they do [join ERGs], somehow, it [their sexual identities] will go back to their family.’ Andrew, an Asian expatriate, observed that, unlike foreigners like himself, Singaporeans were afraid that most local businesses lacked corporate diversity efforts and support networks, and would not tolerate queer employees. Glancing cautiously around the cafe where we spoke, he lowered his voice to add, ‘this is a small country.’ The spaces of neoliberal exceptions cannot provide a complete sense of safety for locals, even if they are members of transnational corporate elites, as long as they are embedded in Singaporean society outside the corporate walls.

This is a home disadvantage and a foreign advantage, stemming from another contradiction inherent in quiet politics. Quiet politics can merely be an extension of the societal norm for foreign employees who come from countries where LGBT rights are better protected. Local employees living in illiberal Singapore, on the other hand, may find it a fugitive and cloistered privilege only partially enjoyed behind the guarded walls of MNCs. The more successful quiet politics becomes in fostering neoliberal exceptions within corporate territory, the greater the separation between the exceptional space of inclusion and the ordinary space of exclusion; hence, the second contradiction. More information is needed to determine if foreign advantage is a manifestation of white privilege in global capitalism. Following the rise of East and Southeast Asian economies since the late 2000s post-economic crisis (Hoang, 2015), white privilege is frequently challenged, contested, and even regulated in Asia, particularly in terms of job security and symbolic images of ‘high-skilled’ white migrants (Hof, 2021). Given the significant presence of non-white expatriates from East and Southeast Asia in corporate diversity activism, more empirical research is needed to understand how home disadvantage and foreign advantage are translated into institutionalized hierarchies in the functioning of quiet politics in global capitalism.

Conclusions

Feminist and queer scholars have expressed growing concern about neoliberalism’s infiltration into the economic, social, and cultural arenas where gender and sexual politics take place. Queer liberalism has provided a theoretical basis for challenging the neoliberal co-optation of concepts like diversity, inclusion, and equality in everyday and organizational life, as well as highlighting neoliberalism’s corrosive depoliticizing influence on queer organizing. Within this theoretical framework, however, it is difficult to fully comprehend the polyvalent and contested nature of neoliberalism, as well as the ambivalent nature of its implications for queer subjects in neoliberal capitalism.

This article examined the conditions and social processes of corporate diversity activism in Singapore and found that queer subjects have not merely conformed to but also strategized the contradictions of queer liberalism in the process of turning global corporations into a battleground in their struggle for rights and recognition. Under the contradictory combination of political illiberalism and economic neoliberalism in Singapore, queer subjects have developed the new mode of mobilization that I have termed quiet politics. In global corporations, outside the conventional realm of social movements, queer employees have been seizing on globalizing initiatives of corporate diversity and taking advantage of the limited autonomy granted to corporate policy and practice under the authoritarian state. Queer actors have identified various legal grey areas to use for quiet advocacy and organizing, reducing the risk of legal retaliation. The quiet politics of queer employees in corporate Singapore reveals both tensions and potential ruptures within the central locus of queer liberalism.

The concept of quiet politics makes significant theoretical contributions to research on neoliberal capitalism, contentious politics, and queer activism. First, by drawing on the diverse economies approach to understand queer practices and relations in neoliberal market economies (Brown, 2009), quiet politics considers the multiple and contested natures of neoliberalism in its particular historical and socio-political context in understanding queer liberalism and its operations. By paying due attention to the contradictions of neoliberalism, rather than taking the coherence of neoliberalism for granted (Rofel, 2007), I shifted the analytical lens from abstract notions of queer liberalism to how queer subjects experience, navigate, and negotiate the neoliberal economic order empirically in various parts of the world.

Second, building on previous scholarship on social movements and economic sociology, I draw attention to the strategic adaptations of social movements to illiberal and authoritarian contexts (Chua, 2014), showing that the pursuit of rights and recognition occurs not only in the conventional realm of social movements but also in the ‘unexpected places’ (Bedford, 2009) of private businesses and firms – particularly when governments limit civic and political liberties. I highlighted the complex role of corporate actors in contentious politics by complicating the widely-held belief that corporations are simply profit-driven, manipulative, and depoliticized entities, with corporate employees serving as merely contributors to the neoliberal capitalist system. Instead, I showed how queer actors create exceptional spaces of inclusion at the critical nexus of global corporations and authoritarian regimes. Quiet politics, particularly in the context of global corporations, opens up a new direction for future research on the relationship between the state and the market in the provision and practice of rights by queer and other marginalized groups.

Lastly, this article adds to the growing body of queer studies in non-Western contexts, notably in Asia, highlighting the importance of silence and invisibility as a strategy of survival and resistance to dominant hegemonic norms (Brainer, 2019; Currier, 2012; Decena, 2011). The concept of quiet politics is useful for making sense of the new modes of mobilization that queer subjects deploy as a strategic response to politically restricted environments such as the contradictory illiberal neoliberalism of Singapore. My empirical study showcased that when social and political strictures make conventional forms of mobilization such as protests, petitions, or legislative lobbying impractical, queer subjects may envision and gravitate toward alternative forms of contentious politics – that is, quiet politics. Quiet politics echoes with the recent critical conversations to ‘decolonize’ the epistemological limits of both Western-centric queer theory and area studies (e.g., Asian studies) to provide insights into the multiple possibilities of queer activism and social change (Kao, 2021; Lee, 2017; see also Moussawi, 2018; Waites, 2017).

I also considered internal discrepancies, emerging hierarchies, and fundamental contradictions within the operation of quiet politics. Significant contradictions emerge in the ‘neoliberal exceptions’ (Ong, 2006) of quiet politics, which provides a liminal and limited space of inclusion for queer employees. On the one hand, quiet politics’ promises of diversity, inclusion, and workplace equality are undermined by the necessary exclusion of queer individuals who do not work for global corporations. The quiet and covert nature of this politics, on the other hand, does not protect queer employees from their lives outside of the workplace. In other words, quiet politics has emerged as a strategy of everyday resistance in the contradictory context of illiberal neoliberalism, where quietness can easily reaffirm illiberal neoliberalism’s very regulatory power, allowing certain subjects to pursue only a limited set of rights and recognition. What remains unclear are the long-term possibilities for quiet politics in terms of advancing the politics of rights, recognition, and redistribution, both in corporations and in society. It remains to be seen, for instance, whether corporate diversity activism may contribute to continuing queer struggles like the repeal of Section 377A of Singapore’s Penal Code while remaining quiet. Such considerations will serve as points of departure for the exploration of the intricate entanglement of neoliberalism with sexual politics and its divergent manifestations around the globe, including quiet politics.