Playground love: sex work, pleasure, and self-affirmation in the urban nightlife of Indonesian waria

Abstract

Indonesian transgender women, locally and internationally recognised as waria, share some lifestyle patterns that have emerged under conditions of limited social acceptance. These patterns include involvement in sex work. The high number of waria who are sex workers is usually explained in economic terms. However, their presence in certain locations around the city known for waria sex work is not only for work, and quite often not even for sex. Waria street nightlife fosters waria agency, which emerges from self-affirmation through pleasurable bodily practices involving intimate (sexual partners) and both proximate (other waria and men nearby) and distant others (structuring ideals). Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2015 in Java and West Papua, this paper describes the political and economic organisation of sex work among waria, then highlights the social and sensorial qualities of waria street nightlife.

Résumé

Les femmes transgenresi indonésiennes, reconnues aux plans local et international en tant que Waria, partagent certains styles de vie qui sont apparus dans certaines conditions communes d’acceptation sociale limitée. Ces modèles incluent l’engagement dans le travail du sexe. La forte prévalence du travail du sexe parmi les Waria est expliquée en termes économiques. Cependant, leur présence dans certains endroits autour de la ville qui est connue pour le travail du sexe exercé par des Waria ne répond pas à leur besoin de travailler, ni même, bien souvent, d’avoir des rapports sexuels. La vie nocturne des Waria dans la rue favorise aussi leur capacité à agir, qui émerge de leur auto-affirmation à travers des pratiques corporelles agréables impliquant d’autres, que ceux-ci soient intimes (partenaires sexuels), et à la fois proches (autres Waria et hommes établis à proximité) et distants (idéaux structurants). En exploitant un travail de terrain conduit entre 2010 et 2015 à Java et en Papouasie occidentale, je décris d’abord l’interprétation politique et économique du travail du sexe chez les Waria, puis je mets en avant les caractéristiques sociales et sensorielles de la vie nocturne des Waria dans la rue.

Resumen

Las mujeres transgénero en Indonesia, local e internacionalmente reconocidas como waria, comparten algunos patrones de estilos de vida que han surgido en condiciones compartidas de aceptación social limitada. En estos patrones se incluye la participación en el trabajo sexual. En general, se supone que el elevado número de warias que son trabajadoras sexuales se debe a problemas económicos. Sin embargo, su presencia en ciertos lugares en torno a la ciudad conocidos por el trabajo sexual de las warias no solo se debe al trabajo y muchas veces ni siquiera al sexo. La vida nocturna en la calle de las warias también fomenta su capacidad de acción que surge de la autoafirmación a través de las prácticas de placer corporal que tienen que ver con la intimidad (parejas sexuales) así como la proximidad (otras warias y hombres cercanos) y distancia de otros (ideales de estructuración). A partir del trabajo de campo llevado a cabo entre 2010 y 2015 en la isla de Java y Papúa Occidental, primero describo la interpretación política y económica del trabajo sexual de las warias, y luego destaco las cualidades sociales y sensoriales de la vida nocturna de las warias en la calle.

Keywords:

• Waria
• transgender
• sex work
• embodiment
• street life
• Indonesia

View correction statement:

Erratum

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank the research participants in Indonesia for sharing their experiences with me, without which this study would not have been possible. My gratitude goes to Paola Bacchetta for her comments on the initial manuscript and Dédé Oetomo for encouragement and support in Indonesia. I would also like to thank Art Leete, Susan Stryker, Saba Mahmood and the UC Berkeley graduate students who attended the CSSC/CRG Dissertation Workshop Retreat in Spring 2014, and the copy editors of this paper Daniel Allen and Paul Emmet. Special thanks to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments I found extremely engaging and helpful.

Notes

1. The word waria is a derivation from wanita [woman] and pria [man]. The term was coined during president Suharto’s New Order era in the late 1970s.

2. All names are pseudonyms. After longer quotations by waria, I refer to the pseudonym, the age of the person at the time of the interview and the city where we met.

3. The Indonesian language does not distinguish pronouns based on gender but considering the waria preference for being addressed as ibu (title of standard Indonesian equating to Mrs) or mbah (widely used title of Javanese origin for Miss), I refer to them by she and her.

4. Gender reassignment surgery is extremely rare in Indonesia.

5. Lesser used, but historically older terms are banci or its variation in waria slang béncong. Today banci and béncong usually bear derogatory connotations.

6. Most waria differentiate themselves from Indonesian gays, claiming that gays are attracted to other gays, but waria are attracted to men who are considered heterosexual.

7. I use the term transgender as a heuristic tool following the growing field of transgender studies (Stryker 2006, 4–6) and not as an identity marker for waria subjectivity. In the field of anthropology, gender variant people have also been framed as ‘third gender’ (e.g. Herdt 1996). I am reluctant to use this term for its inherent colonial gaze and romanticising nature (Towle and Morgan 2002). Although ‘transgender’ could be criticised in a similar manner (Valentine 2007), and I acknowledge the term’s limitations, I use the word heuristically to consider the variety of gendered lives that are lived differently from society’s conventional expectations, derived from sex assigned at birth.

8. While I also use the term sex work to describe monetised sexual exchanges between waria and men, it is important to recognise its limitations in light of the data presented here (see also Wardlow 2004).

9. I draw here on the conception of ‘space’ as used in recent work in critical human geography, influenced by the work of Henri Lefebvre (1991).

10. Since Unni Wikan’s (1977) and Gill Shepherd’s (1978) opposing views on xanith in Oman, there has been a conversation in anthropology that questions whether transgender behaviour is foremost rooted in the symbolism of gender in a particular society or in economic inequality. Waria sex work could potentially be discussed further in relation to this framework, but it remains beyond the scope of this article.

11. Facial silicon injections are rarely used among the younger generation of waria, as they have witnessed the effects of cheap silicon injections on the faces of their elders.

12. Dangdut is a genre of Indonesian popular music.

13. Dorce Gamalama (born 1963) is an Indonesian singer, actress and entertainer. She is one of the few waria who has undergone gender reassignment surgery and hence defines herself as a woman.

14. An estimated 70% of the workforce in Indonesia is engaged in informal employment (Firdausy 2000).

15. Dunia waria nonetheless does not stand in total isolation from other ‘worlds’, such as dunia gay (gay world) or the context of female sex work.

16. Don Kulick (1998, 166) makes a similar claim about travesti in Brazil.