My anxiety, which I was learning to manage with the help of my therapist, was high when Covid-19 travelled to Australia quickly, bar graphs on the television screen shot up day in and day out. I lived alone in a large apartment, took up all sorts of hobbies (remember Animal Crossing???) and dated somebody who was bad for me to fill the void my family had left. I had zoom classes for my martial arts, and each time the classes ended, I told everybody how much I missed and loved them.

What I really missed was the comfort of family. I think back to when I lived in Singapore for three years and how I was able to fly home any given weekend with cheap flight tickets due to privileges attained by my mother who works for the airline. Living in London was great because my brother was an hour and a half train ride away, and would regularly visit me to fill the void we both felt that only family could fill even though all we did was laze the weekend away in my flat.

With a pandemic and living in an isolated city on an isolated island, with restrictions imposed on just about any country that would make me or my family come physically closer to one another, I could feel the sickness that only home could remedy. I miss the comfort of my bed in Brunei, the shuffle of Bapa’s feet as he entered the living room, the feel of my mother’s arm linked into mine for support so she can walk straight, the sound of my brother’s grunt when he agrees to a suggestion, the boom of my older brother’s laugh, and the sound of my sister’s car engine driving up the driveway.

I no longer know how my two year old niece’s weight would feel if I carry her. She thinks I’m a YouTube video every time I video call her.

It’s bloody hard, living alone, not verbally talking to people directly for days sometimes, anxious of touching surfaces while trying to manage a relationship that I knew wasn’t meant to be in in the first place. I kept it to myself and told my friends back home, until I had to consult my therapist one day (face to face, thank goodness) of how much I was struggling, especially as someone who was on the tail end of recovering from an event that led to me developing post-traumatic stress disorder syndrome. Her advice was to make plans with the one friend I have by organising walks, and ensuring we stay at a safe distance from each other.

That was the start of it, really. The void in my heart, I realised, was also experienced by so many other people stranded in Canberra, a city filled with people who did not grow up there. Jemma and I took walks every Friday evening and watched films afterwards at a safe distance from each other.  Tina and Hannah came for dinner at my place every Saturday evenings, each occupying one side of the dining table in order to help each other cope. Adam—having lost a family member—and I began talking to each other every day to help fill our loneliness, and Steph, separated from her partner and her family, would text me telling me how much she misses seeing me or sparring in sword class with me.

As their love filled me, I broke up with the man I was dating.

It’s weird how a pandemic and being separated from people I hardly knew who lives in this city with me brought us so much closer together.

As restrictions began to ease, and contact sports were allowed touching, I found myself missing the feel of being touched—something I didn’t realise I needed—even though it meant that my hapkido training partners were throwing me to the ground. The friendships I developed in lockdown developed outside the comfort of my home and smart phone, and I found myself turning into an incredibly social being, ensuring that my days are filled with friends I cared about, telling people I love that I love them even if they don’t feel the same way, transforming myself from being a cold pessimist to the warmest version of myself.

Acquaintances whom I didn’t know the life of early in 2020 became close friends who’d consult me with their life problems. I became the person people go to for cuddles. I was spoilt with options by people who wanted to adopt me as their family for Christmas. My friends and I closed a bar to celebrate my birthday when the year before I only stayed at home.

The truth is I don’t know when I’ll see my family again. It could be this year, or it could be the next. But the thing is I’ve somehow managed to make my own found family here. It doesn’t have the same warmth as my real family, but it is just as special—lonely souls in a middle of pandemic reaching for one another to fill a void.

by Teah Abdullah

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Five years ago, another break up led me to a long period of no dating. In those years of being single, I nurtured friendships and distanced myself from people I don’t mesh with. I also learned to accept myself for who I am—for all my insecurities and weaknesses, flaws and strengths: I accepted them all. I accepted myself so much so that I just completely forgot about having a partner. I just stopped caring. I stopped being an agreeable, people pleaser. Getting into dating again involved dating apps. And hoo boy, dating apps adds an element of frustration. There are unclear boundaries (yes, I want a relationship but can I come over for a bang?), lack of accountability (I don’t really care I’ve hurt your feeling by making you chase my string), deception (that’s not his name!) and uncertainty (you’re a great person, and genuinely good, but let me shop around Tinder first.)

