Published: 11 July 2024
Saskia E Wieringa
University of Amsterdam
IN BRIEF
In Indonesia, the historical acceptance of sexual and gender diversity, including trans and same-sex practices, is currently under threat. This is due to increasingly conservative religious influence and regional regulations criminalising such behaviour, culminating in the 2022 Criminal Code which prohibits all forms of sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage. Despite dwindling tolerance and societal hostility forcing many LGBT organisations into hiding, members of these groups continue to fight against oppression and intolerance. The internet remains a significant source for both support and information.
Despite a long history of acceptance of trans and same-sex practices, homosexuality in Indonesia is currently framed as deriving from the West, and as alien to the country’s traditions and majority religion, Islam.
Numerous regional regulations have been promulgated in which homosexuality is either prohibited or condemned as immoral. At the national level, a process of criminalisation culminated in the acceptance in 2022 of the revised Criminal Code, which prohibits all forms of sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage. This has been accompanied by a political and religious hate campaign which gained full strength from 2015 onwards.
Yet Indonesia has a long history of gender and sexual diversity. Three deities serve as examples of gender diversity, and while they have mostly lost their powers now, they have been important historically — Ardhanary and Durga in the Hindu religion, and Kwan Im in Buddhism. In several traditional religions transgender priests played important roles. They were seen as mediators between the world of the gods and that of the humans. They might marry partners of the same sex but of a different gender.
The combined effects of colonialism, bringing with it European heteronormative morals from a period in which homosexuality was widely denounced and even criminalised, homophobic monotheistic religions and national histories built on leaders’ postcolonial amnesia have almost destroyed these gender diverse practices. Postcolonial amnesia refers to a process in which postcolonial leaders adopt the heteronormative morality of their colonial predecessors, ignoring traditional non-heteronormative practices and beliefs.
Both in courtly and village cultures, various forms of transgender practices, including cross-dressing and same-sex practices, used to be common. They have now almost disappeared and most of the originally transgender dances have been heteronormatised, with girls or women dancing the parts of formerly male-born transgender dancers.
The so-called ‘events of 1965’ also contributed to the decline of popular art forms and the strengthening of conservative, fundamentalist religious practices.
On 1 October 1965, six of the country’s top generals were abducted by a group of conspirators, consisting of military personnel and a few leaders of the communist party. Based on false rumours of an intended coup they were to be brought before then-president Sukarno. Instead, they were murdered. General Suharto declared it an attempted communist coup. He took over power from Sukarno and orchestrated a brutal campaign of mass murder and imprisonment of the communist party and its associated organisations.
Incited by sexual slander against the socialist women’s mass organisation, Muslim militias and the army murdered about one million people. In this genocide, the cultural organisation LEKRA was also targeted, as it propagated people’s art. Thousands of artists, such as puppet masters, dancers and musicians were killed or imprisoned as they were accused of propagating communist, anti-Islamic values. Transgender practices and fertility rituals became suspect.
The first stirrings of lesbian, bisexual and trans (LBT) organising were seen in the early 1980s, when a group of lesbians living in so-called butch–femme relationships established the organisation Perlesin (Persatuan Lesbian Indonesia, or Union of Indonesian Lesbians). This effort was short-lived, but other groups were established in the following decades. After the fall of the military dictatorship in 1998 society opened up and the space for human rights movements widened, including the struggle for sexual and gender-based rights.
A new discourse on identities allowed people to adopt a wider range of gender-based and sexual identities than had previously been possible. The movement expanded in the wake of the growing feminist movement. The women’s mass organisation Indonesian Women’s Coalition established a section on ‘sexual minorities’. Many activists of the pre-1998 LBT movement joined this rights-based group. Several lesbian women were influential leaders of the nascent women’s movement, but the relationship between the women’s and the LBT movements has often been strained due to prevailing societal homophobia.
In 2004 the LBT organisation the Ardhanary Institute was founded. They assist victims of family violence, including corrective rape by family members and forced marriages, conduct seminars and implement research projects. But from 2010, after an attack on an international meeting of LBT people in Surabaya, the space for organising on sexual rights became restricted again. From the end of 2015 a wave of politico-religious homophobia spread, forcing the whole LGBT movement into hiding. In 2015 the first organisation of trans men was established, Transmen Indonesia, followed by Persatuan Priawan Indonesia and Transmen Talk.
Members of the LBT organisations continue to fight against the oppression they face from their families, educational institutes and workplaces. The rise of conversion therapies and religious intolerance are major issues. It is very difficult now for LGBT organisations to work from their offices due to threats from hardline militias. Foreign funding has also dried up.
Websites have also been shut down or renamed, depriving LGBT youth of access to much needed information and support. Yet despite this censorship, the internet remains a major source of information. Support services such as psychological counselling can also be done online.
The history of gender and sexual diversity in the country continues to be a major source of inspiration.
