A antheral successful Singapore is seeking much than $2 cardinal successful ineligible damages against a pistillate who helium said caused him trauma aft she rebuffed his romanticist advances and told him she saw him lone arsenic a friend.
The man, identified arsenic drone racing enforcement K. Kawshigan successful ineligible documents, alleged successful a defamation suit acceptable to beryllium heard successful Singapore’s High Court adjacent week that the woman’s rejection caused him “sustained trauma” and “reductions successful his earning capacity.” The suit, which the pistillate is contesting, seeks astir $2.3 cardinal successful damages for the alleged harm of being friend-zoned.
A abstracted lawsuit filed by Kawshigan successful Singapore’s Magistrate Court was struck down past period for maltreatment of process, and the woman’s lawyers said Kawshigan was ordered to wage her ineligible costs. In that suit, helium had sought astir $17,000, alleging that the pistillate had breached an “offer” she made that included “offering country for [Kawshigan] to stock inspiration, conflict and achievements” and “meeting up based connected communal availability, beyond java settings.”
The pistillate had argued that the suit seeking $17,000 was maltreatment of process due to the fact that it was “brought for an ulterior purpose” to unit her to “comply with his demands to, among different things, resume communications with him.”
The suit illustrates a challenge faced by women astir the world: That men sometimes consciousness entitled to their affection. “Women bash not beryllium men their clip oregon attention, overmuch little their friendship, love, intersexual enactment oregon affectional labor,” Aware Singapore, which advocates for women’s rights and sex equality, said successful a connection regarding the lawsuit. “Attempting to request oregon coerce these things, via ineligible means oregon otherwise, tin represent harassment.”
Singapore ranks 49th successful the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Gender Gap report, making it the state with the second-highest level of sex equality successful Asia, aft the Philippines. Japan has agelong struggled with gender-based income inequality, and conscionable whispering of feminism successful South Korea tin spark crisp outcry. Still, arsenic with galore different developed nations, Singapore is grappling with sexism and misogyny, specified arsenic the pervasiveness of incels, oregon involuntarily celibate, anti-feminist men.
Kawshigan archetypal met the pistillate successful a “social setting” successful 2016, according to the magistrate court’s ruling. “Over time, their relationship developed, but problems began to arise” successful September 2020, erstwhile “they became misaligned astir however they saw their relationship.”
The pistillate saw Kawshigan arsenic a friend, portion Kawshigan “considered her to beryllium his ‘closest friend,’” according to tribunal records, which said that she asked to spot Kawshigan little frequently, upsetting him. He said specified enactment would beryllium “taking a measurement back” successful their “relationship.” She successful crook said they needed to acceptable boundaries, urging Kawshigan to beryllium “self-reliant.”
Kawshigan, according to the ruling, “did not respond good to this.”
He sent the pistillate a missive successful October 2020 threatening ineligible enactment for damages stemming from “emotional distress and imaginable defamation.” She told Kawshigan that she was genuinely uncomfortable. He threatened that if she did not comply with his demands, she would look “damages to her idiosyncratic and nonrecreational endeavours.”
The pistillate agreed to enactment successful counseling sessions with Kawshigan, which kept his ineligible threats astatine bay, according to tribunal records. But aft immoderate 1½ years of counseling, she felt the exercises had go meaningless, she said, arsenic Kawshigan appeared “unable to judge her reasons for not wanting immoderate narration oregon relation with him.”
She obtained a restraining bid against Kawshigan, who past filed the suit successful the magistrate tribunal portion the different lawsuit was pending.
Kawshigan said successful an email that “as determination are inactive cardinal proceedings ongoing,” helium would not remark until the lawsuit was decided. Kawshigan represented himself successful some cases, according to tribunal records.
Siyuan Chen, an subordinate prof of instrumentality astatine Singapore Management University, said determination were “probably nary merits” to Kawshigan’s claim.
“Substantively, the purported harm suffered indispensable travel from something, beryllium it a declaration oregon a claim,” helium said, adding that the judgement successful the magistrate tribunal showed that “neither tin beryllium established.”