SINGAPORE: A new “Venus in Fur” play from David Ives to be shown in the country beginning March 15 has seen a fervent campaign against the producers over its use of fur and its eroticization and sexualization of women in the country by two unlikely bedmates: animal rights campaigners and women's rights activists. They have called on the government to cancel the showing for two separate reasons. For animal rights activists in the country, like Susan Cho, highlighting the use of fur should be “condemned anywhere and everywhere that it happens.” She, like many of her fellow animal rights campaigners in the country, have said that the promotion of the fur industry is an affront to human and animal dignity. “How many animals are slaughtered each year by fur? Millions and it is growing because our leaders fail to see this as a real issue, but it is and we are tired of it and it must stop,” she told Bikyanews.com, adding that activists are planning a protest to call for a boycott of the play. “Adapted from a novella by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose name inspired the term masochism (a clue as to the nature of the play) it leads you through psychosexual games in two realities – between the director and wannabe actress of the play, and between the Victorian male and female characters of the play-within-the-play,” says the advertisement promoting the show. And for women's rights activists in the country it is another step toward the sexualizing of women in Asia and Singapore in particular. They said that it reveals that a woman must user her body in order to get ahead and that any aspiring actress should use sex as a career mobility tool. “It is disgusting and it just shows where we are in this part of the world on the topic of women and sex,” social worker who deals with battered women in Singapore Maria Costas told Bikyanews.com. She wants women to take a stand against the play. “We must show that in Singapore, women are not objects,” she added. But the show is likely to go on despite the antagonism from activists. “Together, this electrifying cat-and-mouse game promises to be more steamy than E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, one that is funny yet mysterious, sensual yet unsettling,” the advertisement promoting the play reads. But activists hope their words and actions will help put a damper on the much-praised play from Ives to show Singapore that this is not the way. “It's time to say enough is enough,” added Cho. BN
