Communism and Women's Same-Sex Practices in Post-Suharto Indonesia (Wieringa, 2000)

Wieringa, S. E. (2000). Communism and women's same-sex practises in post-Suharto Indonesia. *Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2*(4), 441–457. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3986701 PDF: 02 Secondary Sources/2.1 Gerwani, Women's Movements and Gender/Wieringa (2000) - Communism and Womens Same-Sex Practises in Post-Suharto Indonesia.pdf PDF PAGES 1 to 18 of 18. Text from the PDF text layer where present, otherwise Tesseract OCR (ind+eng); OCR errors remain. === [PDF page 1] === Communism and Women's Same-Sex Practises in Post-Suharto Indonesia Author(s): Saskia E. Wieringa Source: Culture, Health & Sexuality, Vol. 2, No. 4, Critical Regionalities: Gender and Sexual Diversity in South East and East Asia (Oct. - Dec., 2000), pp. 441-457 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3986701 Accessed: 06-02-2020 05:30 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Culture, Health & Sexuality This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 2] === CULTURE, HEALTH & SExuALITY, 2000, VOL. 2, NO. 4, 441-457 Communism and women's same-sex practises in post-Suharto Indonesia SASKIA E. WIERINGA The Indonesian Communist Organization Gerwani was banned in 1966. It had been associated with sexual perversions during the 1 October 1965 putsch in which senior figures within the Indonesian army were killed. These accusations helped fuel the massacre of over a million people and brought General Suharto to power. Yet in many ways Gerwani's ideology wa tanical and geared towards strengthening the monogamous family unit. It breached traditional gender ideology only in its insistence that women should be political actors and militant mothers. More recently, the organization has been accused of 'promoting lesbianism', when it in fact has never discussed the issue. This paper analyses Gerwani's ideology to explore the link between political activism and sexuality. The women's organization can be regarded as one of the forces of 'modernity' which stimulated homophobia. It is suggested that Gerwani's political activism was considered such a breach of traditional gender ideologies that it triggered a fear of social disorder in which women would be free from male heterosexual control-either as loose, perverted women who were seen as liable to castrate generals, or as lesbians. Introduction Between 1982 and 1985, I carried out research among both surviving members of the Indonesian communist women's mass organization Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia or the Indonesian Women's Organization) and among lesbian women. At the time, both communism and women's samesex practises were taboo subjects. In different ways, both were associated with perverse forms of women's sexual behaviour. Gerwani had been accused of having stimulated young members to have sexually abused and castrated the generals who had been murdered during the 1 October 1965 military putsch. Although the organization had long since been banned and tens of thousands of its members killed in the massacre which followed the coup, the association with sexual debauchery lingered on, and politically active women, of whom there were few in those years of the Suharto dictatorship, had to be very careful not to be accused of setting up a 'new Gerwani' movement. Women who engaged in sex with other women violated other social norms. The heterosexualization of Indonesian society which had been promoted since colonial times (see also Onghokham 1991, Anderson 1996) had resulted in a family ideology in which the only accepted form of sexuality for women was within a heterosexual marriage. Saskia E. Wieringa is a Senior Lecturer in Women's Studies at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Her latest book (co-edited with Evelyn Blackwood) is entitled Female Desires; Samesex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures (1999, Columbia University Press). Correspondence: Saskia Wieringa, Institute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT, The Hague, The Netherlands; e-mail: wieringa@iss.nl Culture, Health & Sexuality ISSN 1369-1058 print/ISSN 1464-5351 online 0 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 3] === 442 SASKIA E. WIERINGA Throughout the study, I was careful never to inform either of these groups that I was also involved with research about the other group. Each of them had enough social stigma to carry. In itself this was not too difficult, for Gerwani had never even openly discussed women's same-sex practises, and the lesbian women I associated with had no interest whatsoever in leftist politics. Yet I was afraid that if the authorities might link them via my research this might have adverse consequences for all involved. I was therefore both surprised and upset when in April 1999, and with no apparent warning, Gerwani was accused of having 'promoted lesbianism'. In this paper, an analysis is offered of the background of this accusation. Having first provided a note on methodology, I will then give a short sketch of Indonesia's history, as a background to the following section on Gerwani. After that, I will introduce the historical context in which women's same-sex practises in Indonesia should be located. In the concluding sections, I will return to my original question, the association between women's political agency with what is considered sexual perversion. What does communism have to do with lesbianism in Indonesia? Methodology The research on Gerwani is part of a wider research project on the history of the Indonesian women's movement between 1950 and 1965 (Wieringa 1985, 1995). Researching into the history of Gerwani was like unravelling a hidden story. Trained as an anthropologist, my major method of research was participation in meetings of the organizations I was interested in, and in depth interviews with both members and leaders. Many informants in one of the other women's organizations I was working with had at one stage co-operated with Gerwani, but hardly anybody dared to even refer to their former involvement and association. I had already given up hope of being able to investigate Gerwani's history when in 1982 I was approached by a member of the organization's former secretariat who had just been released from prison. She knew about my prior research project on the social conditions of women's labour in the batik industry (Wieringa 1981) and had heard that the documentary film I had made1 had been banned in Indonesia. These socialist feminist credentials had convinced her that I might be able to write a story that would not be distorted by the slander the military had been spreading about Gerwani, she said. She added that it would be much too dangerous for Indonesian researchers to undertake this research. They themselves, the survivors of the massacre of 1965/66, still had to report regularly to the police and their voices could not be heard.2 Beside the hundreds of interviews I held I also collected a large number of documents,3 largely outside of Indonesia. Some parts of the research primarily rely on documentary analysis, in other cases documents were used also to cross-check interviews. Most interviewees were visited more than once. The major informants in the study were interviewed tens of times. The research on lesbian women in Jakarta adopted a similar qualitative approach: participation in meetings and particularly in informal gatherings at This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 4] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 443 the houses of the women concerned and in bars; informal interviews; and, later, the search for secondary documents, particularly on