Rainbow belt: Singapore’s gay Chinatown as a Lefebvrian space

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, Singapore’s Chinatown has been serving as the country’s de facto gay district. Gay businesses thrive in one of Singapore’s most socially conservative neighbourhoods, because the state allows relative free rein on the usage of preserved buildings after conserving the ethnic enclave as a bastion of Chineseness. Invoking Lefebvrian spatial concepts, I argue that the uneasy interface between moral conservatism and economic neoliberalism opened up intersticial spaces of business opportunities. Gay entrepreneurs took advantage of these spaces and their thriving businesses became the cluster today. I further maintain that as spaces of social interactions for gay men and lesbians, these enterprises help develop Singaporean queer identities. Yet, they simultaneously retard the country’s nascent LGBT rights movement by remaining largely closeted. By granting access to privatised consumption without challenging the heteronormative status quo of Singaporean society, gay Chinatown buttresses homonationalism (Kulick, 2009; Puar, 2007).

Keywords

Chinatown gay businesses Lefebvrian space Singapore

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