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Long road ahead: Life as nonbinary in Indonesia
In a fairly conservative Indonesia, identifying as neither man nor woman often leads to ridicule or, worse, harassment.
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Inclusive: Telling your preferred gender pronoun helps create a welcoming space for nonbinary people and other gender identities. (Unsplash/Sharon McCutcheon) (Unsplash/Sharon McCutcheon)
In a fairly conservative Indonesia, identifying as neither man nor woman often leads to ridicule, or worse, harassment.
It is easy to trigger hatred toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) community — 22-year-old Basil (not their real name) from South Tangerang knew this well. Merely inviting a gay couple to appear on one of the most popular YouTube podcast channels in Indonesia already did the job. The now-deleted podcast episode recently brought up rehashed “discourses” and hate speech on social media.
But Basil, who identifies as nonbinary, noted that this hostility came from an age-old understanding, however flawed it was.
“Sexuality is very easy to explain. These people already know what it means to be of a certain sexuality,” they said to The Jakarta Post on May 11. “But gender? All our lives, people only know either man or woman.”
If you had not already picked up on it, Basil goes by they/them, inclusive pronouns that refer to an unspecified gender — acknowledged by any dictionary. But its use often leads to ridicule or disregard.
“Putting what you identify as on your social media bio almost always backfires on you. More people are going to use it to mock you, like ‘okay, she/her’ or ‘haha quirky snowflake’, the usual,” they said.
In recent years, more people have started putting their pronouns on their social media pages — and more social media platforms have provided the space to do so — to create a “welcoming community for members of all gender identities,” as the social/career platform LinkedIn put it. But many detractors still see it as a “self-absorbed” move to deny one’s assigned sex at birth.