the historical background of same-sex relations in Indonesia. Initially I did not intend to publish the material I had collected in a scholarly fashion. In fact my first publication on lesbian women in Indonesia took the form of ethno-fiction, a collection of letters by the fictive anthropologist Dora D. (Wieringa 1987). I feared I was too personally involved in the lives of the women I met to be able to have sufficient 'academic' distance (see also Lewin and Leap 1996, Kulick and Wilson 1995). Only recently have I felt able to reflect on the experiences of those years in a more academic manner (Blackwood and Wieringa 1999a). Historical background One of the major demands of the Indonesian pre-war women's movement was for reform of the marriage law to abolish or at least curb the right of Muslim men to marry polygynously (Vreede-de Stuers 1960, Wieringa 1995). After independence, Indonesian women fared no better than women who had joined nationalist movements elsewhere (see Jayawardena 1982). They lost their last hope for a reformed marriage law when President Sukarno, Indonesia's charismatic leader, contracted a polygynous marriage in 1954. While Sukarno had openly flirted with feminist ideas until the national victory4 which had gained him the enthusiastic support of the Indonesian women's movement, he later warned against the 'decadence' of Western feminism which upheld values alien to Indonesian womanhood, so he maintained. The first national elections in 1955 brought a series of unstable coalition cabinets. The PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, had come out surprisingly strongly, in fourth position, after Sukarno's nationalist party and two Muslim parties. Tensions between the armed forces, Muslim groups and the various organizations of the 'communist family' soon began to surface. An unsuccessful regional rebellion led Sukarno to impose the authoritarian structure of 'Guided Democracy', a form of government which Suharto later was to perfect (Lev 1999). Sukarno drew almost absolute power to himself. Tensions rose between the armed forces and conservative Muslim groups on the one hand and the fast growing PKI on the other hand (Feith 1962). As a result, Sukarno occupied an increasingly precarious balancing position. The leftist farmer's union, supported by other organizations in the communist bloc, organized land reform campaigns which led to great rural unrest, especially under conservative Muslim landowners. By the end of 1964, Indonesia had declined into a state of 'economic anarchy' (Mortimer 1974). Under Guided Democracy, the army's political and economic influence had grown considerably. The PKI's pressure for a militia, a 'fifth force' of workers and peasants worried the army leaders greatly. However the mass following the PKI had created (an estimated 20 million members of the party and its mass organizations, Mortimer 1974, Tornquist 1984) was not well organized nor ideologically well trained. In this tense and chaotic situation, leftist colonels, assisted by some groups of the communist youth This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 5] === 444 SASKIA E. WIERINGA organization, staged a putsch against their conservative right-wing generals. On the night of 30 September, they abducted and killed six Generals (and one Lieutenant). The murders were committed on a training field in which young women were prepared for one of President Sukarno's antiimperialist campaigns. Volunteers of all political affiliations had their own training fields. This particular field belonged to the leftist Air Force and was used for the ideological and military training of members of the PKI's youth organization. For reasons that are still unclear General Suharto was not among those abducted. The following day he managed to defeat the plotters (Anderson and McVey 1971, Crouch 1978, Wertheim 1991). Officially, President Sukarno was still in power. However, Suharto organized a campaign to discredit the PKI and its women's wing, Gerwani. He wanted to weaken Sukarno's position by associating the PKI, which was supported by the president, with women's supposed sexual perversions. His 'sneaking coup', as I called this manoeuvre elsewhere, was successful (Wieringa 1995). In March 1966, Suharto managed to make Sukarno hand over the presidential powers.5 General Suharto skilfully used the media to accuse the young women present at the airforce training field of having castrated the Generals after having engaged in 'mad' (read pornographic) dancing.6 They were also accused of having gouged out the eyes of the Generals. Later it was 'revealed' that the PKI had been 'training women for prostitution'.7 The first reports of these 'atrocities' appeared in army newspapers. Later, other newspapers picked up on the theme. The radio was also intensively used, my informants reported. The army trained youth groups and assisted them in slaughtering hundreds of thousands people who were associated with the 'communist family'. The PKI cadres, who were taken by surprise, put up hardly any resistance (see also Cribb 1990). The only 'proof' of these weird accusations were statements from the young girls themselves extracted by the military under heavy torture. The autopsy results showed nothing of the kind (Anderson 1987) and the girls were never brought to trial (Wieringa 1995, 1999). But this demonization of Gerwani was so 'successful' that it fuelled an unprecedented campaign of mass murder in which probably a million people were slaughtered. Presentday accusations that Gerwani was a seed bed of lesbianism are new (indeed, the word was not even in use then), and may in many ways be seen as a more up to date version of castration, as lesbian desire effectively renders male heterosexual desire powerless. Nevertheless, the purpose of such accusations is the same: namely, the demonization of politically active women in an attempt to destroy political adversaries. How extensively these lies were believed is indicated in the comments of Mrs Marto, an ex-Gerwani member8 who had been released from prison in 1979. Life as an ex-political prisoner was hard, she told me 'but what really makes me so sad', she added, 'is that my children at school learn such ugly things about Gerwani. I realized my son was holding something back from me. Finally, he came to me and asked: "Ma, why did you become a member of such a group, so morally depraved, bringing ruin to our country? Were you a whore too?"'. This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 6] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 445 The accusation 'Guard against the infiltration of Gerwani members!' warned Mrs Ine Sukarno, chairperson of Kowani, the umbrella of Indonesian women's organizations, in the April 1999 issue of Gaung Demokrasi (Echo of Democracy). 