Saskia E Wieringa is Professor of Gender and Women’s Same-Sex Relations Crossculturally at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.
https://doi.org/10.59425/eabc.1720692000
Saskia E Wieringa
University of Amsterdam
IN BRIEF
In Indonesia, the historical acceptance of sexual and gender diversity, including trans and same-sex practices, is currently under threat. This is due to increasingly conservative religious influence and regional regulations criminalising such behaviour, culminating in the 2022 Criminal Code which prohibits all forms of sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage. Despite dwindling tolerance and societal hostility forcing many LGBT organisations into hiding, members of these groups continue to fight against oppression and intolerance. The internet remains a significant source for both support and information.
Despite a long history of acceptance of trans and same-sex practices, homosexuality in Indonesia is currently framed as deriving from the West, and as alien to the country’s traditions and majority religion, Islam.
Numerous regional regulations have been promulgated in which homosexuality is either prohibited or condemned as immoral. At the national level, a process of criminalisation culminated in the acceptance in 2022 of the revised Criminal Code, which prohibits all forms of sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage. This has been accompanied by a political and religious hate campaign which gained full strength from 2015 onwards.
Yet Indonesia has a long history of gender and sexual diversity. Three deities serve as examples of gender diversity, and while they have mostly lost their powers now, they have been important historically — Ardhanary and Durga in the Hindu religion, and Kwan Im in Buddhism. In several traditional religions transgender priests played important roles. They were seen as mediators between the world of the gods and that of the humans. They might marry partners of the same sex but of a different gender.
The combined effects of colonialism, bringing with it European heteronormative morals from a period in which homosexuality was widely denounced and even criminalised, homophobic monotheistic religions and national histories built on leaders’ postcolonial amnesia have almost destroyed these gender diverse practices. Postcolonial amnesia refers to a process in which postcolonial leaders adopt the heteronormative morality of their colonial predecessors, ignoring traditional non-heteronormative practices and beliefs.
Both in courtly and village cultures, various forms of transgender practices, including cross-dressing and same-sex practices, used to be common. They have now almost disappeared and most of the originally transgender dances have been heteronormatised, with girls or women dancing the parts of formerly male-born transgender dancers.
The so-called ‘events of 1965’ also contributed to the decline of popular art forms and the strengthening of conservative, fundamentalist religious practices.
On 1 October 1965, six of the country’s top generals were abducted by a group of conspirators, consisting of military personnel and a few leaders of the communist party. Based on false rumours of an intended coup they were to be brought before then-president Sukarno. Instead, they were murdered. General Suharto declared it an attempted communist coup. He took over power from Sukarno and orchestrated a brutal campaign of mass murder and imprisonment of the communist party and its associated organisations.
Incited by sexual slander against the socialist women’s mass organisation, Muslim militias and the army murdered about one million people. In this genocide, the cultural organisation LEKRA was also targeted, as it propagated people’s art. Thousands of artists, such as puppet masters, dancers and musicians were killed or imprisoned as they were accused of propagating communist, anti-Islamic values. Transgender practices and fertility rituals became suspect.
The first stirrings of lesbian, bisexual and trans (LBT) organising were seen in the early 1980s, when a group of lesbians living in so-called butch–femme relationships established the organisation Perlesin (Persatuan Lesbian Indonesia, or Union of Indonesian Lesbians). This effort was short-lived, but other groups were established in the following decades. After the fall of the military dictatorship in 1998 society opened up and the space for human rights movements widened, including the struggle for sexual and gender-based rights.
A new discourse on identities allowed people to adopt a wider range of gender-based and sexual identities than had previously been possible. The movement expanded in the wake of the growing feminist movement. The women’s mass organisation Indonesian Women’s Coalition established a section on ‘sexual minorities’. Many activists of the pre-1998 LBT movement joined this rights-based group. Several lesbian women were influential leaders of the nascent women’s movement, but the relationship between the women’s and the LBT movements has often been strained due to prevailing societal homophobia.
In 2004 the LBT organisation the Ardhanary Institute was founded. They assist victims of family violence, including corrective rape by family members and forced marriages, conduct seminars and implement research projects. But from 2010, after an attack on an international meeting of LBT people in Surabaya, the space for organising on sexual rights became restricted again. From the end of 2015 a wave of politico-religious homophobia spread, forcing the whole LGBT movement into hiding. In 2015 the first organisation of trans men was established, Transmen Indonesia, followed by Persatuan Priawan Indonesia and Transmen Talk.
Members of the LBT organisations continue to fight against the oppression they face from their families, educational institutes and workplaces. The rise of conversion therapies and religious intolerance are major issues. It is very difficult now for LGBT organisations to work from their offices due to threats from hardline militias. Foreign funding has also dried up.
Websites have also been shut down or renamed, depriving LGBT youth of access to much needed information and support. Yet despite this censorship, the internet remains a major source of information. Support services such as psychological counselling can also be done online.
The history of gender and sexual diversity in the country continues to be a major source of inspiration.
Saskia E Wieringa is Professor of Gender and Women’s Same-Sex Relations Crossculturally at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.
https://doi.org/10.59425/eabc.1720692000
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