Boys will be boys? Masculinity in Singapore’s National Service

National servicemen can expect to face violence not only from their enemies, but sometimes their comrades too. In May 2018, Kok Yuen Chin, a 22-year-old corporal with the Singapore Civil Defence Force, was celebrating his imminent “operationally ready date (ORD)”. As part of the festivities, his fellow servicemen had chucked him into a 12m-deep pump well at their fire station. After more than 30 mins in the water, during which his colleagues had tried to save him, Kok drowned. In sentencing his commanders to jail, the judge said that it was “...extremely disquieting that there are commanders who condone ragging as horseplay as boys will be boys.” 

Hazing and ragging, although illegal, continues to bedevil armed forces from Malaysia and South Korea to the United States. Less contentious, but still problematic, are instances when regular methods of disciplining soldiers are taken too far. 

During basic military training (BMT) in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), a common form of punishment is the “change parade”: sergeants force recruits to run up a flight of stairs, change into their physical training attire, run back down, do push-ups if they fail to meet impossible requested timings, and then run back up the stairs to change into their uniforms again. Rinse and repeat until the sergeants are satisfied. Occasionally, stories have emerged of recruits getting injured in the process, and then having to be medically evacuated, and their commanders subsequently being charged.

“The Ministry of Defence [MINDEF] and the Singapore Armed Forces take a zero tolerance approach towards any form of abuse of soldiers or personnel, either by their commanders or peers,” said Ng Eng Hen, defence minister, in Parliament two months after Kok’s death. “While military training aims to build up the physical and psychological resilience of soldiers, and instil discipline, their safety need not be compromised. Acts of humiliation are specifically prohibited.”

Yes, extreme instances of abuse and violence are reported and dealt with. What we often don’t hear about are all the other unhealthy behaviours and values that may be engendered during National Service (NS). When we gather a group of young boys, we should understand the concepts they’ll learn—from the system, their higher-ups, and each other—and internalise as they grow into men.

What is the purpose of NS? National defence (SAF), homeland security (Singapore Police Force, SPF) and emergency services (Singapore Civil Defence Force), at its core. It’s also been lauded for its secondary roles, for example in fostering social cohesion and individual discipline. But far less focus has been given to the fact that NS has, perhaps inevitably, become Singapore’s masculine rite of passage.

Delicate urbanite Singaporean boys are pushed out of their comfort zones, conquering physical and mental obstacles alongside a diverse cast of comrades. They grow into men—physically fit and mentally resilient leaders who willingly step up to protect Singapore. It’s a narrative embedded in Singaporean cultural consciousness: “Ah Boys to Men 2”, which echoes said narratives, is the highest-grossing Singaporean film of all time.

As with the “Ah Boys to Men” franchise, popular representations of this important masculine rite of passage tend to veer towards the superficial, more comedy than introspection. Mainstream reporting, meanwhile, tends to privilege dominant stereotypes of masculinity: “[The change parade] is typically used as a type of punishment, but I choose to believe it is to train me for when I become a superhero and have to change into my suit quickly,” concluded Fabian Koh at The Straits Times.

Jom has published commentaries calling for the abolishment of military conscription and, conversely, also profiles of individuals who emphasised its continued importance to Singapore. This essay does not intend to wade into this debate, but instead takes NS as a given, a vital facet of Singaporean life. It seeks to analyse NS as a key site for the contestation and reproduction of masculinity in Singapore: its complexities, challenges, and possible ways forward.

The importance of fitness is institutionalised through the Physical Employment Standard (PES) status and the Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT). The former categorises national servicemen (NSF) based on their medical fitness, with only the top typically being eligible for prestigious vocations like commando or naval divers. The latter awards money for good performance and is crucial in selecting recruits for Specialist Cadet School (SCS) or Officer Cadet School (OCS). While physical fitness is essential for operational readiness, these practices also imbue a sense of prestige in the uniformed services, affecting how young people think about athleticism and aesthetics.