'In the early 1960s', she explained 'Gerwani supported the understanding of lesbianism and endeavoured to run a complex of prostitution'. This outburst of Mrs Sukarno was the result of her being very upset because the former secretary of Gerwani, Mrs Sulami, had been allowed to give her vision of Gerwani's history at the first feminist congress organized in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto, held in December 1998 in Yogyakarta. According to Mrs Sukarno, Mrs Sulami had been able to 'hurl confusing texts' at an innocent public, in an attempt to 'whitewash the black history of Gerwani'. Almost 35 years after the October 1965 putsch the present Kowani chair saw new dangers to Indonesian womanhood: Gerwani... are beginning to enter the political arena again. Or they enter various women's organizations... it should not happen that feminist activists, or even their organizations, become political vehicles in an attempt to revive their political mission as communist cadres. Why are feminist NGOs associated with Gerwani, a women's organization that has been dead for almost 35 years, and whose members were killed, imprisoned or otherwise silenced? And whence this association of communism with political activism of women and lesbianism? In order to answer these questions it is important to understand more about the relationship between Indonesian communism and sexuality. Importantly, it was not Gerwani's theories on sexuality that account for the stories of prostitution, pornography and castration of generals that make up the 'black history' of the organization that Mrs Sukarno refers to. Just like other communist organizations of the time, Gerwani's sexual morality could be considered puritan and austere. As argued elsewhere (Wieringa 1995) these organizations were among the forces to push Indonesia into 'modernity', a major element of which was considered the monogamous, heterosexual family unit. Far from promoting the 'understanding of lesbianism', Gerwani was part of the force that suppressed traditional forms of same-sex relations and the knowledge of them, and promoted homophobia. What Gerwani did, however, was stimulate women to enter the political arena. In so doing the organization stretched traditional gender ideologies to such an extent that it antagonized conservative voices in society. This is again the case. After decades of impotence, feminist organizations in the country are beginning to play an important political role. Indonesian women took to the streets to demand an end to the corruption and political nepotism of Suharto's New Order regime even earlier than the students did. The first time they marched was 23 February 1998, when they demanded affordable food. Since then, the organization SIP (Suara Ibu Peduli, Voice of Concerned Mothers) has been demanding critical changes (Indonesian Observer, 8 March 1999). Other women's groups that had been set up since the mid 1980s, such as Kalyanamitra and Solidaritas Perempuan, also came to the fore. Some of their members became This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 7] === 446 SASKIA E. WIERINGA particularly active in the denouncement of the mass rapes of especially Chinese ethnic women by the military and other groups.9 The more recently established Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy demanded that the president step down, in a meeting they held with him on 18 May 1998, just one week before his fall (Indonesian Observer 8 March 1999). Gerwani: ideology and sexuality Gerwani occupied a unique position in the history of women's organizations all over the world. In its relatively short history the organization negotiated its identity in the competing and at times converging narratives of feminism, nationalism and communism. Structurally semi-autonomous, it maintained its triple loyalty to these discourses. The balance between these loyalties shifted over time, and the extent of its autonomy was gradually eroded until, by 1965, it had become seriously reduced. Gerwani was set up in the wake of national independence. Its most ardent members had joined the guerrilla struggle against the Dutch. They were young and wanted an organization that could use their energies and talents. All of them had in one way or another experienced male domination in what they later called the 'feudal' structures of the 'old' society. They wanted to join the building of a modern Indonesia, in which women would be fully Indonesia's male nationalists and freedom fighters had accepted women as warriors 'by their side' (Sukarno 1963 [1947]) only so long as they needed them. After independence had been won, a process of restoring male power took place, and gender relations were restructured accordingly. While women received 'equal rights', with the exclusion of equality in the crucial area of marriage relations, they were expected to withdraw into their own 'social sphere'. Only Gerwani resisted this process of domestication and demanded the right for women to be political actors themselves. For all its militancy and its insistence on equality, to a large extent Gerwani accepted, as the other women s organizations did, the traditional definition of women's gender ideology. In the accelerating political climate of Guided Democracy, Gerwani became more and more drawn to the camp of the anti-imperialist, populist Sukarno and the communist PKI-that is, to the domain of 'male' politics. As the organization gained greater access to the palace of President Sukarno and the centre of power, the controversy between Gerwani and the other women s organizations grew. At the time this growing controversy was not so noticeable, as Kowani and other women's organizations also moved to the left, or felt compelled to do so (Wieringa 1995). The Indonesian version of prescribed behaviour for women is contained in the kodrat wanita, women's ideological code of conduct. As Gerwani was felt to have deeply betrayed this code it is important to examine this originally Javanese concept more closely. For Javanese women, two wayang figures formed the contrasting symbolic configurations around which the contest over the meaning of the kodrat evolved. Both Sumbadra and This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 8] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 447 Srikandi are wives of the wayang hero Arjuna. While Sumbadra is the symbol of wifely devotion, Srikandi is depicted as a warrior princess, independent and strong. Arjuna is the symbol of virility, invincible because of his spiritual powers. His superior powers do not derive from his physical strength, but from self-control and ascesis (see also Anderson 1965). The corresponding masculine gender ideology depicts men as self-controlled, virile and potent, and in possession of superior spiritual and mental faculties. This is the image Sukarno presented publicly. Men are seen to be responsible for preserving harmony and order on the national and cosmic levels, while women, 'naturally' infinitely more irrational than men and less able to control their emotions, should occupy themselves with the lower orders of society. They are also responsible for matters such as money and a household's material means of survival. Women's sexuality is seen as potentially dangerous, women themselves are not considered capable of containing this danger, and therefore men, as fathers and husbands, are entrusted with the responsibility to control women's sexual conduct.10 Women's resistance to this prescribed role is considered to be dangerous, a disruption of a 'natural' order of things that ultimately may destabilize the order of the world. Women's identity and behaviour as expressed by the kodrat wanita was hotly contested during the Old Order. Gerwani to a certain extent attacked the prevailing notion that women should be meek, passive, obedient to the male members of the family, sexually shy and modest, self-sacrificing and nurturing. Although they accepted the notion that women should find their main vocation in wifehood and motherhood, they introduced the notion of 'militant motherhood'. Gerwani's militant mothers did not limit their action range to the household and the social, but extended their ministrations to the political. Their symbol was the wayang hero Prince Arjuna's warrior-wife Srikandi, and not his meek wife Sumbadra. Apart from these Javanese ideas, Gerwani also upheld socialist ideals.11 The attraction socialist theory held for its leaders was partly its modernity. The new Indonesian woman it attempted to create was 'modern', both in dress, in cultural outlook and in political vision. Importantly, Gerwani's modernity was not modelled on the capitalist