Growing up as a queer person in Indonesia meant continually starving for representation.
It’s a Muslim country, no one’s going to stick their heads over that parapet, not if they want to keep the on their shoulders!
However, when I turn to Western media, more often than not I’m met with disappointment—I find that I cannot relate to the queer characters at all.
Really? It’s just a Western conceit that thinks the only important thing is the sexuality then?
Recently, my friends shared a post about the Amsterdam Rainbow Dress. I get the intended sentiment. It’s a call for inclusivity and equal rights for everyone in every country in the world. Still, I can’t help but wonder, with a definite sense of bitterness: Is that all these countries are to the people behind this project? Why does it feel like the dress is saying “we are more civilized than you are”? The dress gestures at solidarity, but flattens out nuance and historical reality in a way that feels in keeping with a particularly Western, European brand of paternalism that conveniently turns very real people actively fighting for their own rights into caricatures and passive victims.
Welcome to enlightenment! That’s exactly how it works-you’re a tick in the box to the very people who commissioned this post.
Why do I, a queer person of color, have my existence reduced to the narrative that “your country is homophobic” and yet in the media, white characters get to be queer and live rich lives without being trapped and confined within the limits of an outsider’s view of their existence?
Because your country IS homophobic, of course. And that's hardly the worst thing about it, is it?
The graphic novel follows Indu, a trans boy from the moon who struggles with culture shock when he and his adoptive mother move to New Earth. The language barrier makes it difficult for him to connect with his stepfamily and make friends at school, but Indu discovers that New Earth’s queer community are happy to welcome him.
We aren’t just a “developing country.” We aren’t going to be reduced to the neo-colonized tourist traps that have taken over Bali. We are so much more; we are of a rich history and culture that’s under constant threat of being forgotten if we don’t preserve it through our own stories.
You haven’t been able to preserve anything else of your culture in the face of Muslim expansion and conquest, have you?
I'm Australian. I'm gay. I've been to Indonesia many times over many decades, Java, Bali, Lombok. I have friends in Indonesia, one is even an Imam, and no I'm not a muslim. If you want to play a flamboyant victim yes you might have problems. In lots of places. If you act like a normal person in Indonesia no-one could care less what your sexuality is. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteI've given up trying to unravel the Gordian Knot of these people's trains of thought. There are so many unsupported assertions and internal contradictions to work out what point they are trying to make, I doubt that they even know themselves.
ReplyDeleteStonyground.
So, even the white queers are now in need of some "decolonisation", because how dare their queerness be unrepresentative of HIS queerness. If nothing else, this should provide some context for the lanyard classes, because for all the bleating from certain quarters about how terribly xyz-phobic the west is, here is an even bigger victim complaining that our queers get to have a richer life than his queers. Oooh, the bitches!
ReplyDeleteSoon to be followed by screams of complaint when nobody buys their narcissistic mary-sue polemic.
ReplyDeleteYet more of this "poor me" shite, the constant victimhood, or more likely narcissism with a large dose of predatory fetishism. I wouldn't mind, but it's such abject verbose crap and no doubt will be promoted to immature young minds, in schools by the leftist indoctrinators posing as "teachers".
ReplyDelete