TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Ramadan reflection: What’s in a name? What’s in a gender identity?
March 31 is International Day of Transgender Visibility and it is high time that they are made visible in a way that gives them the respect that they deserve as human beings and citizens, and the rights that are rightfully theirs.
Change Size
Feeling invisible: Even years after coming out, Amar Alfikar still feels invisible among fellow lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) Indonesians, especially during discussions. (Personal archive/Courtesy of Amar Alfikar)
L
ast week I had to have a new passport made as my old one had expired in 2020. Given the pandemic travel restrictions, I had no need to renew it, but this year, my son invited me to spend Idul Fitri in Singapore where he lives with his wife and son, so obviously, I need a passport.
I am a member of my neighborhood Rukun Warga (RW) WhatsApp Group, so I decided to ask what the requirements and process of getting a passport are as it has been a while since I last did so. One of them, a man, replied and addressed me as “Pak” (Mr.). I thanked him and said, by the way, I am a woman. He replied by saying again “Welcome Pak”. I told him again, I am a woman, I clearly wrote my name in the WhatsApp text: “Julia”. Apparently, he had only read jsuryakusuma (my name in the WhatsApp Group), and assumed I was a man, and would not change his mind until I told him three times. Sigh!
Simone de Beauvoir wrote her groundbreaking, controversial and best-known book The Second Sex in 1949, but it seems in 2023, women are still the second sex. Patriarchy dies hard. I wish it would. Die, that is, so that all of us can be more human, humane and accept and respect differences, not least, gender and sexual differences.
It made me think, here I am, a woman, irked at being thought of as a man. Imagine what it is like for our transgender friends.
March 31 is International Day of Transgender Visibility and it is high time that they are made visible in a way that gives them the respect that they deserve as human beings and citizens, and the rights that are rightfully theirs.
One of the rights of citizenship is to own an ID card (KTP), as it gives one legal status. One of the problems with being transgender is that their photo, i.e. their gender, does not match what they put in the biological sex column. But now, a transwoman can use a photo of her female persona while still being biologically male, which is stated in the sex column. Obviously it’s vice versa for a transman.
There was a time when it was impossible or very difficult for this to happen. Fortunately, things have changed and the Home Ministry’s Population and Civil Registration Directorate General has made it possible for transgender people to have an e-KTP, but there are only two sexes: male or female. In Indonesia, there is no third option where you can put in: transgender or indeterminate, as is increasingly the case in many countries.