West, but on the examples of the socialist world. It almost intuitively, without much internal debate, adapted the Indonesian reality to aspects of Marxist thinking. Its leaders accepted critical elements of Marxist analysis of the family, especially its theoretical subservience to class relations. But the Gerwani family was decidedly Indonesian in character, plagued by such evils as polygyny and struggling with the Indonesian political reality. Where Gerwani was confronted with domestic violence, rape, or communist men marrying polygynously, these were seen as individual, not structural problems that needed theoretical attention. As far as sexual morality was concerned, Gerwani adhered more to the conservatism of Lenin than to the humanist, liberal trend of earlier streams in Marxism which denounced the restrictions bourgeois morality placed on sexual behaviour (Lapidus 1978). This sexual conservatism was more in line with the kodrat wanita than the 'free love' propagated by early Marxists and Utopian socialists. This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 9] === 448 SASKIA E. WIERINGA Morality The values Gerwani appreciated most in its members were independence, hard work and dedication to the struggle, for which education was a requirement. Gerwani wanted women to stand on their own feet and to choose hard work over the leisure and wealth of being kept. While in the 1950s, militancy and traditional notions of womanhood were felt to clash, in the 1960s links between women's interests and revolutionary activity were stressed. Under Guided Democracy, Gerwani no longer demonstrated the same fear of antagonizing men, declaring that women could be: proud... that we take an active part... in preserving the results of the revolution... [and] hopefully will be alert and ready and not be left behind in preparing ourselves in confronting the struggle for West Irian. (Umi Sardjono, HR 23 August 1961) Gerwani's glossy periodical Api Kartini (AK) carried pictures of uniformed girl students carrying weapons, and the woman volunteers were regularly compared with the warrior-wife of the wayang prince Arjuna, Srikandi (AK February 1962). Like the PKI, Gerwani declared that prostitution would no longer exist in Indonesia under true socialism, and that 'it was not the women's fault that they had been forced into prostitution' (HR 28 September 1955). While awaiting the socialist victory, it was better that the women received some education than that they were captured and kept in the so-called 'Melati bungalows' of Jakarta (HR 3 August 1959).12 Gerwani was not particularly outspoken about sexuality. The organization demonstrated the same shyness on sexual matters that Indonesian women are supposed to show in public. For Ge-wani, love should be mutual, based on respect and preferably occur within the context of a revolutionary (heterosexual) family. While this emphasis on heterosexuality was never stated openly, it can be deducted from Gerwani's actions. When suspicions arose on the sexuality of the first chair of Gerwani, she was quietly removed from her position and she was hardly ever referred to again. There are parallels here with the emphasis on sexual austerity in, for instance, China. There, as in other socialist countries, monogamous heterosexual marriage was portrayed as a naturalized state. All other lifestyles, such as female celibacy or 'deviant' forms of sexuality were seen as abnormal, caused by sickness or psychological disorders. 'Socialist monogamy' was portrayed as emancipatory. On the whole female sexuality, if properly controlled, was seen to stimulate the development of a higher social and moral order, while unfettered and autonomous it might endanger society and even lead to chaos (see also Evans 1997). Gerwani too was adamant in its marriage policy: monogamy was the norm. PKI leaders who took mistresses or who married polygynously were made to withdraw and Gerwani itself did not accept women who were second wives. The 'feudal' or 'backward' situation in which the husband was free to do as he liked while his wife did all the work, prepared his food and accepted his whims was no longer acceptable. The new role of a woman, in a family dedicated to the revolutionary struggle, would be that of 'sister, comrade in struggle and faithful wife'. The husband, meanwhile, should This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 10] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 449 understand this new situation and be prepared to be her teacher (HR 9 March 1959). Women in 'true Manipol families'13 were to have a high political consciousness, for only then could the family 'destroy all efforts to divert the revolution to make our families militant and firm fighters to rapidly create a socialist society'.'4 A revolutionary consciousness was thus key. The major element to developing such a consciousness was political training, but cultural factors were also important, especially for women, the educators of the future generation of anti-imperialist fighters. Despite Gerwani's growing militancy, the organization never fundamentally attacked traditional norms of womanhood as contained within the kodrat. The fear that 'emancipation would mean that men would be told to go to the kitchen', was countered in the communist newspaper Harian Rakyat (People's Daily) with reassurances that such fears were: 'really stupid [for this] had nothing to do with emancipation... women will always be women. Their two functions cannot be separated. Women as Mothers and women as fighters in the spirit of Kartini are one... with their whole souls' 15 (Sulami, HR 19 June 1957). Women's political functioning was seen as derived from their functions as mothers and moral guardians. In the struggle around West Irian for instance, the most 'suitable' work women could do was to raise the consciousness of West Irian women, to educate them and to be active in the health campaigns (HR 30 October 1957). These political tasks were all extensions of women's supposedly 'natural' role in the household, and women were to cope with these different demands by planning their time well. The content of what Gerwani considered to belong to the 'natural' realm of women, changed over time. In the mid-1950s, Gerwani leaders stressed women's femininity, apparently fearing that the militancy of Gerwani cadres might antagonize men. For example, in 1956 chairperson Umi Sarjono herself opened the discussion in a speech for the Third Plenary in which she admonished the cadres to maintain a womanly attitude: ... it is altogether wrong if the tasks we have to carry out in our organizations cause us to sacrifice all our household duties, or that our love for family, house and yard disappears... We must not give up our womanly attitude... this womanly attitude is the love for husband and children, the organization of the household, being dressed properly and in a simple manner and join in the struggle of women to defend the rights of women and children and for peace. (HR 25 June 1956) In the 1960s, with its insistence on the overall mobilization of Indonesian society for the anti-imperialist goals the President had formulated, the discourse centred more on mutual assistance between men and women than on femininity, and on motherly militancy rather than on dedication to household duties. The resistance Gerwani experienced at the militancy it propagated indicates the strength of the traditional women's kodrat. 