Re: #cancelcancelculture
Chand Chandramohan
In November 2014, the Protection from Harassment Act (POHA) came into force in Singapore. As described on the Singapore legal advice website, the POHA ‘seeks to protect people from being targets of harassment or stalking, whether online or in real life. It does so by making it a criminal offence to engage in various harassing acts. Victims of harassment in Singapore also have the option of suing their harasser for compensation in the Protection from Harassment Courts (PHC).’[1] The offences covered under the POHA include: causing harassment, alarm and distress, causing fear or provocation of violence, unlawful stalking, and doxxing. There are various remedies provided under the POHA for such offences, all of which are detailed on the aforementioned website.[2]
This is a crucial and long-needed protection act for victims of harassment, to know that there is legal recourse in the event of harassment-related incidents. However, what happens when this act is used as a tool to further interpersonal violence? This is what happened to two individuals: Penelope* and myself. We spoke over Zoom, after a fraught year of dealing with legal action taken on us under the POHA. As Sara Ahmed writes in Complaint! – a text I’ve since held on to deeply in order to make sense of what was happening to me – ‘we do not know where complaints will go’. Perhaps this essay could be a remedy; in a way that is keeping the complaint alive, and ascribing the process as part of what Ahmed describes as the ‘complaint biography’.[3]
making a complaint is never completed by a single
action: it often requires you do more and more work. It is exhausting,
especially given that what you complain about is already exhausting.[4]
Back in late May 2021, I took to the public sphere to react to what was happening to me – I was falsely accused of running a vigilante Instagram page and shortly after was doxxed by a burner (anonymous) account. It became evident to me that the person who ran the burner account was the same person who was last exposed by the vigilante Instagram account. Doxxing is an offence under the POHA and led to me making a police report citing the Act. In the report, I was provided with some options I could pursue, which included a police investigation or civil litigation. I chose the former, and because my report was considered ‘non-seizable’, I had to apply for a magistrate’s complaint. A ‘non-seizable’ offence occurs when the accused cannot be arrested and charged without a warrant, unless they violate a protection order (PO), enhanced protection order (EPO), or a conditional warning. During the magistrate’s complaint application process, I was informed that because the burner account owner never made explicit threats towards me, the police investigation will likely be a slow process as my safety was not at immediate risk.
Understandably, the process was long. Approximately nine months later, I finally received a call asking for me to give my statement at the police station. Even then, there was nothing to be done because the person behind the burner account could not be ascertained. They would ask the person I accused to give a statement; he would obviously deny running the burner account. Before I gave my statement to the police, approximately four days after my public statement, I was served with an expedited protection order by the person I accused of doxxing me. On top of that, I had to fight the charges in POHA court as he was claiming $19,500 for the damage he thought he had suffered to his reputation. Seeing that large sum freaked me out – as I imagine it would for most – and sent me into a desperate search for legal aid. Going to different law offices, I was quoted an average of $600 per hour or a lump sum of $10,000. I was advised as well, by different legal professionals, that I did not need legal representation in POHA court – instead, I could represent myself and fight the damages, especially as I had already taken down the public statements I made. The idea of representing myself in court against legal representation the applicant had hired was frightening. Thankfully, I had some contacts who helped me secure a lawyer to represent me pro bono. Under POHA court, you are allowed four case management conferences (CMC), and if no agreement is reached, the next step would be a trial. This is highly discouraged, as going to trial comes at extra cost for all parties including the state. If I were to pay for legal representation, the cost I was quoted was the base fee that had to be paid before the trial, with the actual trial time projected to be two days, to be paid at $12,000 a day.
As a result, before I managed to secure pro bono legal representation, hearing all these numbers and costs in order to litigate against a party who was trying to cause me harm was incredibly distressing. At the final CMC, we reached a settlement; it was required for me to write a public statement with the words ‘I retract the statement I made against…’, to be posted as an Instagram Stories post on my personal account for a period of 24 hours, as well as a request to a news site retracting my statements. I performed my duties according to the agreement. However, the confidentiality clause was broken within two hours by the applicant and his wife (a third and uninvolved party) – they took a screenshot of my retraction and posted it on their respective Instagram pages, framing it as an apology and tagging major institutions such as Lasalle College of the Arts, School of the Arts, National Arts Council, and Tao Nan School. It was an effort – again – to frame me as a ‘malicious clout chaser’, engaging in ‘schadenfreude’ for ‘reasons unknown to’ them. An EPO was filed by my legal representation against the two, and at the time of writing, I’m still undergoing this traumatic process.