“Masculinity is about protecting others. Building up your body…makes you appear like you can protect them,” said Gabriel, an NSF second sergeant in the SAF, who spoke to Jom on condition of anonymity, as did other interviewees who are still in the service. 

Peer-to-peer influence is common, and the free time afforded to many NSFs within this masculine space means that the uniformed forces become lush breeding grounds for gym rats. “I couldn’t do a single push-up before NS,” confessed Alex, a corporal in the SAF. “Aesthetics is part of it. But it’s also how the free time makes it easy to focus on fitness. The influence of everyone around me helps too.” Studies show that peer support, especially friends’ encouragement and companionship, significantly boosts exercise behaviour compared to school or family support. It creates a social snowball effect, with moderately active individuals drawing others into the loop and discouraging dropouts.

The NS institutions rely on an impression of physical fitness to project competency and garner the confidence of Singaporeans. On the flip side, individuals may be criticised when said expectation isn’t met—as with Goh Si Hou, a former chief of army, for not looking “enough” like a soldier. In short, NS institutions are incentivised to promote an image of fierceness and fitness amongst their ranks, even if this idea of fitness tends to be aesthetically more lean and muscular for operational reasons rather than being bulky and ripped.

Jokes about the PES BP, assigned to obese recruits who go through an extended BMT period designed for weight loss, highlight the potential for social alienation. When it comes to those who are sickly or not at a healthy weight, it’s “people’s perception that’s the issue,” Gabriel noted.

The expectations of peers and superiors significantly impact how young men view themselves. The focus on appearance in larger society, supported by gym culture, may lead to heightened body image concerns among young men in Singapore, with studies showing that Singaporean men are more likely to be “distressed with developing their upper body and being muscular.”

Clinical psychologist Daniel Ho noted that those already conscious about their bodies may experience more pressure: “[Entering NS] may be stressful [for those who] are already self-conscious about their bodies,” he explained. “The idea of being in a male-dominated space, where [being] topless and even just wearing your underwear [is] deemed normal. Some people get used to it, but I can imagine it can be very pressuring if you entered being conscious about how you look to others.”

The notion that men are immune to body image struggles needs to be relegated to the past. Institutions promoting fitness, like the military, must become more attuned to the diverse ways men experience body anxieties. Recognising the subtle pressures and potential shame allows us to embrace broader fitness definitions, including mental and emotional well-being.

Another NS racoon is the idea of financial literacy. Anxieties over money are common: NSFs still earn a pittance despite recent pay increases. For some, it’s linked to the concept of men being providers. “You might see moonlighting in units where more people have families that need financial help,” said John, a lieutenant in the SCDF. “It’s pretty common in my unit since we have a lot of [racial] minorities.” Developing financial literacy is a valuable pursuit for all NSFs (especially those experiencing economic hardship). Some people use their free time during NS to improve themselves by taking Coursera courses or following self-help media on investing. 

That said, Singapore’s culture of materialism deeply affects Gen Z (constituting our current batch of NSFs), with over 73 percent of this age group citing money as the key to a good life. This can lead to high financial stress for some, with 33 percent of Gen Z in the same survey citing lacking money as their biggest frustration in life.

Self-improvement ideas that influencers promote are also finding fertile ground within this environment. The language around financial literacy aligns with current cultural trends on male influencers and the manosphere. Some figures like Andrew Tate use this opportunity to peddle ‘“get rich quick” schemes, emphasising wealth accumulation to achieve personal autonomy. 

“During Social Night at OCS, graduating officers will bring a guest—many bring their girlfriends. [Most guys] feel pressure to bring a girl; there’s this norm that Social Night is for boys to bring a girl and get wasted,” said Nuraiman, a National Service inspector in the SPF. “For those without [girlfriends], they’d ask their camp buddies ‘if they knew any girl’ to save face.”