'As women' the kodrat prevailed (albeit in a militant form), as 'workers and citizens' equal rights was called for, and 'as wives' they sought the sisterhood of other women's organizations. To Gerwani, these various parts were not seen to demand contradictory analytical responses, but were perceived from a holistic perspective in which these contradictions were dialectically reconciled. This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 11] === 450 SASKIA E. WIERINGA Women's same-sex practises in Indonesia Since the early 1980s, there have been various waves of press reporting in which sensationalized accounts appear of women loving each other.16 When these first appeared, Indonesia had no gay or lesbian movement, the word 'lesbian', or lesbi was hardly known. Although initial media coverage was not downright insulting, the women were presented in a stereotypical fashion (as 'butch'-'femme' couples, for example) and their choice was seen to deviate from 'normal heterosexuality'. The suggestion was that this 'perverse' and 'exotic' custom was introduced into an 'innocent' Indonesia by a decadent West. Especially in publications in the late 1980s, lesbianism was seen as a disease that with some proper effort and the dedicated treatment by welltrained psychotherapists could be cured.17 By that time same-sex activities had become associated with such decadent practises as prostitution, promiscuity and other 'modern' and urban vices as discotheques, the use of drugs and the wild abandon of urban night-life.'8 The discussion by the media of a new term for such activities, 'lesbianism' also meant that intimacy between women became more suspect. Whereas earlier women-loving-women could go undetected if they took care not to violate certain norms of accepted feminine behaviour, they now found themselves under suspicion. At the same time small groups of women adopted a self-styled lesbian identity (see Gayatri n.d., Wieringa 1987) However, although the concept of 'lesbianism' may have been new, and derived from the West, same-sex practises among both women and men were not. In Indonesia, historical references to homosexual practises are rarer than in, for example, India (Thadani 1999), but the occurrence of same-sex relations among both men and women, transvestism and crossgender behaviour has long been noted by travellers and other observers in the 'Malay archipelago'. Karsch-Haack (1911) has summarized some of the most important sources until the first decade of the last century. In his section on male homosexuality he devoted over 30 pages to what is now called Indonesia, in which he gives numerous examples of transvestism (called banci in Java), hermaphroditism,'9 pederasty and sodomy. He wrote of male priestesses among the Dayak, the Buginese and the Toraja, about transvestite male-to-female dancers in Java and about boys at the courts of Aceh and Bali who were used for anal intercourse by older men (1911, pp. 185-218).20 Karsch-Haack devotes considerably fewer pages to women (only three) in which he dwells on the dildos that some of the women used: in Aceh the women made them of wax, as did the women in Bali, while Dayak women used a combination of wood and wax. He remarks that in East Java one can find transgendered women who dressed and behaved like men from an early age. They were referred to by the same name as used for the men, wandu which is Javanese for banci (1911, pp. 488491). Although Karsch-Haack uses far fewer sources on women than on men, this does not necessarily imply that women engaged in same-sex practises in fewer cases than men did. About Bali, for example, he suggests that women engage in 'tribady' in similar fashion as men engage in pederasty, but in a much more covert way. This remark points to two important problems when This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 12] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 451 comparing same-sex practises among men and women. In the first place, gender relations are such that women, in line with their kodrat, are supposed to be gentle, meek and sexually shy, while men are stimulated to be more sexually aggressive, coarse, brave and outward-looking. In the second place, male observers, such as travellers, administrators and scholars tend to ignore women's intimate domains, or are denied access to such information. This may be caused both by women's culturally-imposed shyness towards men and, at times, callous indifference of male observers of the specificities of women's social and sexual domains (see also Blackwood and Wieringa 1999b). Other cases of gender inversion have been documented in the royal courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta in Central Java. Lady soldiers, 'Javanese Amazons' as Carey and Houben (1987) call them, were dressed in male attire. These soldiers were admired for their military prowess and were also trained in dancing, singing and making music (Kumar 1980).21 Same-sex erotic relations among women were also recorded. During the reign of Pakubuwana V, a 'lesbian scandal' was reported at his central Javanese court of Surakarta. The Dutch translator Winter, who knew the court intimately, wrote in 1902 that ever since the Pakubuwana V had discovered that the women who had been found to have intimate relations with each other lay beside each other playing with their dildo, he had made it into a law that to prevent this harmful practise, as they might never be interested in love with men any more, he would never allow his permanent servants to sleep at night out of his view, so all of them had to lie in front of the door to his room, in a row, six feet from each other. (Winter 1902, p. 39) It is interesting to note that the Pakubuwana did not ascribe the pleasure the women found in each other to 'heterosexual deprivation', as so often occurred in the harems of Eastern kings (see for instance Murray and Roscoe 1997). On the contrary, he was afraid they might like it so much they would not want to sleep with men any more. As Gayatri learnt from her late grandmother, who lived within the walls of the royal court of Yogyakarta, no man, not even the king, was allowed to set foot within the keputren, the women's space. In these polygynous households the women of the keputren engaged in female friendships, which might involve same-sex intimacies, without fear of being discovered. 22 Another indication of female-to-male gender inversion is found in the concept of arthanariswari, an originally Sanskrit term which translates as 'mistress or queen who is half male'.2 This was for instance said of K&n Dhedhes, a queen of Singasari in the thirteenth-century. She was seen as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga, whose destructive powers, if tamed by a potent husband, 'could be transmuted to fertile and beneficent influence crucial to the cosmic harmony of the realm' (Carey and Houben 1987, p. 15, quoting Lind). Srikandi, wayang hero Arjuna's warrior wife, is known to have engaged in transsexual activities, as told in the Kandihawa play (Gayatri n.d., citing Wiryoatmojo). She is described as changing her sexuality and taking the name of Kandihawa, in order to marry a woman called Dewi Durniti. When Durniti complained to her father that s/he was not a real man, Kandihawa This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 13] === 452 SASKIA E. WIERINGA went to a priest to ask his help to gratify her/his wife's needs. Kandihawa was provided with male genitals, went home and slept with her/his wife, who fell pregnant and gave birth to a son called Bambang Nirbita. In present-day Indonesia banci (or wandu) are still to be found in the modern cities of Java, such as Surabaya and Jakarta.24 They are also called wadam (from wanita-woman, Adam) or waria (from wanita and pria man). Waria are so common that several cities have waria associations, such as the Surabaya Waria Union (Oetomo 1996, p. 265). In present-day Indonesian cities, there are also crossdressing, transgendered women who have sex with other