To work on a complaint is often to work out how a complaint is stalled.[5]
I sat with Penelope over Zoom. She took to the public sphere to allege that a person she was previously entangled with had threatened to release her nudes after a disagreement she had with him a few years ago. She posted screenshots of their conversation, which included the threats he made against her. She had also tagged the companies that funded him as he was a content creator.
Penelope’s call-out came in two parts. There seemed to be an admittance of wrongdoing by the accused the first time he was accused, while the second part saw one of his colleagues being accused of sexual misconduct by multiple anonymous complaints, where his name was again brought up. The second part was propelled by citizen journalism on social media. Penelope was served with an EPO, with a damages claim of about $3,000. She was advised by legal professionals, but ultimately had to represent herself in the CMCs where she settled and made a public apology for ‘false accusations’. At this point, the statement of apology the person and the group made was deleted from their respective social media accounts.
a complainer is often a magnet: if you complain about a hostile
environment, that complaint is quickly directed back at you.[6]
There is something especially sickening about watching people whom you know support menaces that have made your life hell for over a year. It is a monster of an ordeal, and it is always at the back of your mind and soul-crushing. For me, it was seeing former lecturers, classmates, and prominent people who worked with him ‘liking’ his posts about taking legal action against me or supporting his claims to victimhood. To see all these people actively wishing harm upon me – especially for something I had not done – was…I genuinely have no words. ‘What did I do to you?’ ‘Why did I deserve this?’ Even after countless sessions of counselling, I am unable to make sense of why these people wished harm upon me. It escapes me why they would continue to support this person who had caused such harm to me. For Penelope, it was friends of her abuser who had weaponised her mental health, claiming that it was ‘toxic on both sides’, even though only one party threatened to release nudes and broke the law.
New language has emerged in our social lexicon – terms such as ‘cancel culture’ and ‘name and shame’. But this is not an exploration of ‘cancel culture’. There are many – too many, maybe – points of views and angles through which this social phenomenon of ‘cancel culture’ is interrogated. Instead, I am asking; what is so damn great about these people that we need to be harmed in order to keep them around? Who are the people allowed to speak and act?
To diminish violence by attributing it to ‘cancel culture’ is ridiculous. It is an effort to minimise the harm an individual has enacted against someone else. To characterise violence as ‘cancel culture’ or ‘schadenfreude’ is to explicitly say the person who called out the abuse is worth less than the perpetrator; that their humanity is worth less than institutional discomfort. Of course, there are instances where ‘cancel-culture’, ‘call out culture’, or ‘woke culture’ can go overboard, but this is about actively being harmed, having zero recourse, and witnessing people relish the harm done to you. People are not expected to be perfect and faultless, but here, our concern is this; will harm be addressed? Is there an acknowledgement of harm done? Most often – and at least through mine and Penelope’s experiences thus far – the answer is a firm no.
Conversations around ‘cancel culture’ tend to function as a distraction, particularly when the conversation revolves around the harm done and the systems and people that perpetuate the harm – such as in my case when so many people cheered my harasser on, particularly as he and his wife actively went against legal agreements and judgements to state their case against me. I see this phrase often when the address of harm experienced moves to the public sphere; ‘I categorically deny any and all allegations made against me’. But that is not an acknowledgement of the harm done, but rather an attempt to refract and dispel accountability.
We can think back to, think with, the image of the complaint graveyard. Even the complaints that end up there, buried, under the ground, have gone somewhere. What has been put away can come back. To tell stories of complaint, leaky, ghostly, haunting, is to be reminded of what can be inherited from actions that did not seem to succeed. We do not always know where complaints will go.[7]
‘Under section 3 of the POHA, a person who threatens, abuses or insults (whether by behaviour, words or other forms of communication) with the intention to cause and did cause another person harassment, alarm or distress, will be guilty of an offence.’ An example given is ‘co-worker X loudly and graphically describes X’s desire to have a sexual relationship with co-worker Y to other co-workers in an insulting manner. X does so while knowing that Y can hear this and intending to cause Y distress. If Y does in fact feel distressed, X has committed an offence.’