These are, in a way, part and parcel of dating, but dating apps magnifies the shittiness of casual dating. You get more choice but with little to no substance. It’s hard to settle, so often people don’t.  It is exhausting.

More options does not give you a spice of life. More options means you can choose not to be accountable. So I decided, well, screw that. I don’t want to date anymore because it’s just a ton of work. Needing to learn from others experience as well as further validate my decision, I searched online on other women’s experience to no longer wanting to date and why they have come to that conclusion. A search engine, instead, gave me results on how it is necessary for me to be in a heterosexual relationship with somebody—that I need to work on myself, that what I am feeling is actually fear of intimacy, that I fear getting hurt, BUT IT IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL FOR YOU TO FIND A MAN, GET MARRIED TO THEM QUICK, AND HAVE YOUR 2.5 CHILDREN EVEN THOUGH THEY WILL SUFFER THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE. But the reality is this: I have worked on myself and I love her; it took me a while to realise that post-breakup because I went from needing validation from another person instead of from myself.

I want to be single because dating is messy business, and I look at my friends who are in unhappy marriages and publicly show their failure to communicate with their partners. But I also look at my friends who are in happy partnerships and how that, too, is a lot of work. I don’t want to date because I don’t want to put in the work, that I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with men who are expecting me to mother them, that I don’t want to deal with men who thinks I am playing game when I make it clear of what I need but those needs are ignored.  I don’t want to notch myself down every few months when a new person comes into my life, invading into my space and chipping my confidence bit by bit (Which. Has. Happened. With. Their. Intention!).

Intimacy doesn’t scare me, vulnerability doesn’t scare me—because hell, for six months, I did all those things without fear of repercussions when I dated again. Instead, what dating has done to me was destroy my confidence from one piece to another, especially as a fat woman. I ran by this with a friend, who is also working through the apps. She asked if I’m tired of people’s bullshit or having to communicate clearly that I’m not playing games all the time. When I told her about the search engine’s results, she had this to say:

“That’s fine, a lot of people are self-reliant and doesn’t need relationships as a part of their lives. A lot of people have meaningful friendships instead. You don’t need to date. You don’t even need a reason to not date.”

I don’t need a reason to not date.

by Teah Abdullah

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She dominates that relationship, you thought.

This whole picture; the bag slinging down his arm instead of hers is wrong, you thought.

But the reality is this: you are wrong.

Let him carry her bag.

Let him carry her bag if it’s a mutual decision, because those decisions reflects communication, and communication is important in a relationship. Communication where a decision is made by both parties? More important, because there is openness, tenderness, a peek into vulnerability.

Let him carry her bag, because it isn’t her fault that she has to have one while he doesn’t. Because the clothing industry is notorious for not putting useable pockets in women’s clothes. It isn’t her fault that her wallet choices are limited to those sized like her forearm. It isn’t her fault that mobile phones have gotten bigger over the years. It isn’t her fault that she has to carry a small swiss army knife with her for safety.  

She has to carry a bag.

Let him carry her bag, because it isn’t her fault that women’s clothing doesn’t allow pockets. And carrying bags are like carrying burden of being a woman: an outwardly show at the baggage and shit we have to carry with us all the fucking time.

The voice in your head saying that she should not have carried her bag if she was going to give it to him? That voice is wrong. She has to carry a bag.

As you navigate around the mall, you spot something else. A man. With a “man bag”, and something in you rages. A MAN? CARRYING A BAG MADE FOR MEN? What has the world come to that a man has to carry a bag that’s similar to a woman’s handbag?

Your opinion on this is right, men should not have to carry bags!

Because bags look weird on a man’s shoulder (does it?)

But you are wrong.

Let him carry that bag. Because you never once considered that fashion is also evolution, that just because a strap across a man’s chest is something you have never seen in the first twenty years of your life, it doesn’t mean it should cease to exist for the rest of eternity.

Let him carry that bag, because men’s trousers are getting fitter and having bulky wallets and larger phones in fitted jeans is not an acceptable look in our society.

Let him carry that bag because a loaded hip might feel uncomfortable to him.

Let him carry that bag because he chooses to, and a stranger should not be the one determining a person’s choice to just. Carry. Something. So. Insignificant. In. A. Stranger’s. Life.