women, and who seem to have a harder time than the waria have. They are socially less visible, and their transgression of accepted gender borders is less accepted. As a result they face severe harassment from their surroundings and are on the whole socially marginalized. There are many other, more hidden ways in which women express their erotic or sexual attraction to each other. All these forms of sexual practises are Indonesian, are rooted in specific Indonesian customs and traditions and are not imported into or imposed upon Indonesian women by either a decadent West, or by 'foreign ideologies' like socialism. On the contrary, 'modernity' came to Indonesia in the form of colonialist power holders who brought with them a bourgeois, Calvinist morality,25 and a morally upright version of socialism as propagated by the PKI and its mass organizations. In both cases these ideologies did not stimulate 'decadent' sexual practises, such as gender transversion or same-sex intimacies. Rather, they propagated a family model based on normative compulsory heterosexuality and introduced or at least strengthened homophobia. Conclusions The accusations directed at Gerwani after 'the events' of October 1965 are not supported by the organization's ideology or practise. The organization opposed prostitution, defended rape victims and fought against various forms of 'moral corruption'. Its sexual policy was fairly puritanical, and with a certain emphasis on egalitarian values. The monogamous heterosexual family was treated as the norm. What probably frightened conservative people most was the combination Gerwani cadres represented: mothers who were politically aware and militant patriots and who were challenging men, in the public realm, which was traditionally seen as a male reserve. An analysis of the 1965/66 campaign of sexual slander in Indonesia in which socialist women were demonized in order to smear the PKI and bring down President Sukarno, not only reveals the lies that were used, but also tells something about the backdrop of sexual oppositions through which political conceptions, in this case the birth of the 'New Order' may take place.26 Since then, women's courage, their political and social independence and physical autonomy has been firmly associated with unspeakable acts of sexual debauchery and sexual perversion. New Order women's organizations such as Kowani were entrusted with the task to keep women in their proper place and to 'resubordinate' them after the hectic days of women's political activism in the early 1960s (Vieringa 1985). This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 14] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 453 Indonesia is not unique in its conceptualization of sexuality and women's moral conduct. As Evans (1997) argues, in China too women's sexuality is feared if it is uncontrolled as it spells danger and chaos. There are other parallels too with China. When in 1927 the nationalist Kwomintang army defeated the communist units, 'modern' women were singled out both as an object of hatred and as an object of resubordination. In this case women's 'modernity' was often represented in bobbed hair. The nationalists murdered hundreds of women who had had their hair cut. These women were often sexually tortured, their breasts were cut off or their 'bodies were stripped naked in public places with pieces of wood stuck in their vaginas (Siu 1981, p. 133). Chinese nationalists found that the 'charge of sexual immorality was an extremely effective weapon for discrediting communist party organizers' (Gilmartin 1994, p. 224). In this climate, claiming women's autonomous sexuality, free from patriarchal control, as the lesbian women whom I met tried to do, demanded enormous courage. The recent accusation that Gerwani, with its politically active membership, would have 'promoted lesbianism' suggests that women's political autonomy can be compared to women's sexual autonomy. In both cases, the perceived 'immorality' of the women concerned is regarded not only as a threat to the moral fabric of society, but also to the political stability of the nation. Far from organizing a prostitution racket or promoting an 'understanding of lesbianism', Gerwani was an organization that helped set up a 'modern' sexual morality, heterosexual and monogamous. It never even discussed issues such as 'lesbianism', a concept that was not used in those days. If it had engaged itself in a discussion on the topic it would probably have denounced the forms of gender inversion, crossdressing and same-sex erotic practises that have existed in various forms in particular communities in Indonesia as 'feudal remnants'. Notes 1. 'Maybe Women are more Economical...' (1985), distribution Cinemien, Amsterdam. 2. Fortunately, after the fall of Suharto the ex-members of the large 'communist family' that Gerwani was a part of, need no longer be so afraid. Some former members, including Mrs Sulami, ex-deputy secretary of Gerwani, have even set up a foundation to find the 'truth' about the 1965/66 massacre. They have been interviewing survivors and have been documenting mass graves. See, for the prison years of Mrs Sulami, (Sulami 1999). 3. See, for the interview process and the biases encountered in the documentary part of the research process, chapter 1 of my thesis Unravelling Hidden Histories: The Research Process (1995, pp. 1-22). 4. His book Sarinah, subtitled (in translation) the 'Duty of Women in the Struggle of the Indonesian Republic', was one of the most feminist books written by an Indonesian author until the fall of Suharto in 1998. It was first published in 1947. 5. In August 1998, Soekardjo Wiladjito, who was adjutant of Sukarno in 1966, declared that Sukarno was forced to sign the letter in which he handed over his powers to Suharto, when general Panggabean pointed his gun to the president. This testimony of Soekardjo can be seen as another proof that Suharto indeed committed a coup. This contradicts the official army position, that it was the PKI which organized a coup, while Sukarno voluntarily signed away his powers (NRC 30/9/98). 6. In, for instance, the following papers: the army newspaper Angkatan Bersenjata, of 11 October 1965 and Duta Masyarakat 12 October 1965. 7. For instance, in Berita Yudha of 4 November 1965 and Mingguan Berita, second week of December 1965. This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 15] === 454 SASKIA E. WIERINGA 8. Marto is a pseudonym. Interview 28 February 1983. 9. See the report on Indonesia and East Timor prepared by the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences, Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy, which was submitted to the 55th session of the Commission on Human Rights on 21 January 1999 (E/CN.4/1999/68/Add.3). 10. See also Wolf (1992), Brenner (1995) and Bodden (1996). 11. The content of Gerwani's political ideology was so vague that it is difficult to determine in any way whether it should be called 'socialist' or 'communist'. It is 'communist' in so far as Gerwani followed the PKI line, but on a daily, practical level it seems fairer to call its views 'socialist'. The organization itself also often used the words 'progressive' and 'revolutionary' which linked it closer to Sukarno's discourse (see Wieringa 1995). 12. This article on the 'Melati bungalows' (brothels) used case studies to demonstrate that concubinage and marriage problems caused some women to enter the trade. 13. Manipol, Manifesto Politik, is the name of Sukarno's speech in which he outlined his ideology of Guided Democracy. 14. General report of Gerwani's Central Leadership, HR 5 November 1964. 15. Kartini was the first major Indonesian feminist. She is a national heroine. 