Welcome to Indonesia! Our very knowledgeable guests gave us a history lesson this week, talking about different aspects of queer traditions in Indonesia and their unfortunate persecution and erasure.
First, some information about our new location. Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia/Oceania. It is made up of nearly 1300 ethnic groups speaking about 700 different languages. It is the fourth largest country in terms of population and the largest Muslim-majority country. More than half of the population lives on the island of Java, where the capital, Jakarta, is located, while the rest is mainly spread over the other main islands: Borneo (Kalimantan), Sumatra, Sulawesi, New Guinea and Bali.
After a brief incursion by the Portuguese in the 16th century, the Dutch colonized the territories - with varying degrees of mostly economic control - for nearly 500 years, ending only with the Japanese invasion during World War II, which allowed the Indonesians to claim independence in 1949 after the war ended and the Dutch finally relinquished control.
After independence, the country's political parties fought for power until the New Order, a right-wing authoritarian government backed by the United States, came to power in 1968. In 2004, Indonesia held its first democratic presidential election.
Today, we will focus on one aspect that was mentioned in the conversation with our guests: gender diversity in Bugis culture and the bissu, their genderqueer spiritual leaders.
The Bugis are an ethnic group native to the southwestern peninsula of Sulawesi. Today, the Bugis population is over 7 million people and they are an important political factor in Indonesia.
They've lived in the region for thousands of years, and for most of that time they practiced an animistic religion called Attoriolong. The Bugis converted to Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, but as in most of Indonesia, there was a high degree of religious syncretism and certain practices remained alongside Muslim traditions.
According to Attoriolong beliefs, the universe consists of three realms: the divine, where the gods dwell; the earth, the home of humanity; and the underworld, where spirits and ancestors reside. The human realm is maintained by a delicate balance between the five genders: oroané (masculine male), makkunrai (feminine female), calabai (feminine male), calalai (masculine female), and bissu (male/female/intersex masculine/feminine). Each has a specific role to fulfill in Bugis society.
Traditionally, there is still an expectation of heteronormativity, so calabai fulfill the duties of wives to oroané or assist makkunrai in their wedding preparations, while calalai take on manual labor jobs on farms and are expected to provide for their families, usually by adopting children.
Also, while calalai and calabai people behave and dress according to their gender expression, they do not transition in the Western sense and are not willing or required to "pass" as cis people. They even have their own distinctive clothing and accessories to mark their gender identity and are expected to retain some traditional features that correspond to their sex assigned at birth. This distinguishes them from the oroané and makkunrai and makes them special, with a spirit more in tune with the full gender spectrum of nature and the divine.
Among the calalai and calabai, and especially among those born intersex, some receive a special calling to fulfill the roles of spiritual leaders, called bissu.
The bissu embrace both the feminine and masculine simultaneously, which makes them especially receptive to connecting with spirits and the ancestors. The bissu must express the feminine and masculine in their appearance, combining traditional elements worn by men - such as a badi (a hunting knife) - with decorative flowers in their hair, as women do. This gender duality is also a symbol of their duality in spirit, being part human to carry out their earthly duties, and part deity to understand the language of the gods. This allows them to be possessed by the spirits and act as mediators between the human and the divine.
After a long and difficult process of initiation and training, a bissu is responsible for communicating the will of the gods, performing rituals, incantations, and blessings. In pre-Islamic times, they crowned kings and oversaw the fulfillment of the community's religious duties in the form of numerous offerings to the spirits of nature, the ancestors, and the divine, making them a fundamental factor in the well-being and prosperity of Bugis society. Their mere presence signals to the community a healthy relationship with the gods.
Clip of a bissu possession. They stab themselves with a dagger to show they're impermeable and the possession has been successful.
With the arrival of Islam in the 16th century, attitudes toward the bissu began to change. But because of the strong syncretism in Indonesia between Muslim doctrine and indigenous beliefs, the bissu adapted their role in society and continued to perform rituals that complemented Islamic practices. For example, bissu offer blessings to protect pilgrims traveling to Mecca during the hajj.
However, as the organization of Bugis society changed over the centuries, modernization and globalization caused the gradual loss of indigenous practices, and with it, the belief and reverence for the bissu. As a result, the bissu lost their protection from the strict gender binary norms promoted by the two-front assault of Islamization and Western colonization.
After independence, Indonesian nationalist unity movements placed more emphasis on government and less on community organization, resulting in a top-down approach that restricted the local and imposed a more uniform belief system. As a result, the bissu lost the benefits and protections they used to receive from local authorities to carry out their duties. In 1966, Operation Toba was carried out to eradicate the practice of the bissu as it was considered "heretical" and they were forced to either live out their lives as the sex they were assigned at birth or be killed.
During the right-wing conservative government of the New Order, bissu were persecuted along with other shamanic practices because what was now considered anti-Islamic immoral behavior was associated with the Communist Party, which the government was determined to destroy. This only has gotten worse with the increasing number of anti-LGBTQ+ legislations all over Indonesia.
Today, while some practices are maintained and revitalization efforts are underway, the bissu are a largely marginalized community. Having lost their status in Bugis society, the bissu have no protection or support to carry out their traditional duties. They occasionally perform some blessings, but most of the rituals they oversee are primarily performative, done for the sake of tourism and entertainment. In some cases, bissu are only allowed to express their gender identity during rituals and are expected to live their lives as cisgender people the rest of the time.
This, combined with the difficult process required to become a bissu and the lack of social support to provide adequate mentorship, has left gender non-conforming people without options to become one, and those who do perform the somewhat tolerated heteronormative roles usually associated with calalai and calabai, either in the fields for the former or in beauty salons and bridal assistance for the latter.
The figure of the bissu as a non-binary, genderqueer identity is in danger of disappearing.
Acknowledging the bissu and the Bugis five-gender cosmology, despite its endangered status, is an important aspect of queer culture in Indonesia and everywhere. It serves to demonstrate that the binary system is only a modern development and is far from being the "natural" organization of societies.
As we've seen with the nupa maibis and the bissu, and considering the hijra, the two-spirit, the māhū, and several other indigenous identities around the world, it seems that the strict gender binary is the exception rather than the rule, and that genderqueer identities have always existed and, more importantly, have been celebrated.
Queerness, in this sense, has been a symbol of uniqueness in its particular receptivity to both the feminine and the masculine. By being both and neither, somewhere in between or completely outside, queer people have been revered for having a special affinity to the complexity of the gender spectrum in nature and the divine.
The efforts to preserve these traditions must come from the local communities, but as outsiders, our mission is to support these efforts and learn about them so that they may never be forgotten.
References
Leonard Y. Andaya (2018) The Bissu: Study of a Third Gender in Indonesia. Gender in Focus: Identities, Codes, Stereotypes and Politics. A. Zamfira et al., eds. p. 64–87. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvddzn5f.5
Petsy J. Ismoyo (2022) Decolonizing Gender Identities in Indonesia: A Study of Bissu ‘The Trans-Religious Leader’ in Bugis People. Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya 10(3) https://doi.org/10.17510/ paradigma.v10i3.404
Daniel Stables (2021) Asia’s Isle of Five Separate Genders. BBC Travel. 13th April. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210411-asias-isle-of-five-separate-genders
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