Let them carry their bags, because no one’s telling you that you shouldn’t carry a phone with you because of privacy issues and your movement is being tracked by a big company. Let men carry bags because it’s foolish to fight the notion of what’s feminine or masculine through the use of items, or colours, or style. These things are so arbitrary and man-made, but we choose to let it engulf our thinking and allow it to manifest into what is right or wrong, distracting us from other more significant problems we could be tackling.

by Teah Abdullah

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So, no pinks, light greens, oranges, or baby blues (but fine for the men!)

Bright colours are seen as a feminine trait. Femininity is a threat when it crosses over to the male section of clothing: it is repulsive and extraordinary. It should have no place in the black, white, greys and boring blue.

Gendered colours in clothing is the most ridiculous thing to have come out of the fashion industry. We have witnessed men accusing another is gay because they wear pink while also assuming that being gay is bad. Nothing more dangerous than a man being accused of being gay, right? While any accusation against him of being a rapist is fine?

A shopkeeper once told me that I shouldn’t buy a long sleeve green shirt for my niece because it is for boys. I’ve asked my niece, and she has no opinion whatsoever on the shirt because SHE IS SIX MONTHS OLD. She likes all colours because her baby brain responds to all bright colour, just like baby boys do!

Colours are colours, they do not have genders!

Culture

There are a variety of anthropological studies which states that upholding culture is predominantly a woman’s duty in a society. Brunei is no exemption to this. Have a look at government uniforms: men are allowed to wear Westernised clothing, a remnant of our colonial masters who brought that culture here. But women? Women are expected to wear baju kurung, our cultural uniform. Despite the fact that the uniform regulation stated that women just need to “tutup aurah”, they are often pressured to stick to the baju kurung. I’m not saying baju kurung is bad. I personally like wearing them especially in the Brunei heat. But trousers should also be an option for women. Not just a section of women who have to run around in their duty, but all women.

And sure, let’s normalise skirts for men too. I understand that men’s baju Melayu isn’t actually appealing as a way of clothing, but let’s be real, baju kurung isn’t either. Women can’t really run in them, they are restrictive at times, and the material can get very uncomfortable. We just think baju kurung is appealing because we have normalised it in our everyday life. Women shouldn’t bear the responsibility of upholding a culture by themselves, particularly in our way of clothing. Not to mention the high cost in making baju kurung in comparison to baju cara Melayu. Cultural clothing should be something all genders celebrate on an everyday basis.

Pockets

Pockets are great—they hold your wallet, your phone and your keys. But the fashion industry decided that women don’t require pockets. 

And we want pockets, damn it.

The pockets in many women’s clothing are either: non-existent (i.e. they’re fake pockets) or are really minuscule (i.e. they cannot fit a phone, not even the Nokia 3210). I don’t need to tell you about the history of why women’s clothing lack pockets, there are multiple op-eds out there already explaining the sexist history of pockets.

I’m a frugal person. I like to travel light, and I dislike using bags. Bags is part and partial of the capitalistic tool targeting women to spend more because we’re not given pockets, so much so that local tailors think it odd when you ask for pockets in your baju kurung (I’m paying for you to do this, damn it!) There is no greater thrill for women than finding a piece of clothing, whether it’s a dress or jeans, that have functional pockets, so much so, the squeal of delight every time we announce “it has pockets!” to other women is a response shared worldwide.

I chanced upon jeans recently that had deep pockets. Have you ever carried a bottle of juice in your pocket before, ladies? Let me tell you, it feels almost revolutionary!

If you like bags, that’s fine! But I am a firm believer of consumer’s choice, in that the choices given to men to make everyday life easier for them should be the same choices given to women, and vice versa. Let men wear purses, and let women have pockets. Don’t force one or the other to buy an extra item just because the fashion industry wants to manipulate one or the other to buy more.

-----

Now, what’s the solution here? I personally think clothes should not be gendered, because settling with making femininity as a powerful tool indicate that I am okay with the problems of masculinity and patriarchy, while reverting to masculinity as a norm or an androgynous form of clothing means I reject the concept of femininity existing. Clothes, afterall, are just clothes. It is us, as humans, as people who have the power to make certain things “normal”, who have the power to understand that concept that clothes are clothes, and they are not and should not be gendered. A man wants to wear a skirt? Hells yeah, go ahead—why limit your legs from being exposed to the cool wind by just using kain and jubah during Friday prayers when you can have that option all the time. Women want to wear baju cara Melayu? Uh, that’s pretty badass, please proceed. A transman who still likes the benefit women get to carry handbags? Go ahead! Bags are great, as are functional pockets!