These seemingly disparate concepts are intertwined: reducing women to sexual objects demeans their personhood, while the commodification of female companionship results in female friends being “pimped out” to platoon mates. Men are used to asserting their masculinity and boosting social standing; a study has suggested that “men signal high-quality mates predominantly to other men.” Boasting about “body count” and sexual conquests in pornographic detail become ways to gain social relevance. The consequences of objectifying women are far-reaching: it perpetuates harmful attitudes towards women, normalises behaviours that fuel sexual assault and harassment, and ultimately contributes towards a hostile environment where victims struggle to find support or justice.

John believed that the male-dominated environment allows these attitudes to be normalised. “We were policed by women in the vicinity during junior college, but in NS, it’s kind of enabled by people around you, so you’re able to objectify women and talk about them sexually.”

Interviewees agreed that in front of women, NSFs are usually respectful. Gabriel said that there was no difference in how they were perceived: “It was all quite healthy, and no issues with taking orders from female leaders.” Rachel, a regular in the SAF, largely agreed: “Generally, the male subordinates are quite respectful of female commanders, at least in my case.” That said, Rachel recalled cat-calling incidents during her BMT. This is almost a tradition amongst cohorts of female recruits. “We’d find it no big deal,” she said. “We either ignore or tell our respective commanders.”

Sexualising women may not physically harm them, but those within earshot feel the impact. “I won’t usually join the conversation when boys have their usual topic, be it sex or whatever,” said Rachel. “I would rather walk away than try to fit in.” When the behaviour is repeated, Rachel acknowledged that it can be alienating.

There have been attempts to mitigate this culture. Following a complaint by the Association of Women for Action and Research, the SAF changed the lyrics of a misogynistic marching song. Alex noted that there are regulars who try to be good examples: “They…stop…these behaviours by making offenders do push-ups or rebutting [them by asking] ‘whether you’d talk about your sister/mother in such a way’.” 

Women also experience gender-based discrimination through dismissive attitudes. With Rachel being in a combat vocation, it’s likely that guys will be stronger than most girls, “but...people will just tend to compare or make some remarks that are unnecessary: ‘aiyah she so skinny’; ‘cannot carry one lah’”. This problem of women being denigrated isn’t just a Singapore problem either; 66 percent of Canadians with links to the military agreed that there was a culture of disrespect towards women in their military.

This disrespect faced by women in uniform extends beyond the camps and into the way they are fetishised in online forums: “Halimah chat with sweaty chiobu in GOH [guest of honour] contingent” is a thread on Hardware Zone, owned by state-backed SPH Media, which shows a photograph of Singapore’s former president speaking to a female soldier, who’s described as chio bu (“hot mother” in Hokkien); both objectifying, and potentially offensive.

The culmination of these problems—locker room talk, the risk of sexual harassment, and the dismissing of women and their capabilities—creates a hostile environment: “Some people cannot take such a culture, like morale [is] low. And they’d choose to leave or find other alternatives,” Rachel noted.

A 2020 US Government Accountability Office report noted that women were 28 percent more likely to leave the service than men, with organisational culture and sexual assault being two of the six factors cited (similar data for Singapore is unavailable). 

The effect of these hostile environments is that women would think twice about joining, as is the case in the US. This is a shame for Singapore since attracting and retaining women can mitigate the shortage of staff due to declining birth rates. Singapore has over 1,600 uniformed servicewomen, making up around eight percent of the “regular” population. These figures pale in comparison to our allies: women constitute 17.2 percent of the active duty force and 21.1 percent of guard and reserves in the US, while overall participation of women in the Australian Defence Force in 2021/22 was 20.1 percent.

The SAF has policies protecting women. In addition to separate bunks, there are, as Jom understands, procedures for female health problems like menstrual pain during outfield trips. Strict standard operating procedures reduce the risk of perpetuating dismissive attitudes. The women interviewed believe that their career progress is merit-based and fair vis-a-vis male regulars (even if prone to occasional favouritism from superiors). There are women mentorship programmes where female regulars help those more junior adapt to the majority-male environment. With these measures in place, the next step to nudge our numbers closer to Singapore’s allies would be to improve this male-centric culture and how it treats women.

