It was merely two years before the Indonesian independence was announced that Inggit had to witness her husband taking another much younger woman.  Soekarno, who had been married to Inggit for about two decades, decided to take another wife, Fatmah or Fatmawati.

Although Inggit refused to stay with Soekarno and his Fatmah in a polygamous relationship, Inggit had to leave without creating any conflict, as was portrayed by the autobiographical book of Inggit, Kuantar ke Gerbang which was written by Ramadhan KH.  Her son in law then said:

Ini jalan satu-satunya, Bu.  Negeri kita memerlukan Bapak.  Dia kepunyaan kita semua.  Rakyat memerlukan Bapak sebagai pemimpinnya, tidak yang lain.  Dan apa yang akan terjadi dengan Indonesia, kalau Bapak hancur?

[This is the only way, Mother.  Our country needs Father.  He belongs to all of us.  The people need Father as their leader, not anyone else.  And what will happen to Indonesia, if Father is destroyed?] (Ganarsih, 1988; 291).

For the sake of the people, a man’s ego must be supported with a woman’s sacrifice. It was Soekarno who could do something for the nation.  It was Soekarno who was important for the nation, not Inggit.  Although she was the one who accompanied Sukarno and had even funded his activism, when facing the conflict between the two, Inggit’s merits were not to be regarded seriously.  As a woman, she had to keep making self-sacrifices for the benefit of the country.

However, while this sacrifice may imply Inggit’s submissiveness to Soekarno, her sacrifice may make her greater than Soekarno.  If it were not for Inggit, the nation would crumble.  In this case, Inggit’s sacrifice is not only for one man, but for the entire nation.  Inggit, who had given moral and financial supports to Soekarno.  She was the one who had smuggled books, newspapers, letters and various information from Soekarno’s political mates when he was imprisoned.  She was the one who had winded up her brain to insert codes and messages in the prison.  Inggit, who bravely accompanied Sukarno in his exile and suffered with him there, was no longer with her husband when he was about to reap the rewards of their long struggles and sufferings.

Rob Willer states that individuals are encouraged to make sacrifice for the greater goods of the society, because the promise of higher status or respect.  The reward for Soekarno, the man, is a national recognition and status, as the first President of Indonesia and the Father of the nation.  And the reward for Inggit?

For her sacrifice, Inggit is elevated more than the other wives of Soekarno, as Poeradisastra states in the introduction:

Inilah bedanya Inggit dari yang lain-lain: naraka katut, suarga ora nunut. . . .  Dengan kebesaran jiwa Inggit memaafkan “Fatimah” [Fatmah], bekas anak angkatnya, yang menjalin kasih sayang dengan ayah angkatnya.

[This is the difference between Inggit and the other (wives): carried to hell, but not following to heaven . . . With her big heart, Inggit forgives “Fatimah” (Fatmah), her ex-adopted daughter, who had had a love affair with her adopted father] (Ganarsih, 1988; ix).

In this case, Inggit is judged by her reaction to Soekarno’s infidelity.  She is considered more prominent than other women (that is, the other wives of Soekarno) because of these characteristics.  In this “competition”, a woman’s merit is thus based upon her service to her husband.  The woman who shows the most devotion will be appreciated, not the one who rebels and transgresses.  It is Inggit who “wins” the “competition” because she has proved to be the most dedicated in relation to her husband Soekarno.

Hence, the picture of Inggit that the text produces is still mainly that of a faithful woman who is devoted and caring to her only lover, Soekarno.  And this is the irony: that while Soekarno claimed that he promoted women’s rights and supported the growth of women’s organisations, the interest of his own wife was somehow ignored.  While his view on women was quite progressive for that era, he did not seem to apply the idea of gender equality in his own house.  Soekarno entered the palace with Fatmawati, whereas Inggit had to return to her simple home in a village in Bandung.

Somehow the portrayal of Inggit in this biographical book is what has been popularised in public and the expectancy of women to self-sacrice for the sake of men becomes a kind of a norm.