– Guide to Singapore’s Protection from Harassment Act (POHA)[8]
What I learned through this experience is that everything is up to (subjective) interpretation which proves to be especially so in a lawsuit of this nature. Saying ‘fuck you’ publicly to the person who committed harm towards you goes against this section because the ‘condition’ is that the person feels distressed. But what amounts to distress? Calls for accountability can make a person feel distressed. Calls for accountability can feel like bullying as well, in spaces where harmful behaviour, especially that from those with high social standing, is praised, enabled, and upheld. That is why the person who filed legal action against me were so quick to break the agreement. It was so they could misframe and misrepresent the legal agreement of retraction as ‘an apology’, which ended up serving as ‘proof’ that I ran the vigilante Instagram account. To date, I do not know who is behind that vigilante account, but I felt I had to speak out because I was doxxed and falsely accused of running it. If anonymity is enough to evade litigation, perhaps this is the recourse for us; to hide in anonymity. But is that really the solution? To lurk in the shadows of the unknown, and for rumours to endlessly circulate about you, while institutions can hide behind ignorance and bureaucracy in order to protect violent individuals who seem hell-bent on causing harm.
I do not know, or even claim to know, how many people who spoke out publicly via their social media accounts were made to retract their statement(s) under the POHA system. This essay might be the start in bringing to the surface the fact that the POHA system can be weaponised to further harassment. Realistically, I wrote this to show where our complaints can end up (possibly, in non-disclosure agreements), particularly when we are not prepared or are ignorant to court and litigation processes. It goes without saying that to be accused in this way via the POHA system is a frightening and isolating experience, even more so for those without legal connections or financial security, which can make speaking out against harassment that much more difficult.
Something fundamentally incompatible happens when the path to address and remedy violence is the same path that ends up furthering the violence. If violence arises from institutional sources, then the solution has to be resolved through institutional channels as well. It requires lawyers willing to represent clients pro bono, and it takes judges’ recognition that some cases are a frivolous waste of the court’s time. There also needs to be acknowledgement from the courts and judiciary officials that POHA cases can become very intimidating if we ourselves were to go up against a lawyer representing the applicant. It must be noted that the maximum monetary amount that can be claimed through POHA court is $20,000. Based on this condition, and the fact that you are allowed to self-represent, hiring a lawyer to represent oneself makes little sense other than as an intimidation tactic.
For Penelope and I, I don’t think I can say that this shared experience was particularly liberating, transformative, or empowering. We spoke about not eating, getting body-shamed, such as when I was fat-shamed on my harasser’s police report. We spoke of how even though it is well known in both our circles how violent both our abusers were, there are and will always be supporters of violence. But what I got from our conversation was that we are still in the midst of healing, to put into words the isolation and trauma we both went through over the past year. Not necessarily to name the pain, but to acknowledge there is a strange pain always lingering. Perhaps there is a solace in knowing that someone else holds the same tension as yourself. When I first approached her, I noticed she posted about angel numbers. I kept seeing angel numbers all year…I still do. I would like to think that is why we both held on to these beliefs, because as humans, we always hold on to hope that we could come out of this somehow, no matter how bruised we are.
*Names have been changed.
Chand Chandramohan is a multidisciplinary artist from Singapore. Interested in ideas of performativity within frames, she works mainly with performance art to explore satire, marginalisation, and social commentary. She is part of joke artist groups desigirl69, horizontal denglong, and many more to come. Notable shows include a solo presentation in Hue, Vietnam (2015), performances with Chicks on Speed at Art Science Museum (Singapore), The Rejected Proposals Showcase at Coda Culture, Singapore (2018), The Lands Of at The Reef, Los Angeles (2019), An Actual MAMA Shop at The Substation, Singapore (2020). She was the curator of From Your Eyes to Ours at Coda Culture (2019), the first art event to feature all contemporary South Asian artists, as well as co-curator of fated love sky for Singapore Art Week 2022.
References
[1] 'Guide to Singapore’s Protection from Harassment Act (POHA)', https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/singapore-protection-harassment-act/, Singapore, Singapore Legal Advice, 2022, 1, (accessed 05/05/2022).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Sara Ahmed, Complaint!, Durham: Duke University Press, 2021, p. 32.
[4] Ibid., p. 16.
[5] Ibid., p. 15.
[6] Ibid., p. 165.
[7] Ibid., p. 299.
[8] 'Guide to Singapore’s Protection from Harassment Act (POHA)', https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/singapore-protection-harassment-act/, Singapore, Singapore Legal Advice, 2022, 1, (accessed 05/05/2022).