“I became quite reserved again,” Nuraiman continued. “I didn’t disclose my homosexuality during BMT.” He did, however, find allies in OCS. While Nuraiman took the path of only disclosing his homosexuality to a trusted few, there have been those who have been able to survive in a traditionally masculine military environment despite being openly gay.

In “‘Oi, Recruit! Wake Up Your Idea!’: Homosexuality and Cultural Citizenship in the Singaporean Military”, Chris Tan, an academic at Singapore Management University, wrote that while there might be “conceptual links between effeminacy, homosexuality and physical frailty”, “even flamboyantly ‘gay’ soldiers can thrive in the military by satisfying the high [physical and performance] standards expected of them”, thereby breaking the aforementioned conceptual links.

Kira Chan, a queer musician, discussed his past NS experience in an operational planning unit. “Everyone was generally pretty welcoming”, he said. “They don’t live these lives of being in the community. Their point-of-view is still what society paints us to be”. For context, he would walk around his unit carrying a bag with flower prints.

“I could see a generational shift in acceptance. I went into NS with my guard up a bit, and to leave having talked about my experiences in the [LGBTQ] community is a testament to how open people are in NS,” said Chan. “At the end of the day, it didn’t really matter to them—which was great. People were just very task-oriented. There weren’t any major forms of discrimination, violence or bullying, and people were actually curious. [Them] trying to understand my experience made me feel a lot more comfortable and safer than when I first got in.”

On a similar note, Tan, an anthropologist of new media, gender and sexuality, explained that the treatment of gay soldiers has improved a lot since his chapter was published. “If a soldier does officially declare himself as gay, the medical officer will observe his gendered behaviour. If he comes off as cis-gendered, he will be treated as if he were no different from his straight counterparts, ie., assigned roles according to his PES status. It’s only the feminine ones who will be assigned to clerical posts, and even then, it’s to protect them from potential bullying rather than to prevent their supposed ‘bad’ influence from spreading.”

While gay men do receive some attention in the uniformed services, be it positive or negative, transgender or non-binary people—who present a fundamental challenge to the gender-based conscription system—are often overlooked. No research exists on this topic in Singapore. While not every transgender person may feel these sentiments as strongly as she did, closeted transfeminine Violet, a private in the SAF detailed her experiences in the army.

Assigned PES E due to a gender dysphoria diagnosis, she was sent to School V for her BMT. Despite the leniency afforded (School V is often colloquially known as Kranji Resort), even otherwise mundane army experiences can cause dysphoria. “The most obvious one is the haircut”, she said. “I used to grow my hair long and had a ponytail…Secondly, the people in charge always use hypermasculine language”, she added. “Our instructors still say, ‘Eh, y’all are men, y’all can do better than this.’”

She noted an occasion when her encik inadvertently outed her to her sergeant. While nothing happened afterwards, it revealed the absence of effective sensitivity training, where staff overseeing School 5 (known for housing PES E status individuals, ie., people who have physical injuries, people with disabilities and people with mental health conditions) might reasonably expect to come across someone with gender dysphoria.

(In response to a query on support for transgender people in NS, a MINDEF spokesperson pointed Jom to a 2016 statement in which it said, among other things, that “Those who are legally declared female will not be required to serve NS.”)

While people like Violet might struggle with standard regimented military life (at least as it is in Singapore), Nuraiman’s experiences show that people who deviate from heteronormativity can still excel in a uniformed services setting.

The forces influencing masculinity in NS exist in other Singaporean spaces, like boys’ schools, and in other countries too, so it’s worth reviewing contemporary thought on the issue. “The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity,” wrote the late bell hooks. “Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.”

