• DOI:10.1017/S0021911805002251
• Corpus ID: 162771344

Gender Transgression in Colonial and Postcolonial Indonesia

@article{Blackwood2005GenderTI,
  title={Gender Transgression in Colonial and Postcolonial Indonesia},
  author={Evelyn Blackwood},
  journal={The Journal of Asian Studies},
  year={2005},
  volume={64},
  pages={849 - 879}
}

• E. Blackwood
• Published 1 November 2005
• History
• The Journal of Asian Studies

THE PRACTICE OF “RITUAL TRANSVESTISM” appears to have been widespread throughout island Southeast Asia from pre-Islamic times. Accounts of ritual transvestic figures appear in colonial and court documents; mythological literature; and ethnohistoric records produced by colonial officials, missionaries, and anthropologists. These accounts draw portraits of individuals who in the course of priestly or shamanic functions “switched” genders or took on “gender-ambiguous” roles as they interceded with spiritual beings on behalf of human subjects. Western observers stated that many of these individuals were males who “dressed as women,” but a few were identified as females who “acted like men.” In the late twentieth century, a burgeoning lesbian and gay movement in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia brought into view a range of genders and sexualities, some of which seem to draw on older models of the ritual transvestite who “switched” genders. Male transgendered individuals, called banci or waria, are prominent in urban areas in Indonesia and figure in theatrical and television performances. Transgendered females are much less obvious in the media or in public spaces; the most publicly recognized figure is the tomboi, the female who identifies as and acts like a man. Are the tomboi/waria identities the contemporary manifestation of the ritual transvestites of early modern times? Or put another way, why are contemporary transgendered individuals, such as the tomboi and waria, framed in the same terms as their colonial “predecessors,” as acting and dressing like the other gender? In reviewing