This “legacy” is to be found nowadays, when women are to be at the background, when their role in politics is merely as the supporter of men.  When their role in politics is still discouraged.  Although the 30% quota for women was finally introduced, this was without a struggle and the result was rather disapointing – as many feminists still found out that the patriarchal ideology still plays a huge role in controlling who could or could not be selected.  As after the quota, several women who are involved in politics have not been active in voicing women’s rights.  Many elected female legislative members are merely ornaments who could get the top because of their skill in attracting publicity and funding for their campaign.  The majority of women can still only win the heart of the society if they conform to rather than rebel against patriarchal system.  For this reason, we also found that many women were in support the anti-pornographic law and also of polygamy.  Women have still been competing in pleasing the men and supporting the patriarchal culture around them.

Indonesia’s independence has indeed not been the privilege of all of its citizens![]

This article is exclusively published by Center for Minority, Gender, and Human Rights.

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1. Between God and women

I was driving with my eighty-year-old mother to our monthly family gathering at my cousin’s the other Sunday when I related to her how Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s stand on same-sex marriage had surpassed President Obama’s. She responded by saying that she could understand Cheney’s stand because his second daughter, Mary, is lesbian. We then discussed Mary’s pregnancy, whether it was by artificial insemination (who could be the sperm donor?) or by actual sexual intercourse with a friend.

Then all of a sudden my mother asked me, “Don’t you want to have children?” It threw me off balance for a moment, but then I gave my usual retort when people ask me the question. “Come on, I’m so busy, who’d take care of the kids?” Well, the truth is, I’ve never really liked children, so perhaps even if I were not gay, I would not care to have any.

I’ve been reflecting on that little conversation, and realize that on the surface the question is one that grandparents often ask, but in our case the question is posed in a completely different context, one that would have been unthinkable one hundred years ago. My parents have always accepted my sexual orientation, had good relations with my partners, and I’ve been an out gay person and an activist since I came out in the early 1980s. This is certainly a new phenomenon in any human society.

As an early activist, promoting homosexual emancipation and sexual diversity and debating with society, I was fully aware that I was trying to change society. I later realized how my cultural position as a Peranakan (mestizo) Chinese helped me immensely, having been partly uprooted from “traditional” Chinese culture but also inheriting the values of the early twentieth-century rationalist reform strong among my Peranakan ancestors, having been kind of rejected by “traditional” Javanese culture as people from across the seas (read: uncouth) but then not falling into the oppressive hypocritical trappings of those traditions, and having embraced the values of the Enlightenment and the new values of independent Indonesia. It helped also that partly because of Chinese religious pragmatism my father left the Pentecostal Church early in his youth and my mother was never thrilled by the guilt tripping of the Catholic nuns of her early education.

As I matured in my activism and social thinking, I’ve mellowed out a great deal, but the question still bugs me: why can my people change so that having a homosexual son, after the initial worries, is not really a big deal, and why do others, even to this day, still cannot shake off their heteronormative cultural shackles?

Just the other day a gay friend asked me to accompany him to look at batik material before he takes his fiancée to buy some for their wedding day later in the year. Ahmad (not his real name) hails from a devout but moderate Nahdliyyin Muslim culture, known for tolerating homosexual acts and relations in their boarding schools and transgendering in their communities. He has come out to his sister and widowed mother (now this is something new), who in typical Nahdliyyin fashion are not excessively bothered by his homosexuality, but have not stopped nagging him (his sister being less insistent) about getting married (the heterosexual way, that is), which is why he’s seriously dating his fiancée. But his intention to marry and form a family is sincere. On the other hand, these months he said he’s enjoying every last moment of “freedom.” He’s planning to have one last vacation in Bali, to hit all the gay bars, cafés, cabaret lounges and beaches.

As a gay activist should I be bothered by what guys like Ahmad plan to do? Should I rely on cultural relativism to respect the fact that in his culture gay men do marry heterosexually and form a family, whereas in my culture I might marry (in a gender-neutral way) and have children too, but not in the way he’s doing it? My feminist side, though, is screaming murder. Ahmad has not told his wife (am I being ethnocentric by even mentioning this?) that he’s gay. He said he’d stop having sex with men and falling in love with them. But I know that such a vow is more easily made than fulfilled. Could I again hold on to cultural relativism and compare Ahmad to the philandering or polygamous guy (many of whom have sex or form relations with transgenders and other men)? But don’t the women have any say?