Make options available for all genders!

by Teah Abdullah

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Let me give you some examples of my disability. I switch lights on and off using my knuckles or arm. I cannot turn faucet handles, preferring those that goes up or down (innovation is fantastic, isn’t it?) I cannot open unopened bottle caps at all because my right hand has lost a lot of its strength. I turn the keys to my car with great difficulty and would use my non-dominant left hand instead. I hate being the first one to come to my office because I’d have to be the one to unlock the door. Since it is the right hand, I break adab by sometimes eating rice with my left hand—don’t worry, I wash my hands notoriously (without soap, because soap burns). 

I am a proponent of utensils.

Even with utensils, it hurts. I am clumsy while eating because of my disabled right hand. And because my left hand is just as clumsy, I leave crumbs and mess behind. So, when the debate about whether pizza must be eaten by hand or utensil, it dawned on me how ableist that debate is. (For the record, my Italian friend—i.e., the place where pizza originated from, i.e., the person who would know the best—said that pizza should be eaten however well you want to, as long as it ends up in your belly, because damn, pizza=good.)

Ableist means prejudice towards those who are disabled. Brunei is ignorant towards those with disability, so much so that they are not visible in public spaces. How often do you see people who are disabled in your everyday life outside of medical centers? When was the last time you saw someone bound to a wheelchair in public three times within a week unless you live with someone who does? We lack resources to allow wheelchair to enter buildings as well as feel ashamed at those who are visibly disabled.

We normalise abled bodies so much that we ignore that other people have different experiences in everyday conveniences. The plastic straw debate that wants to ban the use of straw completely? Many disabled people can only use plastic straws at the current height of technological advancement of drink sucking. Hate Comic Sans as a font? Some dyslexic people find it to be the easiest font to read because of the way it curves. A step that’s half-a-foot high leading towards restaurants? Not everyone can climb it even if they have legs that can stand.

Ten years ago, I was obsessed with correct typing, but I am now known among my friends as someone who cannot bother with punctuation or correct spellings anymore. A friend recently scolded me asking why I can’t take the time to type things properly, because somewhere in their mind, thee has’t speaketh English prop’rly on Whatsapp or thee shall face the wrath of the mighty lord.

It occurred to me then that we all assume that those with hands equates to fully functional hands. I no longer type properly on chat because my fingers make so much typos, especially with technology that doesn’t recognise fingers that doesn’t have skin on them--I have not passed any fingerprint tests the past ten years! I can’t be bothered to text anymore and doing it regularly is a strain to my hand. There are even times where I hilariously unlock my phone with my nose (did you know that the iPhone’s fingerprint feature can identify your nose’s skin?)

By no means am I saying you should sympathise me. My life the past ten years has been about adaptability. But it still doesn’t change the fact that I am a disabled person on a visibly abled bodied, until you microscope onto the disability itself. I have had days where I cannot drive because of it, and have had days where I need to sanitise my steering wheel to make sure that I wouldn’t get an infection from holding it. I have had days where I had to assign my colleague to type for me, and days where my right hand is semi-functional enough for me to type my own work. There are days where my whole arm shrinks because of the pain. I have many days where I use the speech-to-text function on my phone, but also have many frustration towards my phone’s inability to understand ‘leak’ in my accent and would instead type it as ‘league’ (‘I have to take a league’ is far more ambitious than the originally intentioned ‘I have to take a leak’.)

I look forward to the day when medical advancement can cure me of this. But it has also been a decade since my condition started and has gotten progressively worse (yes, I’ve downed ten bottles of essential oils—it doesn’t work!) This is my life now, and the only thing I can hope for is for people to create awareness towards the most marginalised group in our society: the disabled. We need to make changes for people who does not fit the able bodied category. Whatever we do, whatever decision we make that has the involvement of others should consider those who cannot do things that an able-bodied person can because we stand to benefit from the involvement of many people who doesn’t fit in the mold of normality in our society.

by Teah Abdullah

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We can see this from the recent allegations of assault from comedians Louis CK and the complex case of harassment within the realms of dating by Aziz Ansari. These are behemoths in the comedy world who have joked about how ridiculous men are when it comes to entertaining their sexual needs while forgetting that the women are, well, humans. Their position on stage is clear: I support women, and men’s treatment of women is disgraceful

But their position off stage, one they control away from the media’s narrative, has recently been made clear too: My stage persona is a farce, and I, as a male feminist, am just as capable at defying my feminist beliefs by assaulting and harassing women for brownie points.