The socio-economic roots of today’s crisis of patriarchal masculinity warrant further discussion. Over the past few decades, advances in women’s rights, alongside fundamental changes in the economies of rich countries, have affected the nature of work—simply put, less “brawn” (for example, in factories) and more “brain” (in creative industries)—and that work’s distribution between the genders, in ways that have mitigated, if not upended, historically discriminatory socio-economic structures that privileged men. Singapore’s female labour force participation rate increased drastically from 44.3 percent in 1980 to 63.2 percent in 2022. (For males, it rose from 72 percent to 77 percent over the same period.)

This relative shift in opportunity and power has affected some men more than others—“relative” being the operative word, because gender inequity, at least in structural forms, still exists in many spaces, including with household and caregiving labour. In Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, Richard Reeves documented these shifts and outcomes that reflect them: schoolgirls outperforming schoolboys across the world; schoolboys more likely to suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, to drop out of school, or get suspended; and that three out of four “deaths of despair” (suicide or overdose) are of males. Available data in Singapore supports the imbalance in educational performance and delinquency. Among Reeves’s structural prescriptions are getting boys into kindergarten a year early (to account for their slower adolescent brain development).

Compounding this is a seeming epidemic of male loneliness. In 1990, 55 percent of American men reported having at least six close friends. By 2022, it had dropped to 27 percent, while fully 15 percent—almost one in six men—claimed to have no close friends at all. Anecdotal evidence from informal men’s groups suggests that many Singaporean men face the same problem. Niobe Way, a psychologist at New York University and the author of Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, told The Economist that in childhood, “...boys tend to be as open as girls about their need for friends. As they get older, they ‘feel they have to get into a gender straitjacket’ and define their masculinity primarily as not being feminine. By the age of 15, many boys start saying they don’t need friends and worrying that close friendships will make them seem ‘girly’.”

The likes of Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate have emerged from this febrile atmosphere, amassing huge followings through their rousing calls for young men to take charge of their lives. While they will perhaps inspire many young men to find meaning in their lives, what kind of meaning is it? Their polemics are suffused with reactionary stances to progressive movements, particularly #MeToo—provoked in part, perhaps, by instances of progressive excess, what Christine Emba of The Washington Post terms “...a pretty silly and uncritical form of man-hating and misandry.”

Theirs is the projection of contemporary masculinity that is as much about individual responsibility as it is a dagger in what’s commonly called “the culture wars”. Sexists and White supremacists find common ground in their conception of a zero-sum game in which the gains of women and ethnic minorities, respectively, must necessarily come at their cost. Their philosophies also incorporate a number of other puzzling dictums, such as carnivorism, which feed into some testosterone-charged, hunter-warrior vision of manhood. (Weapons, locomotive vehicles, and meat have seemingly been the hallmarks of masculinity from antiquity, as documented by French historian Ivan Jablonka in What Do Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Discontents.) It is a divisive, not inclusive, way for young men to think about their identities, and the spaces they occupy among other beings. 

Rather than castigate men for their apparent failings and thus cede ground to these conservative firebrands, Jablonka senses an opportunity, as the patriarchy declines, to reshape gender norms more broadly (as did hooks). Zoë Heller writes about his position in The New Yorker: “Now is the time to convince men that their “obligatory model of virility” has immiserated them far more than it has empowered them. ‘The masculinity of domination pays, but it comes at a high cost: an insecure ego, puerile vanity, disinterest in reading and the life of the mind, atrophied inner life, the narrowing of social opportunities…and to top it all, a diminished life expectancy.’”

For us in Singapore, it would be lazy to assume that these Western gender dynamics and notions of masculinity might necessarily transpose themselves here in some seamless fashion—as simplistic as the idea that Chinese privilege is analogous to White. At the same time, it would be naive to assume that our circumstances are wholly different. To be sure, the rhetoric of Paterson, Tate, and others surely have some influence here. (The recent arrest of an ethnic Chinese White supremacist was one indication of this.) The rich—if often disconcerting—discourse in the West should prod us to reimagine masculinity on our own terms.

