The past few days have been a rollercoaster of dramatic events from the one place we least expected — politics. After all, it seemed like just yesterday when “populist” shirts were up for sale as a joke, and suddenly five GRCs in Singapore are now missing an MP each.
Whether you’ve caught up with the juicy tea through PM Lee’s most recent press conference or internet memes, this episode has resulted in a lot of outrage from many Singaporeans.
But we’re left swimming with endless questions: who’s really in the wrong, what is society saying, and based on internet comments, do women always get the short end of the stick when it comes to scandals like these?
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In case you’ve not caught up yet, here’s a quick TL;DR. We’re talking about an unprofessional relationship between Tan Chuan Jin and Cheng Li Hui — it’s almost equivalent to the “consensual workplace relationship” drama that Ned Fulmer of the Try Guys was caught in.
We’re left in shock because:
While WP has yet to confirm or deny anything regarding the leaked video, PM Lee basically came clean with the truth right after Tan Chuan Jin and Cheng Li Hui submitted their resignations.
We haven’t even milked enough memes of Tan Chuan Jin’s unparliamentary language incident before this bomb was dropped on us, that’s for sure.
Do you see what we see?
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While Singaporeans were quick to voice out their opinions on almost every social media channel, some comments have crossed the line. And do I dare to say this out loud? But Cheng Li Hui suffered the brunt of this situation.
A quick glance at the public reaction from The Straits Times’ Telegram channel is telling enough. The news site released two separate articles of Tan Chuan Jin and Cheng Li Hui — who are both, by the way, equally wrong for engaging in a workplace relationship, yet they were met with very different reactions.
There were 390 thumbs up reactions towards the Tan Chuan Jin article, whereas the Cheng Li Hui article received 609 thumbs down reactions.
Even the memes surrounding Tan Chuan Jin seemed to praise him for his scandal. Let’s be honest — there’s barely any heat on him in this Drake meme that’s been circulating on Whatsapp.
Toxic masculinity always finds its way back to sex somehow, as if that’s all males are capable of.
I’ve seen way too many “jokes” targeted towards Cheng Li Hui, accusing her of being a homewrecker, a slut or even for “seducing” Tan Chuan Jin.
The hard truth behind these comments about her is simply because she’s a middle-aged single woman — a role that doesn’t fit the expectations of being a wife and mother for her age.
So of course, she’s the main devil at fault that “seduced” Tan Chuan Jin into bed since she doesn’t have a partner. Once again, the narrative is being brought back to just sex.
Source, source
Outside of the political drama, there are many other incidents where women were mercilessly scrutinised for their actions.
Some might remember the Ronaldo and Wong Li Lin incident from earlier this year, where she was accused of inappropriately touching the football star. Many made fun of her appearance by mockingly calling her a random “auntie”, and others assumed she was taking advantage of Ronaldo.
And in the case of influencer Rachel Wong’s scandal last year, where she was accused of cheating based on just one girl’s Instagram story, many netizens didn’t hesitate to bash her. She was labelled a cheater and other terrible names, all without any concrete evidence.
Both instances, these women were once again referred to as mere “sluts” or “whores” against the males involved.
It’s almost hilarious how the Tan Chuan Jin and Cheng Li Hui affair is a cinematic parallel to the Nicole Seah and Leon Perera rumours. Unlike Cheng Li Hui, both parties from WP are married, with Nicole Seah having two children of her own.
That doesn’t make her situation any better than Cheng Li Hui’s. Headlines surrounding Nicole Seah described her as a “goddess” who was “seen behaving intimately”, while Leon Perera is simply just an “MP”. Isn’t Leon Perera holding her hand too?
The disappointment towards her actions is significantly higher, with more articles reducing her to just a married woman and a mother — “who is Nicole Seah married to and how many children does she have?”
It’s as if this is the main concern of the affair — her failing her “women duties”.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that these women aren’t in the wrong for their actions. That’s a super un-feminist statement, even for us. Adultery is wrong, and even more so for those representing our country.
We’re just questioning the stark differences in how the public treat the two genders. Why is society so negative towards women — even dragging in their private lives — whereas men can get away with memes that are just for the sh*ts and giggles? To quote the iconic Wanda Maximoff, “You Men break the rules and they become the hero. I Women do it and they become the enemy. That doesn’t seem fair.”
Some users on Twitter even turned this into a competition of the women’s looks as if it’s a beauty pageant. TBH, nobody deserves such harsh comments on their personal lives, despite the damage that they’ve done.
As we’re too busy debating about who’s in the right or wrong, some of us are completely missing the point: PM Lee knew about this incident since 2020, and Tan Chuan Jin submitted his resignation in February 2023. So why was the public kept in the dark until now?
The internet feels like a giant kopitiam where anybody can just share whatever they want like they’re gossipy uncles and aunties. We just want to point our fingers and blame someone, but we don’t realise that our opinions are often based on misogyny and expectations of women to “do better” than men.
So why do females who are involved with media scandals always get the short end of the stick? Despite their position or marital status, women are always held in higher responsibility because with how backward society still is, they have to “prove” themselves to be better than their male counterparts in order to be successful.
As we’re waiting for the next few days to play out, perhaps this can even be a learning lesson to take a step back and reflect on how we portray our opinions. Who can we fault, without expectations clouding our judgement?
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