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View all search resultsThat women have had no control over their own reproductive system is as old as time.
n a collectivist culture like Indonesia’s, one of the ways that a patriarchal society polices women’s rights over their own bodies is by pressuring them to have children, no matter whether the women want to have children or not.
Their personal experiences dealing with social pressures and judgments from their nosy neighbors inspired husband-wife filmmakers Chonie Prysilia and Hizkia Subiyantoro to create a feature-length animated documentary called K0s0ng (empty), released under the English title No One Inside.
The filmmaking couple, currently living in Yogyakarta, deliberately decided not to have children.
“I was called ‘gabug’ by a neighbor. I didn’t speak Javanese, so I asked my husband what that meant. Literally, the word refers to [an empty rice husk], but metaphorically, it refers to infertile women,” Chonie told The Jakarta Post during an interview on Sept. 11.
Chonie was not the only one “punished” by their community for not having children, but also her husband, Hizkia.
“My neighbors started to bully me, saying that I was not man enough to have children,” Hizkia told the Post, highlighting the toxic masculinity of the insult.
“I felt offended and started to get angry, but I didn’t want to be angry all the time. So in 2016, my wife and I decided to answer their questions and hurtful remarks with this film instead,” he said.
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