Hello friends!
Starting March 2009, SinQSA will be embarking on a small project.
In each of our monthly meet-up, everyone will take turns to contribute to the list of straight privileges, which contains the taken-for-granted things straight people have in Singapore.
This project aims to display the simple things in our daily lives as Singaporeans that may in fact be privileges exclusive to a group of people, in this case, those who identified as heterosexual. Any one, who identifies as straight or queer, are welcome to add to this list. It is a round-table effort, as the list is literally passed around the table for your guys to contribute.
An example of such a list can be found here.
We will see how long this list will grow in the months to come. We will compile it and post it on our website.
Hope to see you at our monthly meet-ups. Join our facebook group for more information!
I am concerned with this initiative to ask people listing down “straight privileges” on this website. It seems like charity given by straight people to gay people allowing them to list down what they think straight people have that they don’t. This will severely undermine the ideals of the Straight- Gay Alliance, whose aim is to promote discourse and understanding between straight and gay people. Even if there were straight people listing down things they had taken for granted with respect to what gay people could have done, the merely listing of the number of straight people contributing to the items on the list as opposed to the number of gay doing the same, it will encourage division among them, resulting in greater misunderstanding in the future.
Adapted from the book “Permanent Partners”, for marriage alone, there is ….
In routine matters, the right to:
1. have access to spouse’s life and health insurance from spouse’s workplace
2. be able to file joint tax returns and access marriage-related tax benefits
3. be relocated with spouse by the company in a job change
4. sponsor permanent residency and citizenship if spouse is from another country
5. have joint leases for rental property with automatic renewal rights if spouse leaves or dies
6. have joint insurance policies for home, motor and health
7. receive medical care, education, home loans if spouse is in the military (not sure if this applies in SG)
8. invoke spousal privilege in a court of law (not sure if this applies in SG)
9. own property in joint tenancy (not sure if this applies in SG)
With children, the right to:
1. have joint parenting rights such as access to children’s school records
2. have ready access to joint adoption of children
3. have custody of children in the event of divorce
4. have custody of children after death of a spouse
5. have relationships, with all its entitlements, legally recognised in other countries
Upon spouse’s illness, the right to:
1. obtain sick leave from a workplace to care for the person
2. make medical decisions for the person, if necessary
3. visit in the hospital (not sure if this applies in SG)
Upon spouse’s death, the right to:
1. get compassionate leave from a workplace
2. make decisions about the manner of a spouse’s burial
3. receive the spouse’s CPF
4. have automatic inheritance of shared assets
5. inherit retirement savings tax-free
6. assume a spouse’s pension
7. inherit automatically if spouse dies without a will
8. file a wrongful death claim (not sure if this applies in SG)