And this behaviour does not just start or end with celebrities; it is behaviour that is manifested within male feminists I know too.  It might not necessarily be in relation to harassment or assault; it is also in the silence when their voice is needed. My distrust towards male feminist did not come about from Ansari or CK’s case; my resentment towards male feminist has grown since before then too, because male feminists have over and over failed me, and continue to fail in delivering their position. 

The reality is our society holds the anger of men’s voice more seriously. My voice as an angry woman has been dismissed as irrational or radical, too extreme to be placed within the space of our society. And yet, when the need to have men’s angry voice in my plight to highlight gender inequality, male allies voices are often silent.

I’m talking about men who Tweet they are feminists, and are proud of it, but stops their effort there. Men who share statistics and data about gender disparity in Brunei, but lurk the Brunei Reddit page and stayed silent when rampant sexism or scathing attacks towards individual women crops up. I’m talking about men who chimes in “But Not Me!” when women starts talking about the problem of Men In General.

I’m talking about male allies who talk, but have done little to no action in their alliance with women—those of whom continue to support projects made by men while disregarding projects by women and subconsciously dismissing them as trivial. I’m talking about men who continue to read male authors and academics, and never seeking out or balancing it with the perspective of women.

What are Tweets for when you don’t take action to your words, especially when you’ve been called out on your continuous misogyny? Highlighting sexism on social media is one thing, but promoting things that fight sexism is another entirely. The former is to get likes, the latter is allyship.  

Here is what I now think of male allies: I do not trust you. It is hard to trust you now because you keep failing me. This is true to those outside of Brunei and within Brunei.

I lost faith in male allies over the years as I become a subject of public scrutiny. In peaceful time, my male ally friends would happily stand up to say they are feminists. But during the days I am attacked on social media, they are quick to back away from me in my defence because of the inconvenience of arguing and engaging; because they assume that my voice alone can fight people who are insulting me, without realising that I have been fighting men on my own without it going anywhere or with little progress for years now.

I lost faith in male allies because many are there to be impressionable, but are never there when you need the weight of their voice to show their support. Because many male allies are going to continue to see the world as gender-neutral and disregarding that experiences are gendered, by allowing their internal misogyny to continue to support male-led projects or projects done by male abusers, by insisting that gender is a binary and erasing the experience of those who doesn't fit the binary, or by not hyping up projects led by women when these men have social media influence.

Male allies in the Brunei context, if you want women to trust you, you need to start acting with us. Look into the small projects you’re excited about: is there only one woman in a line-up of ten? Speak up and say that more women need to be involved to achieve gender balance as a goal—our gendered demography is 50-50 afterall. If it doesn’t change after a year, leave or don’t support that project at all, because one year is sufficient time to change gender imbalances. 

Are there women led projects of good quality happening at this moment? Voice it out and tell your friends about it; women led projects are worth talking about because they are run differently than projects that are dominated by men—they are more conscious of gender disparity and work to normalise the feminine experience is for everybody. Go to events run by women, whether it be fashion or art or social causes, because they are a completely different experience, and those experiences are to be shared with everybody.

Sexism problem persists everywhere, but we shouldn’t encourage it when we spot gender imbalances. We have to be better than just speaking up in times of peace.

by Teah Abdullah

Ladies, contribute your stories for March’s theme ‘Month of Women’! E-mail us at [email protected] with your ideas or article.

I hate going to hospitals because I am fat. The times I have gone has led to judgmental conclusions from the doctors and nurses solely base on my weight—that I am unhealthy and need to lose that weight, and that I am This Close to getting a heart attack. Nurses have commented harshly on my fats, and doctors have told me off by mistakenly thinking I am lazy and that all I do is eat.

I 

hate

going

to

hospitals.

When I’ve finally got my fatass off the squeaky chair to enter the consultation room, the doctor kindly ran through the pages of my results. Her face was morose, but I later learned that is the face she has. While my features decided to stick with the Resting Bitch Face, this doctor has Resting Morose Face.

