Locking the closet door

Indonesia’s traditional and modern LGBT cultures are under relentless attack by law and religion, but the community still manages to win some of its battles.

The Indonesian lengger lanang dancer Rianto, who now lives in Japan, performs in September 2018. A film called 'Memories of My Body' that is about his life, in which he plays himself, has been banned in several Indonesian jurisdictions because of its depiction of the country's ancient transgender heritage, but the movie is also in the running for an Oscar. Photo taken by Riza Arif Nur Saputra.

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The nightclub was dark, hot, crowded and noisy. The only lights of any strength shone at one end of the large space onto a slightly raised dance floor where a mass of bodies gyrated to the beat of earsplitting techno music blasting from unseen speakers. The DJ – if there was one – was likewise invisible, perhaps tucked away in one of the many corners or alcoves, or simply lost in the overwhelming darkness.

I couldn’t see the bar, either. It was probably not only hidden by the size and gloom of the club, but also by a dense press of people around it. Consequently, I carefully nursed my rapidly warming half-pint of draft beer as I leaned back on a wall to watch the spectacle in front of me, out of the way of the many flailing limbs.

As far as I could tell, most if not all of the hundreds of patrons of this obviously popular nightclub were men – even those who dressed like women. They danced with happy abandon, not only on the raised floor, but throughout the large room. Many had stripped off their shirts – partly, no doubt, to cool off in the humid heat. The club had no tables for its patrons and it apparently had no need for them. These men clearly did not want to sit down; they only wanted to dance.

If the nightclub had a name and I was told it, I have forgotten what it was. The place had no signs announcing its presence or how to find it. I only got to it by following some friends and acquaintances who already knew it. I would not likely be able to find it again on my own, if it is even in the same location.

Our taxi stopped and let us out on one of the larger streets a kilometer or two north of Jakarta’s National Monument plaza. We headed down a smaller side street, then went into a narrow alleyway, turned a few corners, climbed a wide flight of stairs, threaded our way along an exterior corridor, down a brightly lit hallway, through one set of double doors into an anteroom and finally past a second set of doors into the nightclub itself. Along the way we passed small groups of men – old and young – who were hanging out, smoking cigarettes, drinking from water bottles and chatting together. They eyed us as we walked by, mostly out of curiosity. Their numbers grew the closer we got to the club until it was obvious by their sweaty appearance that they were taking a break from dancing. None were displaying any signs of affection for each other – what happens inside stays inside.

The nightclub had good reason to make itself hard to find. While homosexuality is not yet illegal in Indonesia, some powerful groups – like the police and various fundamentalist organizations affiliated with monotheistic religions imported from the Middle East – treat it as if it should be and often as if it already is. In recent years several gay nightclubs, spas and even private homes in Jakarta have been raided by police who have frog-marched the patrons into public exposure to charge them with various trumped-up charges involving drugs, decency and pornography. Vigilante groups that sometimes conduct similar raids ahead of the police and regularly issue threats of violence are rarely, if ever, charged with things like disturbing the peace, trespass, assault, or kidnapping.

The sheer number of people in that nightclub on that one random evening is the proof that exposes the lie behind the arguments put forth by the fanatical religious groups that want to eliminate Indonesia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community: It is not a fringe phenomenon and it was not recently introduced into the country as contamination from decadent Western lifestyles. Not only is the proportion of LGBT people to the general Indonesian population probably the same as in every country on Earth, but they have lived here for a very long time and for many centuries occupied accepted and sometimes even honoured positions among the archipelago’s diverse cultures.

Predictably, while the anti-LGBT groups seek to deny the historical facts because they are too inconvenient for their intolerant world views, they fail, so they try to hide them and erase them instead. Fortunately, they are failing at that, as well.

A recent example is the objections by several such groups and governments to an award-winning film called Memories of My Body, which depicts the plight of waria (transgender) women through the true story of a dancer involved in the traditional Javanese lengger lanang performance in which men depict both the male and female roles. The movie has been banned in at least three jurisdictions because it purportedly promotes “sexually deviant behavior”, but it has also been selected as Indonesia’s official entry to the Academy Awards as a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Fanatics want to hide Indonesian culture from Indonesians, but their intolerance only helps to reveal it to the world.

Also, the national House of Representatives had been about to pass a set of revisions to the colonial-era Criminal Code that would have outlawed, among other things, cohabitation, consensual premarital sex and homosexual relations. Fortunately, at the last minute, despite all-party support for the bill, President Joko Widodo listened to a public outcry against the lawmakers legislating morality. He has demanded the proposed revisions be furthered reviewed by the next session of the legislature before they become law.

This does not represent a permanent protection of LGBT rights, or keep the government out of the bedrooms of the nation, but it does at least provide a little breathing room.