16. See, for instance, the articles in Tempo of May 23, 1981, on 'the love affair of Aty and Nona' and of 30 may 1981, on 'the marriage of Jossie and Bonnie'. 17. See for instance, Nova, 28 May 1989. 18. See also my fictionalized description of some women-loving-women in Uw Toegenegen Dora D. (Wieringa 1987). 19. The fascination of Karsch-Haack and his sources with hermaphroditism, elongated clitorises etc., must be seen in the light of the pre-modern one-sex model as analysed by Lacqeur (1990). In this view 'mannish women' somehow, that is either with a dildo or by means of an enlarged clitoris, penetrated their partners. See also Bleys (1995). 20. See also Van der Kroef 1954. 21. One of the most feared cavalry commanders of the Javanese prince Dipanagara who led the Java war (1825-30) was Raden Ayu Yudakusuma who had shaved off her hair like many male commanders (Carey and Houben 1987, p. 20). 22. Personal communication to the author, August 1994. 23. This transgendered being is created by the union of the Hindu deities Shiva (male) and Shakti (female). Especially in Tan-tric rites there is also ani association of the ardhanarishvara with homoeroticism (Conner et al. 1997). 24. See, for instance, Wilson and Oetomo on the reog, a traditional performance in the East Javanese town of Ponorogo (http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/hum/as/intersections/current2). 25. See also Onghokham 1991. 26. For an analysis of the New Order regime, see for instance Cribb and Brown (1995), Hill (1994), Schwarz (1994) and Vatikiotis (1993). References Anderson, B. R. 0. G. (1965) Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project). Anderson, B. (1987) How Did the Generals Die? Indonesza, 43, 109-135. Anderson, B. R. 0. G. (1996) 'Bullshit!'. S/he said. The Happy, Modern, Sexy, Indonesian Married Woman as Transsexual. In L. J. Sears (ed.) Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia (Durham and London: Duke University Press), pp. 270195. Anderson, B. R. and McVey, R. T. (1971) A Preliminaiy Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup in Indonesia (Ithaca: Modern Indonesia Project Cornell University, Interim Report). Blackwood, E. and Wieringa, S. E. (1999a) Female Desires: Same-sex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures (New York: Columbia University Press). Blackwood, E. and Wieringa, S. E. (1999b) Sapphic Shadows: Challenging the Silence in the Study of Sexuality. In E. Blackwood and S. E. Wieringa (eds) Female Desires: Same-sex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 39-67. Bleys, R. C. (1995) The Geography of Perversion; Male-to-Male Sexual Behavior Outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination, 1750-1918 (New York: New York University Press). Bodden, M. H. (1996) Woman as nation in Mangunwijaya's Durga Umayi. Indonesia, 62, 53-82. This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 16] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 455 Brenner, S. A. (1995) Why Women Rule the Roost: Rethinking Javanese ideologies of Gender and Self- Control. In A. Ong and M. G. Peletz (eds) Bewitching Women, Pious Men, Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press). Carey, P. and Houben, V. (1987) Spirited Srikandhis and Sly Sumbadras: the Social, Political and Economic Roles of Women at the Central Javanese Courts in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. In E. Locher-Scholten and A. Niehof (eds) Indonesian Women in Focus (Dordrecht: Foris), pp. 12-43. Conner, R. P., Hatfield Sparks, D. and Sparks, M. (1997) Cassell's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit (London: Cassell). Cribb, R. (ed.) (1990) The Indonesian Killings of 19651966 (Clayton: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies). Cribb, R. and Brown, C. (1995) Modern Indonesia: a History Since 1945 (Harlow: Longman). Crouch, H. (1978) The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Evans, H. (1997) Women and Sexuality in China (Cambridge: Polity Press). Feith, H. (1962) The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Gayatri, B. J. D. (n.d.) [Come] Outed but Remains Invisible: A Portrait of Lesbian in Yava (sic) (mimeo). Gilmartin, C. K (1994) Gender, Political Culture, and Women's Mobilization in the Chinese Nationalist Revolution, 1924-1927. In C. K Gilmartin, G. Hershatter, L. Rofel and T. White (eds) Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), pp. 195-226. Hill, H. (ed.) (1994) Indonesia's New Order: The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Transformation (St Leonard's: Allen & Unwin). Jayawardena, K. (1982) Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London: Zed Books) Karsch-Haack, F. (1911) Das Gleichgechlechtlige Leben derNaturv6lker (Munich: Reinhardt). Kumar, A. (1980) Javanese Court Society an Politics in the late Eighteenth Century: The Record of a Lady Soldier, Part I: The Religious, Social, and Economic Life of the Court. Indonesia, 29, 1-46. Lapidus, G. W. (1978) Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development and Social Change (Berkeley: University of California Press). Laqueur, T. (1990) Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Lev, D. S. (1999) Strengthening Indonesian Civil Society. Paper presented at the Human Rights Symposium, Amsterdam. Lewin, Ellen and Leap, L. W. (eds) (1996) Out in the Field. Reflections of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press). Mortimer, R. (1974) Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics 1959-1965 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Murray, S. 0. and Roscoe, W. (1997) Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature (New York and London: New York University Press). Onghokham (1991) Kekuasaan dan Seksualitas, Lintasan Sejarah Pra dan Masa Kolonial. Prisma, 7,15-23. Oetumo, De6d (1996) Gender and Sexual Orientation in Indonesia. In Laurie J. Sears (ed.). Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia. (Durham & London: Duke University Press.) Schwarz, A. (1994) A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia in the 1990s (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin). Siu, B. (1991) 1900-1949. Women of China: Imperialism and Women's Resistance (London: Zed Press). Sukarno, I. (1963 [1947]) Sarinah: Kewadjiban Wanita dalam Perdjoangan Republik Indonesia (Djokjakarta: Panitya Penerbit Buku-Buku Karangan Presiden Sukarno). Sulami (1999) Perempuan-Kebenaran dan Penjara (Jakarta: Cipta Lestari). Thadani, G. (1999) The Politics of Identities and Languages: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India. In E. Blackwood and S. E. Wieringa (eds) Female Desires: Same-sex Relations and Transgender Practices across Cultures (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 67-91. Tornquist, 0. (1984) Dilemmas of Third World Communism: The Destruction of the PKI in Indonesia (London: Zed Press). Van der Kroef, J. M. (1992 [1954]) Transvestism and the Religious Hermaphrodite in Indonesia. In W. R. Dynes and S. Donaldson (eds) Asian Homosexuality (New York and London: Garland). Vatikiotis, M. R. J. (1993) Indonesian Politics under Suharto. Order, Developnzent and Pressure for Change. (London and New York: Routledge). Vreede-de Stuers, C. (1960) The Indonesian Woman, Struggles and Achievements (The Hague: Mouton). Wertheim, W. F. (1991) Indonesie in 1965: Wanneer gaan de Archieven open? Derde Wereld, 9, 33-56. Wieringa, S. E. (1981) En Overal laat zij Bloedsporen achter, Macht, Sekse en Klasse in de Batikindustrie van Midden Java. SocFem Teksten, 5, 179-202. This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 17] === 456 SASKIA E. WIERINGA Wieringa, S. E. (1985) The Perfumed Nightmare, Some Notes on the Indonesian Women's Movement (The Hague: Institute of Social