I’m not sure which is better. 

She ran through everything with me, moving from one section to the next. She concluded by telling me that I am… healthy. Like, incredibly healthy. Everything about me is On Point. And when we reached my body fats and weight, she told me, “We use the BMI system because it is a standard system. You are overweight, but you are a very healthy person.”

I’ve never attributed my looks—the weight, the shape, the way my thighs refuse to shrink over the years—to one of a healthy person. I currently have a problem where I cannot exercise without it impacting on my skin condition—it flares up at the smallest things and takes weeks to heal. I once exercised five times a week which led to weight loss, but I was also mentally ill during that time, replacing blood with sweat to make me feel alive. I can no longer do something like that without it impacting on my skin. So I’ve settled to pretending to be okay with my body until I soon accepted it, when others could not.

However, upon entering the hospital, I realise how self-conscious I actually am despite my best efforts to just Be Okay With Myself. And the words the doctor told me—'very healthy'—came to me as a surprise, because you do not see people like me considered as healthy from almost anyone, including health professionals.

It was then I realise that I make efforts too; efforts that I dismiss by focusing more on my guilt every time I decide to have cake or miss out on swimming (the only exercise I can actually do). I dismiss the fact that I usually skip dinner whenever I have a full lunch. I dismiss my decision to stop eating rice in favour of vegetables. I dismiss my diet where I've stopped eating red meat. I dismiss the fact that I’ve quit drinking soda for eight years now. I dismiss the fact that I’ve only had less than twenty cigarettes in my life, and that I’ve abandoned bi-weekly shisha sessions. I forget the effort I’ve taken to make sure I only have one take-away drink per week. I dismiss the fact that I try not to sit down for more than 45 minutes.

Instead, I focus on the guilt and the stereotypes people might have towards those with my kind of body--the disgusting sack of meat and fats that is me. Because those words--which eventually blurred itself to the point that it no longer felt like an insult but a fact--are things I have been told as a child: my body can never be healthy until I meet the standards of not having a pouch in front of me.

But I was wrong to be so harsh on myself, and they are wrong. I have been healthy all this while. I have papers to show it. 

People, whether they know me or not, are going to comment on my body. People who only just know me would think that I am a slob, whereas close acquaintances may see the results of the efforts I make, whether I relapse or improve. People are going to talk regardless of what because that is what we do.

Society has told me for many years that fatness is a vice, but society never turn to look at the ramification of that idea—that me, a healthy person, will continue to be self-conscious because I do not fit the ideal despite being healthy, and that I am going to continue to pine for that ideal because unlearning is so fucking hard. Society doesn’t care that I’m going to have bouts of hatred towards myself because it has told me that I should hate myself. Society is going to keep telling me that I am going to be a victim of something dangerous, even when they don’t have the documents with my vitals on it, even when they don't understand the impact exercising can and have done to other parts of my body, even when they don’t understand the efforts I have made all these years.

Society isn't going to understand that, but I now do, and I'm trying to unlearn that my fatness is immoral. We are an image-conscious society surrounded by delicious delicacies. But more importantly, we are all human, with differing bodies that are capable of different things, and with minds that can cause more harm to everything around us than our body can.

by Teah Abdullah

Interested in contributing to Songket Alliance? E-mail us at [email protected] with your ideas or article.

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I am 21, waiting to get food at the canteen on campus in Singapore. I am fair enough to be considered as Chinese passing. The woman working behind the counter started talking to me in Hokkien.

"Sorry, auntie. I don't understand," I said.

She smiled, condescendingly, and said, "This is Singapore. Learn to speak Chinese. That's 3 dollars."

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I am 27, in London, and Asar prayers is almost over. I stopped by a mosque on my way home, did my prayers with the hawking eyes of dark skinned women bored into me, their children doing somersaults in front of me as I did my first, second, third, sujuds. I gave my salaams, took my bag and went to put on my shoes.

“This isn’t your mosque,” said one man as I put my left boot in.

“Huh?” I asked back.

He pointed at the sign, which indicated the mosque is owned by a diaspora from an African nation. 

“It’s a mosque,” I retorted, tying my shoelaces, “I’m here to pray. We bow to the same God.”

“You do not belong here,” he emphasised.