In my activism, I must confess, I’ve been vacillating between militantly wanting to change society and hesitantly respecting local values. Does Ahmad honestly know what he’s getting himself and his fiancée into? On the other hand, should we be so rational and plan our lives? The compromise we’ve taken in our LGBTIQ movement in Indonesia so far has been that one should be honest to everyone involved and respect the principle of consent in matters of heterosexual or gender-neutral marriage, ménages à trois and other polyamorous queer relationships, and so on and so forth.

Indeed the heteronormative pressure to marry and form a family is the strongest obstacle to many lesbians and gay men in Indonesian society, and to a lesser extent to transgenders, in pursuing happiness and well being. Perhaps the Indonesian LGBTIQ movement should set ideal standards of pride, honesty, and equality, but should also be sensitive to cultural impediments, while at the same time working hard to change that culture. Certainly we should be there for our fellow queers who are going through the tribulations of following the call of their hearts in new constructions of gender identities and sexualities not accommodated yet, let alone accepted, by the imaginings of an old guard dominating our society.

If I were in my twenties, I might have written this piece differently (I used to do so thirty years ago). Perhaps age and social science have mellowed me out. But my friend Ahmad is only twenty-eight.[]

This article is exclusively published by Center for Minority, Gender, and Human Rights.

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Darwin under Scrutiny

Once when I was in Indonesia, I was trying to defend Darwin’s theory in front of several people who rejected it completely because of their religious views.  One of them asked me: “But as a feminist, shouldn’t you be against Darwin as well?  Doesn’t Darwin discriminate women, whereas all (male and female) are equal in God’s eye?”.

Indeed, Darwin’s theory generally has been viewed to be quite problematic by religious fundamentalists as well as feminists.  The argument of humans deriving from monkeys does not seem to make sense for people who are strongly convinced that the human was uniquely created by God and in God’s image.  In the USA, Darwin’s theory of evolution has even been banned by several schools.

As Darwin’s theory states the importance of survival of the fittest in nature, this also induces the idea that men are considered to be evolutionary advanced because in general, they are bigger and stronger. In The Origin of Species, Darwin states that because males are always in competition to get their females, they are required to get better and better, whereas the weaker males are eliminated by not producing as many offspring because of their lack of ability to get a partner.  In other words, inequalities of the sexes are considered natural, and can even be justified.  Male aggressiveness and domination over females are often understood in this light.

At this point, the religious fundamentalists and feminists seem to have a similar stance – the refusal of Darwin’s theory.  Both have claimed to have been ignored and underestimated by the followers of Darwin. Indeed, discrimination against women and God in Darwin’s theory is sometimes seen to overlap.  Jerry Bergman in his article “The history of the teaching of human female inferiority in Darwinism”, begins with the argument that discrimination against women is one of the main themes in Darwin’s theory.  According to Bergman, because men were exposed to far greater selective pressures than women, in Darwin’s theory, they have been conditioned to be more evolutionary advanced than female.  Bergman concludes that the cause of this sexism is Darwin’s disappointment with God: “A critical reason for Darwin’s conclusion was his rejection of the biblical account, which taught that man and woman were specific creations of God, made not to dominate but to complement each other”.

Both the feminists and religious groups have argued against Darwin’s theory based on the inaccuracy of human perception.  However, I want to emphasise the distinctions between the religious fundamentalists from the feminists regarding Darwin.

The Distinctions

While several religious denominations have been avoiding Darwin by either prohibiting or shutting themselves from his theory, more and more feminist groups are getting closer to science, to prove the blemish in interpreting Darwin’s theory.  As some feminists are now using the theory of evolution to claim a more “equal” place for women.  In other words, they are using science to scrutinise science.

Sarah Hrdy, who is known as a Darwinian feminist, demystifies sexist stereotypes by applying the logic of the survival of the fittest.  Reflecting on her research on bonobo monkeys, she notices that females who have the advantage of reproduction (as she carries the baby in her womb), are also more able to confuse the males and dominate them.

Sharing more than 98 percent of human genetic profile, bonobos are thus one of our closest “relatives”.  They enjoy sex all day long, and seem to use it not only for procreation but also for attachment with others.  Females often hang out together and engage in homosexual activities – this cement the bonds amongst them and in some ways allow them to form alliances against males.

