Indonesian queer histories as solace and resistance

For historians of gender and sexuality, sources about queer historical past are sometimes elusive. That is much more so within the context of Southeast Asia, the place the kind of supply materials that is perhaps accessible in archives within the World North shouldn’t be at all times readily accessible. A lot historic analysis on homosexuality in Europe, as an illustration, depends on intensive authorized archives that element courtroom circumstances about relationships that have been deemed illegitimate underneath ethical laws.

Historians desirous about Southeast Asian locales typically shouldn’t have this type of materials at their disposal. This isn’t at all times a matter of existence of archives: in pre-Independence Indonesia, as an illustration, same-sex relationships weren’t formally outlawed, regardless that Java was the scene of a much-publicised “gay scandal” amongst European males within the late Nineteen Thirties.

But generally traces of the queer previous present up in sudden locations. After I was doing archival analysis for my dissertation about women’ schooling within the Dutch East Indies, this was definitely the case. There have been just a few sentences, handwritten in an unassuming college pocket book that was saved in a 14th century monastery, however they revealed a attainable love affair between two Indonesian girls in 1933.

A particular friendship

I used to be skimming by way of the archives of a Roman Catholic sisters’ congregation on the Erfgoedcentrum Nederlands Kloosterleven, the Heritage Centre for Dutch Monastic Life. The Zusters van het Gezelschap van Jezus, Maria en Josef [Sisters of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph] had opened a number of women’ faculties within the Minahasa area of Sulawesi within the early twentieth century, and I used to be searching for details about the varsity curricula. In a visitation report, written by a Mom Superior who had travelled from the Netherlands to Indonesia for an inspection, I discovered the next reference:

“So far as issues particular friendships, simply earlier than my go to one case had been found by the Superior, of the Native Sister Dorithea with one of many boarding women. We, the Superiors, discovered that the case was very severe and after consulting with the 4 of us, we concluded we must always expel Sr. Dorithea.”

In non secular girls’s communities, there was typically appreciable anxiousness about so-called “particular friendships”. Management of monasteries have been frightened concerning the ethical implications of romantic, and probably sexual, relationships between girls. Their important worry, nonetheless, was that shut particular person relationships, romantic or not, might undermine sisters’ and college students’ loyalty to the group.

The home science course ran by the JMJ sisters in Tomohon, c. 1929. Supply: Missies der Zusters van het Gezelschap van J.M.J. in Oost-Indië en Britsch-Indië, vol. 27 (1929) no. 3, p.5. The folks on this picture don’t determine on this article.

The friendship in query had developed between a sister of Indonesian descent and a lady who seemingly studied on the sisters’ hospital within the village of Tomohon to change into a nurse. The sister, who was one of many first Minahasan girls to affix the order, was allowed to stick with the group solely after the intervention of the native priest, who needed to offer her one other probability. It’s in fact attainable that the connection between sister Dorithea and the scholar was certainly a really intense friendship that distracted them from their every day duties on the hospital and the monastery. It’s simply as seemingly, nonetheless, that this was a lesbian relationship, particularly judging from the response of the monastery management:

“The lady was despatched away instantly. And so far as issues Sister D.’s way of thinking, she is extremely sorry, says that she deserves to be despatched away and is asking for depart so she will do penance, and she or he promised me that one thing like this can by no means occur once more.”

Clearly, the invention of their relationship, no matter its nature, uprooted the lives of each sister Dorithea and the nursing pupil, who was expelled from college and should not have had the prospect to observe secondary schooling once more. Sister Dorithea was additionally in a susceptible place, as a lot of her white friends doubted Indonesian girls’s suitability as sisters within the first place. Whereas the archive doesn’t reveal any additional details about both the sister or her pal, they clearly needed to dwell with the implications of their relationship.

Queer archives as resistance

Small archival findings resembling these could appear insignificant: they reveal little or no about precise queer girls’s expertise, and are simply written off as quaint remnants of a long-gone previous. But, reclaiming historical past could be highly effective within the context of the present backlash towards LGBTQ+ communities in up to date Southeast Asia. For right this moment’s activists, realizing that there are a lot of traces of a queer previous in could be a supply of solace and energy.

Whereas LGBTQ+ folks have change into extra seen in Indonesian society in recent times, there have been uncountable makes an attempt, authorized or in any other case, to additional marginalise this already susceptible group. Probably the most outstanding instance of latest laws that severely restricts the minority rights is the brand new Indonesian penal code, which successfully criminalises any sexual encounter outdoors the framework of heterosexual, state-sanctioned marriage. Upheld by President Joko Widono’s authorities as a mandatory reform of Indonesia’s authorized system, the brand new penal code has drawn sharp criticism from human rights organisations in Indonesia and past.

In public discourse, homophobic political and spiritual leaders have typically tried to border LGBTQ+ Indonesians both as victims of an sickness or as members of a harmful motion intent on undermining the state. In lots of of those cases, homosexuality and gender-nonconformity are portrayed as someway “new” to Indonesia, a international and fashionable invention that’s now seeping into the framework of Indonesian society. The uncovering of tales about LGBTQ+ experiences from the previous, nonetheless fragmentary, can be utilized as a instrument for resisting these narratives.

Many Southeast Asian cultures have lengthy traditions that depend on fluid performances of gender, and right this moment’s queer group is actively preserving more moderen queer histories as effectively. An inspiring instance of how activists can reclaim native pasts is the expansive web site Queer Indonesia Archive, a volunteer initiative that’s “dedicated to the gathering, preservation and celebration of fabric reflecting the lives and experiences of queer Indonesia.”

A waria pageant in Jakarta in 1992, from the non-public assortment of participant Monica. Supply: Queer Indonesia Archive, https://qiarchive.org/en/exhibitions/

Since its institution in 2020, the staff of volunteers that run the web site have accomplished necessary work in digitising queer magazines from the Suharto period and past. The web site additionally holds a group of non-public images, correspondence and print articles about subjects resembling queer nightlife in Nineteen Nineties Jakarta and the early HIV disaster. It’s a distinctive repository of queer Indonesian historical past that’s often hidden from the general public eye.

This summer season, Queer Indonesia Archive printed the exhibition Letters from Ger, which traces the correspondence between a lesbian lady in Sixties Jakarta and an editor of the pioneering American lesbian journal The Ladder. Within the introduction to Ger’s story, Yulia Dwi Andriyanti described the letters as “a reflective journey about queer emotions and their function in opening up prospects to contest a system that frequently negates and erases queer identities and emotions. To embrace these prospects, it’s important to acknowledge queer emotions from the very starting.”

Ger, by Rora, 1963 as printed in The Ladder, vol. 9, no. 2, November 1964. Supply: Queer Indonesia Archive, https://qiarchive.org/en/lfgintro/

That is precisely the place the facility of queer historical past making lies. Making seen the experiences of queer folks prior to now is a type of resistance towards a dominant discourse that goals to border their very existence as a novel aberration. In one in every of her movies Kai Mata, a singer-songwriter who has repeatedly gone viral together with her queer anthems, sings: pelangi juga bersinar di langit kita—rainbows additionally shine in our skies. Even an archival discover of some traces can remind us that this motto rings true for the previous in addition to right this moment’s world.

The creator want to thank the QIA staff for his or her assist with this text.