In terms of longer-term policies, increasing the number of women can slowly begin challenging the idea of NS institutions being male-dominated. (Doubters worry about the further militarisation of the population.) This could firstly be done through policies to incentivise careers in the military, like increased maternity leave or a menopause policy.

The enlistment of women may be another way to normalise and boost the number of women in service: the percentage of women in the Norwegian armed forces rose five percent to 15 percent within seven years of gender-neutral conscription coming into force (though their model is more based on selecting enlistees from the most suitable; 15 percent of the eligible pool).

“You can look at Israel; there are tons of examples from other countries,” said Tan. “[NS] is a nation-building exercise, and women are also part of the nation.”

Another way of encouraging more women to join—and stay—is to make the environment more hospitable to LGBTQ people and those with mental health problems. It begins with more transparent, concrete policy approaches.

With certainty and safety, people can be confident about coming out. The culture won’t change overnight, but a sense of safety can be achieved via strict policies urging sensitivity and enforcing a baseline tolerance standard. “Sending [army commanders] off to diversity classes is a start,” said Tan. Gender and sensitivity training can ensure some level of standardisation in knowledge in responding to women, queer people and mental health concerns.

Should strong punitive deterrence and sensitivity training fail, we must make reporting mechanisms safer. Even with anonymising, it may be obvious who “tattled” through FormSGs or hotlines. There must be an option for victims to be redeployed without derailing their career projections.

(In response to a query on support for those with mental health conditions, a MINDEF spokesperson pointed Jom to two statements—an official letter from 2019 and a parliamentary statement from 2020—that detail the current mental health approaches in NS.)

This expansion of what masculinity means should also involve expanding on alternative posting options beyond the existing admin/combat dichotomy, such as nursing, education, etc. (where the additional manpower this necessitates can be made more feasible with more female staffing). “Working towards equal participation of both genders can slowly begin challenging the idea of NS being male-dominated, while expanding the scope of service beyond current roles could further drive meaningful change,” said Corinna Lim, executive director of the Association of Women for Action and Research. She advocated for “a broadened concept of national service, encompassing educational, health, caregiving, nursing, para-medical, and medical services; this expansion not only promotes gender equality but also addresses other societal needs while offering diverse experiences for all.” 

The value of civic participation is not solely measured in physical contributions, which can alleviate anxieties associated with one’s physique. Daniel Ho affirmed that shifting towards less aestheticised ideas of masculinity will relieve body image-related pressures.

NS has often been touted as a platform for social mixing: people of different races and socio-economic statuses bond through adversity, and this brotherhood helps reduce societal friction. But social mixing could extend into other areas as well: LGBTQ people, women, those with mental health concerns—all of these should be no exception. 

Indeed, better mixing across groups could help young men with their relationships: psychologists and others have lauded women and LGBTQ people for their demonstrably more emotional ways of connecting with each other, bereft of the rugged individualism and imperviousness that seems to prevent straight men from being open and honest about their feelings and, perhaps, mental health challenges.

In this instance, Kumar uses a Singlish term denoting feminine boys to make a broader point—the futility of trying to mould any teenager into a single version of a man. Boys do not have to be “boys”. If Singapore’s national service can instead create and hold space for more positive ideals of masculinity to emerge, it could become a crucible for healthier gender dynamics across society.

Driven by curiosity and a passion for exploring the intersection of digital culture and society, Athena Thang navigates the ever-evolving online landscape. As a Malaysian-born, Indonesian-raised, and Singapore-educated citizen of the digital world, they dissect online narratives, deconstructing gender and youth movements. Athena is eager to uncover the ways online spaces shape and reflect our identities, believing that digital spaces have the power to connect, challenge, and inspire.

Additional contributions by Jean Hew, Jom's head of research, and Sudhir Vadaketh, Jom's editor-in-chief .

Letters in response to this piece can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.