In mating, the females are not hesitant in approaching the males and they can be quite promiscuous in doing so.  As females have multiple partners, the males do not know which offspring are theirs. The status of a male also depends on the position of his mother, to whom he remains closely bonded for her entire life.

The theory of evolution can thus be interpreted in such a way that the species characters are never fixed.  Indeed, Darwin’s theory can also open a new interpretation as he implies that the variation of species is not limited, so there is a possibility of an open-ended becoming.  Such a transformation in some ways explains why bonobo monkeys are different from their closest relative chimpanzees, in which males dominate the group and are quite patriarchal.  As the open-ended becoming is possible in Darwin’s theory, male dominance is thus no longer a law or a condition, but rather a process.  As such, different genders or sexes have the chance or opportunity to swap positions: the possibility of fluidity is huge.

The patriarchal notions of Darwin’s theory have been further challenged after the discovery of cloning.  In brief, cloning is a sexless way to create an exact genetic progeny.  The argument nearly swung the other way around, as with the cloning of Dolly, females can thus reproduce themselves.  If we are to follow the rationale of “the survival of the fittest”, that is, the main aim of living organisms is to sustain its species by reproduction, males do not have any importance in this regeneration, as females can sustain the generation on their own.  However, recent finding has revealed that males may also be cloned.

The case of Darwin in relation to gender theories in some ways can be compared with the debate between Einstein and Bohr, instead of between Darwin and religion.  When Bohr disputed Einstein’s theory, he was using Einstein’s theory of relativity to prove it.

They have not been running away from evidence, but are inspecting it.  By doing this, they can see it from different perspectives, instead of avoiding it completely.  On the other hand, the religious groups which maintain the arguments that the earth is only 6000 years old and that humans were created in God’s image rather than a result of the evolution from monkeys, is rather similar to insisting that the earth is the centre of the Universe.  These people do not base their argument on human lack of objectivity.  Rather, they insist on their views without being bothered scrutinizing them properly.

Indeed, isn’t it the paradox of science that the more the scientists research and observe, the more they will find inaccuracy in their observation?  In other words, the more you inquire it, the more you are aware of human lack of objectivity.  It is only through inquiring, researching and investigating that Copernicus came to the conclusion that the centre of the Universe is no longer the Earth but the Sun. This finding brought an awareness that human observation of the space could be deceiving – as from where they are, humans will easily conclude that the heavenly bodies all go around the planet they live.

Einstein could claim “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one” only after he studied science scrupulously.  As scientific tools were progressing, Niels Bohr further found out that absolute objectivity in science was doubtful, as the role of the observer cannot be disregarded in any scientific conclusion.  Accordingly, as most scientific observers have been males (and only recently do women have more opportunities to take part in science), it is no wonder that the conclusion often leans towards supporting a patriarchal system.  The inclusion of women’s points of view will transform the perspectives in science as well.

Such acknowledgment of scientific partiality was however achieved not via accusation or assumption without any detailed study.  Human awareness can only be better attained or at least learnt by endless analysis, which results in more exactness and meticulousness – this often includes the understanding of its lack and shortcomings.

In this view, Darwinian feminists have revealed that Darwin’s theory can offer various possibilities.  They have offered different perspectives, without ostracizing science.  On the other hand, while the religious groups seem to base their counter-argument against Darwin on the illusion of reality and human objectivity, the insistence of their own belief without allowing any scrutiny is also a form of persistence on human arrogance and it is an argument which in the end beats itself off.[]

This article is exclusively published by Center for Minority, Gender, and Human Rights.

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1. Indonesian independence and the sacrifice of women

When we read about the Indonesian national independence movement, whether in the official historiography of the State or that of Indonesianists, there is a total silence on homosexual women and men and transgendered people. We do not know if among the pemuda (youths) who kidnapped Soekarno and Hatta and forced them to proclaim independence on 17 August 1945, and the millions of others who had been active in the nationalist movement before them and took part in the independence war afterwards, those studied and adulated by the likes of Benedict Anderson, there were pemuda who loved one another or who were transgendered.

