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View all search resultsLGBT community finds Bali ‘somewhat friendlier’. With conditions.
Members of Indonesia's LGBT community reflect on their altered perceptions of Bali following the very public – and for some, unwanted – furor over the issues unearthed by the Kristen Gray case.
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LGBT Indonesians mostly consider Bali a LGBT-friendly place, but the recent Kristen Grey issue on social media has made some rethink that belief. (JP/Courtesy of source)
T
he day was like any other for Josephine and Putri. In the early evening after work, they exercised before dinner as usual and then retreated to relax at the end of the day, their phones in hand.
Scrolling through Twitter, they came across a controversy already in full bloom. Opinions had been formed and sides taken in the now-familiar issues surrounding American national Kristen Gray and her deleted Twitter thread on expat life in Bali as a “digital nomad”. By then, the debate had devolved into a virtual shouting match of racial and homophobic remarks.
Like Gray and her partner Saundra Alexander, Josephine and Putri (who prefer to keep their full names private) are a same-sex couple in Indonesia who live together. But the similarities stop there: Josephine is of the Chinese-Indonesian minority while Putri is Javanese. They live in Bandung, West Java, and neither has a passport nor receives an income from the United States.
Both women are in their 20s and agree that the Gray case is an “unfortunate situation” that had been blown out of proportion, and that Gray’s statements about Bali being “queer-friendly” rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
”The issue is layered. Overstaying a visa, tax evasion, ethics… Yet [Gray] played it up as an LGBT issue. She didn’t even acknowledge the valid arguments about gentrification and its impact on native Balinese,” said Putri.
“It’s easy for them to [move here], but it’s impossible for us to do the opposite. Everybody is entitled to pursue a better life, but you must be aware of the weight your nationality holds,” said Josephine.
Josephine and Putri’s remarks come in the larger context of the wellbeing of Indonesia’s LGBT community. The widespread attention Gray’s case has brought to LGBT issues, they fear, could cause newfound unrest among Indonesian society.
