How The LGBTQ+Dating Scene Has Evolved In Singapore

Several queer people tell us how the LGBTQ+ dating scene has evolved in Singapore over the years – and share how they’re making it a safer, more welcoming space for all

- Hillary Kang

In her younger days, Sia Ching Sian was, as she calls it, a party gay. That meant weekday nights spent getting smashed at Play, Singapore's most well-known gay club prior to its closure in 2014. It wasn’t that Sia, a soft-spoken doctoral candidate, had a particularly hedonistic streak. At that time, spaces for queer people were very, very limited, says the 39-year-old. I grew up in a generation where the only way for me to meet other queer women was in the clubs – you get trashed, you get out of Play at 4 am, and then you go home.

Sia acknowledges numerous LGBTQ+-centric groups did exist at the time: Organisations like Young Out Here and Sayoni were both founded in 2006, while Oogachaga began operations in 1999. The long-running Pink Dot event held its first edition in 2009; Sia herself would join the organising committee in 2013, and has spent the last nine years running Pink Dot’s social media pages.

But for a closeted queer person in the early aughts, locating these spaces proved difficult. As a result, Sia says that finding a partner was often something of an act of convenience: Sometimes you end up being with someone just because they are also queer, she says.

It's an experience echoed by Sia's fiancée, Cally Cheung. A lot of events and spaces that are allowed to queer people revolve around sex and dating, says the 27-year-old media professional. There's nothing wrong with that, but when you go to a party, when you're clubbing, the energy there is obviously very sexual. What if you're not ready for that? What if you just want to make friends? Every time you met someone, you always had to navigate that tricky space.

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