Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations eds. by Linda Rae Bennett and Sharyn Graham Davies

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations eds. by Linda Rae Bennett and Sharyn Graham Davies Annemarie Samuels (bio) Linda Rae Bennett and Sharyn Graham Davies, eds. Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 328 pp. In June 2014 I watched waria dancers perform traditional feminine Acehnese dances on stage in Banda Aceh. It was a splendid performance in which the dancers' techniques, dress, and cosmetics betrayed a high degree of professionalism and many hours of training. It was also a courageous performance. Although the audience consisted mainly of sympathetic students, activists, and NGO workers, a raid by the radical Islamist FPI (Front Pembela Islam, Islamic Defenders Front) and the police was a serious risk. Surveillance of sexuality in general and denunciation of LGBTI in particular has increased in Aceh in the past years, especially in the capital where the government openly joins forces with FPI and related groups. Yet the performance for a crowd of activists took place in a hopeful atmosphere where people embraced diversity, and which may be equally characteristic of the past decade's blooming NGO scene and democratization process. While Aceh cannot be considered representative of the rest of the archipelago, the range of developments taking place in the province resonates with the assessment of the edited volume Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations. As the editors, Linda Bennett and Sharyn Davies, note in their introduction to the volume, in terms of sexual politics, the post-Suharto era is characterized by "the constant vacillation between diverse voices—some progressive, some conservative and many in between" (10). A decade and a half after the fall of Suharto, the editors asked a highly experienced and multidisciplinary group of researchers to take stock of the dynamics of sex and sexualities in Indonesia. The result is a collection of fifteen insightful and often surprising chapters that address a broad range of topics using data from a wide variety of sources and places. The book is divided into four sections: sexual politics, sexual health, sexual diversity, and sexual representations. An encompassing introduction by the editors and a sparkling afterword in the form of a dialogue with two important gay activists/academics, Dédé Oetomo and Tom Boellstorff, provide general reflections on the volume's central issues and point at new directions for research. The volume's strength lies not only in its timeliness and the high quality of the individual chapters, but also in the broad scope of the compilation that makes several significant contributions to the study of sex and sexualities in Indonesia. It does so in three major ways. First of all, this collection of studies and perspectives offers an assessment of current developments in the field of sex and sexualities. By analyzing discourses, public sentiments, health concerns, and limits and possibilities of diversity, among other topics, the chapters together provide a rich view on (mostly) [End Page 91] recent historical developments and the present state of affairs, forming an important addition to earlier scholarly work in this field.1 A major topic of interest in this respect is the rise of Islamic conservatism and the increasing public presence of radical Islamic groups that influence sexual politics. Tracing relations between Islam and gender politics in Indonesia since the period of the New Order regime, Kathryn Robinson (chapter two) points out that both the New Order ideology and the Islamist discourses that have gained ground in the Reformasi era have promoted a patriarchal, heteronormative gender order. Despite Islamic political parties not being successful during elections, radical Islamic groups have pushed conservative agendas by mobilizing public opinion, such as the mass support for the adoption of 2008's anti-pornography bill, the highly mediatized demonstrations against Lady Gaga's 2012 visit, and the growing public agitation and protests against LGBTI Indonesians.2 Interestingly, as Robinson notes, it is exactly the democratic space opened up by Reformasi that has enabled radical Islamist discourses to thrive. Yet, this same space has also enabled progressive women's activists to be heard, most successfully in 2006's adoption of the...