We do get glimpses of gender bending in Soekarno: An Autobiography, As Told to Cindy Adams (1965), of the nationalist leader as a young man cross-dressing in a ludruk theatre performance typical of East Java, in which he took part as a female character. But almost in the same breath we read about his disgust and condescension towards Dutch gay men who would go to such performances accompanied by young Indonesian men. This aversion to transgendered people and homosexuals was also found amongst communist leaders by James L. Peacock in his study of ludruk in the 1960s (Rites of Modernization: Symbolic and Social Aspects of Indonesian Proletarian Drama, 1968). They urged cross-dressing ludruk actors to consult a psychiatrist to be cured. Later we learned from the work of Saskia E. Wieringa (Politicization of Gender Relations in Indonesia: The Indonesian Women’s Movement and Gerwani Until the New Order State, 1995) that the leftist women’s organization, Gerwani, purged its chairwoman in the 1950s because she was a lesbian.

The only obscure piece of good news we hear from Benedict Anderson, in his foreword to my collected writings, Memberi Suara pada Yang Bisu (Giving Voice to the Mute, 2001), is about the nationalist leader, Arnold Mononutu, who later became a minister in many of the early administrations of the republic. Apparently many of his comrades knew about Uncle Arnold’s homosexuality, and yet they respected and accepted him.

Given such a situation, we wonder as today’s Indonesian lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people what kind of place we have after our founding fathers and mothers, some of whom might have been homosexual like Uncle Arnold, or transgendered, took us across the golden bridge of independence.

We could cynically state that it was Dutch colonialism that gave us a penal code based on the Code Napoléon in the 19^th century, in which homosexual acts by consenting adults is not criminalized. We could then continue that today’s apparent independence, which in political economic terms is really but a newer version of colonialism anyway, after the fall of the Soeharto regime in 1998 put us in jeopardy, with attacks by Islamist vigilante groups and local shari’ah-based ordinances criminalizing homosexual acts such as those in the City of Palembang and the Province of South Sumatra, not to mention the impending draft qanun being debated in the provincial parliament of Aceh.

It is exactly when we think about the dilemma between the independence of our nation and our personal freedom as LGBT people that we need to think clearly and strategically, especially as the LGBT movement in Indonesia grows in size and importance.

The spirit of our nationalist movement was the struggle for economic independence. The means to attain that was understood as political or national independence. Nationalism has a weakness in that it diverted attention from class divisions to those between colonial nations and colonized ones. In its name, those who are seen as nationals are almost automatically embraced as sons and daughters of the soil, without examining their ulterior class-based motives. Some of them then subverted the original goals of the nationalist movement to benefit their class or even themselves. One of the founding fathers of the republic, Sutan Sjahrir, feared that this would be the case, and he was proven right in the last quarter of 1965, when what Soekarno termed neocolonialist-imperialist forces worked through their Indonesian lackeys to open our doors totally to foreign investment and exploitation again.

Now many, if not most, Indonesian lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered people and other men who have sex and women who have sex with women are as poor as other Indonesians. The typical Indonesian lesbian or woman who has sex with women, in addition to being trapped in an oppressive marriage, for instance, is most likely also disenfranchised economically, perhaps exactly because of the heteronormative trap. Yes, we certainly need our gender and sexual rights, but the fulfilment of those rights cannot be separated from the betterment of our livelihood.

Most LGBT activists do not realize that the gender and sexual oppression they live under are directly linked to such issues as poverty. The lessons learned from developed societies should show us that economic development could translate into the freedom to determine the way we live based on our gender identity and sexual orientation.

Thus the writing on the wall is clear: Yes, we can emulate the admirable high spirit and passion of our erstwhile nationalist leaders. We could not really blame them for silencing LGBT people among them and in the ranks of the people. It’s a generational thing: Identity politics based on gender identity and sexual orientation was then not yet a human rights issue, was not their cup of tea, as it were, but now it is for us, and for contemporary nationalist leaders like Nelson Mandela, and it is really up to us LGBT activists to join hands with other progressive elements in society to continue the struggle towards a better future in material and immaterial terms, not just one or the other. After all, the goal of our independence movement is a just and prosperous society. These days justice is increasingly understood as involving rights to diverse gender identities and sexual orientations.[]

This article is exclusively published by Center for Minority, Gender, and Human Rights.

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