I stood up, gave him an Assalamualaikum, and took my leave with an eye roll.

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Learning to be respectful of others is difficult, especially when you start expanding your social life outside a bubble your parents had shut you in. Growing up, I spent time with Malays, befriended Malays, learned by osmosis of racist vernaculars and the expected norm of daily Malay life. I was taught to function in line with the majority, put the interest of the majority in front of me as priority, and to ensure my actions fall in line with the majority.

However, I was never told what it is to fall in line with the majority from the position of a minority. While my ethnicity urges I show favouritism towards it, my religion has taught me of kindness towards others regardless of their background--to coexist, and to fight for those in the minority, because minorities exist even within my ethnicity and religion; and because these minorities are ignored in their public functionality, whether through the lack of parking spaces for the differently abled, or the restriction of women from entering some spaces deemed as religious.

Physical space is interesting in determining your belonging and hierarchy, especially when you can instantly be a majority within one demarcation and invisible as you step into another. For instance, when I’m in Belait, people claim, sometimes mock, that I am not from there even though my lineage is mostly from that district. Now, imagine leaving Brunei: where I was repeatedly put in a situation where I was the minority: a Malay—an ethnicity of lower strata—in Singapore, and a Southeast Asian in London, where the word ‘Malay’ is foreign to almost everyone there that I had to be defined by the region I come from. I am Asian in America, and degraded to nothing in the Arab countries I have been to. These in itself were struggles in getting my voice out, where I had to shout louder than others in classes, to knock on shop counters aggressively when I was degraded as nothing in the Middle East, to scream at racial harassment in the streets, to give the finger to people who ching-ed and chong-ed towards me, and to fight against a lecturer who intentionally lowered the marks of Muslims in his class.

And why would I, as someone who has received the bullying end of the stick, want to treat people the same way as I was treated--as nothing, as irrelevant, as dirt?

I am a product of my culture. A culture that contradicts itself, that sets standards which changes as I ask people what those standards actually are. I am a product of my culture, one where modernisation is seen as a threat. I am a product of my culture, whose language is insensitive to others, and has taught me to defend what I am—a Malay—despite the flaws in definition and mass action. I am a product of my culture, one that encourages me to fight for me and those “like me” even though I don’t fucking know what that means.

But it doesn’t mean I cannot change. I am a product of my culture, but it doesn’t mean I should be ignorant of others and be narrow-minded of others' problems. I am a product of my culture, but it should also mean that I need to learn how to shut up and listen to others because I am a part of the majority in Brunei. I am a product of my culture, and it doesn’t mean I am always right, and it doesn’t mean what position I sway myself into or disagree with is right either. Everyone has the capacity to be wrong.

And that includes the culture I am a product of, which has been used in arguments as an absolute and unmoving monolith. A culture that has so many beauty but also so many uglies that is hard to acknowledge because we don’t take criticisms well. I’ve learned that while my culture can be wrong, your personal capacity to be kind and compassionate are not.

Someone said recently that there is a reason why certain things are a minority: it means that they are redundant and should not be listened to.

Taking this position indicates that only the majority should be listened to, that the majority has more validity than the minority. Siding with the majority all the time is dismissing the flaws in our system, that we are ignoring systematic racism, sexism and ableism that is integrated in our daily lives by justifying to ourselves, "I benefit from this system. Those who do not are not my problem. I'll turn a blind eye or else I lose my benefits." Siding with the majority means not encouraging those who are on wheelchairs or with autism to go outside because "people will stare", allowing the use of racist languages in our everyday lives because "everyone does it", and permitting sexism to continue because "biology, innit?”

Siding with the majority all the time, when minorities suffer even a smidge from a system that only benefits the majority, means that one type of life is more valuable than another. Life isn’t about revenge, that just because your Muslim sisters and brothers are suffering elsewhere, it means we have the authority to do the same to the “others” where we are, even if it “isn’t so bad”.

We all come from the same kind of soil, and when we are led to believe as well as internalise the idea that one type is better than another--such as ours rising above others, believing that one person is a godsent because he authorised the killings of thousands, demanding others to speak the same language as you, or internalising that a space of worship should be cleansed from “outsiders” from the same religion--that’s when we lose our humanity. 

And that is when we fail to see that humans have more similarity than differences. 

by Teah Abdullah 

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