Studies Working Paper). Wieringa, S. E. (1987) Uw Toegenegen Dora D., Reisbrieven (Amsterdam: Furie). Wieringa, S. E. (1995) The Politicization of Gender Relations in Indonesia: The Indonesian Women's Movement and Gerwani until the New Order State (The Hague: ISS PhD thesis). Wieringa, S. E. (1999) Sexual Metaphors In the Change from Soekarno's Old Order to Soeharto's New Order. In Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 32, 143-179. Winter, J. W. (1902) Beknopte beschrijving van het Hof van Soerakarta in 1824. Bijdragen tot de Taal Land- en Volkenkunde, 54, 15-172. Wolf, D. (1992) Factory Daughters: Gender, Household Dynamics, and Rural Industrialization in Java (Berkeley: University of California Press). Resume Gerwani, organisation communiste indonesienne, a ete interdite en 1966. Lors du putsch du ler Octobre 1965, au cours duquel d'importantes personnalit's militaires indonesiennes furent tuees, elle avait ete denoncee comme etant 'associee aux perversions sexuelles'. Ces accusations ont contribue au massacre de plus d'un million de personnes et a l'arrivee au pouvoir du General Suharto. Pourtant, par bien des aspects, l'ideologie de Gerwani etait puritaine et plutot en faveur du renforcement de la cellule familiale monogame. Elle ne remettait en cause l'ideologie traditionnelle du genre qu'en insistant sur le role que les femmes devaient jouer, en tant qu'acteurs politiques et en tant que meres militantes. C'est plus recemment que l'organisation a ete accusee de 'promouvoir le lesbianisme', alors que ce sujet n'a jamais ete discute en son sein. L'article examine l'ideologie de Gerwani afin d'explorer les liens entre activisme politique et sexualite'. Selon elle, l'organisation feminine serait une de ces 'forces de la modernite' qui ont reveille l'homophobie. Son auteur emet l'hypothese que I'activisme politique de Gerwani, considere comme une telle remise en cause de l'ideologie traditionnelle du genre, a fini par engendrer de la peur, celle d'un certain desordre social, oiu les femmes seraient liberees de tout controle par les hommes heterosexuels-soit en tant que femmes aux moeurs legeres, perverties et susceptibles de castrer des generaux, soit en tant que lesbiennes. Resumen La organizacion comunista de Indonesia Gerwani fue prohibida en 1966. Habia sido asociada con perversiones sexuales durante el golpe de estado ocurrido el 1 de octubre de 1965, en que fueron asesinadas personalidades importantes del ejercito de Indonesia. Estas acusaciones fueon un factor que provoc6 la masacre de m's de un millon de personas y Ilevo al poder al General Suharto. Sin embargo, la ideologia Gerwani era, en muchos aspectos, puritana y encaminada a defender la unidad familiar monogama. Quebrantaba la ideologia tradicional de 1 genero solo porque insistia en que las mujeres debian representar un papel politico y ser madres militantes. Hace poco la organizacion ha sido acusada de fomentar el lesbianismo, cuando en realidad nunca ha tocado este tema. En este documento, se analiza la ideologia Gerwani para explorar el vinculo entre activismo politico y sexualidad. La This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms === [PDF page 18] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 457 organizacion de las mujeres puede ser vista coma una de las fuerzas de la 'modernidad' que estimulo la homofobia. El documents sugiere que el activismo politico de Gerwani fue considerado un quiebre tal de la ideologia tradicional de los ge6neros, que disparo un temor al desorden social, en el que las mujeres se librarian del control de los hombres heterosexuales -tanto como las mujeres promiscues y pervertidas que eran vistas como propensas a castrar a los generales o como lesbianas. This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

=== [Page 17] === 456 SASKIA E. WIERINGA [References – English, unchanged:] Wieringa, S. E. (1985) The Perfumed Nightmare, Some Notes on the Indonesian Women's Movement (The Hague: Institute of Social Studies Working Paper). Wieringa, S. E. (1987) Uw Toegenegen Dora D., Reisbrieven (Amsterdam: Furie). Wieringa, S. E. (1995) The Politicization of Gender Relations in Indonesia: The Indonesian Women's Movement and Gerwani until the New Order State (The Hague: ISS PhD thesis). Wieringa, S. E. (1999) Sexual Metaphors In the Change from Soekarno's Old Order to Soeharto's New Order. In Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 32, 143-179. Winter, J. W. (1902) Beknopte beschrijving van het Hof van Soerakarta in 1824. Bijdragen tot de Taal Land- en Volkenkunde, 54, 15-172. Wolf, D. (1992) Factory Daughters: Gender, Household Dynamics, and Rural Industrialization in Java (Berkeley: University of California Press). Résumé [French abstract, translated] Gerwani, an Indonesian communist organisation, was banned in 1966. During the coup of 1 October 1965, in which important Indonesian military figures were killed, it had been denounced as being "associated with sexual perversions". These accusations contributed to the massacre of more than a million people and to General Suharto's coming to power. Yet in many respects Gerwani's ideology was puritan and rather in favour of strengthening the monogamous family unit. It challenged the traditional gender ideology only by insisting on the role that women should play, as political actors and as militant mothers. More recently the organisation has been accused of "promoting lesbianism", whereas this subject was never discussed within it. The article examines Gerwani's ideology in order to explore the links between political activism and sexuality. According to the author, the women's organisation would be one of those "forces of modernity" that awakened homophobia. The author puts forward the hypothesis that Gerwani's political activism, regarded as such a challenge to traditional gender ideology, ended up generating fear – that of a certain social disorder in which women would be freed from all control by heterosexual men – whether as women of loose morals, perverted and liable to castrate generals, or as lesbians. Resumen [Spanish abstract, translated] The Indonesian communist organisation Gerwani was banned in 1966. It had been associated with sexual perversions during the coup d'état of 1 October 1965, in which important figures of the Indonesian army were murdered. These accusations were a factor that provoked the massacre of more than a million people and brought General Suharto to power. However, the Gerwani ideology was in many respects puritan and aimed at defending the monogamous family unit. It broke with the traditional ideology of gender only because it insisted that women should play a political role and be militant mothers. Recently the organisation has been accused of fomenting lesbianism, when in reality it never touched on this subject. In this paper the Gerwani ideology is analysed to explore the link between political activism and sexuality. The ... [Notice: "This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC. All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms"] === [Page 18] === SAME-SEX PRACTISES IN INDONESIA 457 ... women's organisation can be seen as one of the forces of "modernity" that stimulated homophobia. The paper suggests that Gerwani's political activism was considered such a break with the traditional ideology of the genders that it triggered a fear of social disorder in which women would free themselves from the control of heterosexual men – both as the promiscuous and perverted women who were seen as liable to castrate generals and as lesbians. [Notice: "This content downloaded from 101.203.170.242 on Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:30:03 UTC. All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms"]