Digital homophobia

ABSTRACT

This article examines the emergence of digital homophobia in Indonesia as an assemblage of homophobic discourses imbued with a language of urgency, technological infrastructures, and punitive laws on non-normative sexualities. The internationalisation of LGBT rights has provided discursive capital for anti-LGBT groups to generate affective qualities (fear and moral panic), positioning queer people as a ‘threat’ to national identity, ‘traditional values’, and ‘vectors of disease’ intent on ‘converting’ others to homosexuality. Moreover, technological infrastructure, such as social media, fosters and amplifies the circulation of homophobic rhetoric. Such technologies have enabled citizens to persecute and shame LGBT people directly, and increasingly demand that the state enact punitive laws on gender and sexuality through the use of online petitions and other online surveillance practices that affect queer people beyond the digital space. These movements are legally justified by existing regulations, often associating homosexuality with pornography and social indecency, manifested in local and national laws that do not always specifically target homosexuality. As a result, digital homophobia moves beyond the online space, deeply affecting the material life of the Indonesian queer community and activism. For instance, activists, fearing reprisal, have begun carrying out their activities surreptitiously. This analysis makes a contribution to existing scholarship on global homophobia, surveillance, and technocultural and sexual globalisation by highlighting the interplay of technology, homophobic discourses, and public policy in responding to the proliferation of international LGBT rights discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• assemblages
• digital homophobia
• homophobia
• Indonesia
• LGBT

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Adam Dedman and Jonathan Symons for their intellectual companionship throughout the writing process. I also thank the anonymous reviewer and the guest editors Ben Murtagh and Diego Garcia Rodriguez of this special issue for their sharp feedback.

Notes

1 Human Rights Watch 2016: 21.

2 Interview with Rita Subagyo, Hidayatullah.com (3 February 2014).

3 Throughout this article, the term ‘LGBT’ is used to refer to the global discussion of LGBT rights and the homophobic rhetoric deployed by the anti-queer groups in Indonesia. This decision of choice is mainly driven by the realisation that many international humanitarian organisations and conservative groups still use the term ‘LGBT’ in their quotidian practices, publications, and campaigns.

4 I specifically use the term ‘queer’ as an umbrella term to refer to Indonesians with non-normative genders and sexualities, including the people who identify and who do not identify with LGBT identities. This term is used in this article to refer to Indonesia’s queer activism and subjectivities. Notably, at the time of writing, this choice of nomenclature is made based on the current realisation that after the anti-LGBT panic in 2015–2016, local activists have increasingly deployed the term ‘queer’ in the activist discourses and practices. What is important to acknowledge here is the fact that besides LGBT identities, the term ‘queer’ as an identity is increasingly adopted by urban, highly educated, and upper middle class gay and lesbian Indonesians. For a discussion of the historical shifts of queer identities in Indonesia, from gay, lesbian, to LGBT, see Wijaya (2020).

5 In this article, the term ‘anti-LGBT groups’ refers to both religious and non-religious groups, and the state and non-state actors, that deployed anti-LGBT views in public discourse. These include AILA, Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam, FPI), Minister of Research, Technology, and Higher Education, Muhammad Nasir, and other conservative civil society organisations, government officials and politicians. These organisations and actors happened to articulate their anti-LGBT views at the same interval during the heightened anti-LGBT sentiments in Indonesia in 2015–2016. For a comprehensive description of who said what, see Human Rights Watch (2016: 20-21).

6 I specifically use the term ‘homophobia’. Despite the fact that hatred also extends to transgender people, the anti-LGBT groups predominantly target their attacks on gay and lesbian people.

7 As the current literature suggests, while LGBT equality discourses have achieved substantial successes in recent years, particularly marked by decriminalisation of homosexuality and recognition of the rights of same-sex couples to marry (Winter et al. 2018: 1), a global divide over the course of LGBT rights is also inescapable (Altman and Symons 2016). Similar to the processes occurring in Indonesia, governments, political leaders, and religious groups – for example, in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Uganda, and Malawi – have conveniently framed queer rights as a threat to traditional family values, morality, and societal norms, in order to generate public support around calls to preserve national identity (Currier and Moreau 2018; Offord 2016; Tang 2017; Waidzunas 2015; Weiss 2013). Responding to such a political landscape, a growing body of scholarship has analysed how these rising anti-queer sentiments have impacted local queer activism and, more broadly, gender and sexual politics (see, for example, Bosia and Weiss 2013; Buyantueva 2018; Han 2016; O’Dwyer 2018; Wahab 2012).

8 For a comprehensive discussion about the roles of emotions in the sex panics, see, for example, Irvine (2008).

9 For a more comprehensive discussion of the emergence of the SOGIE framework in Indonesia and how it has been used by queer activists, see Wijaya (2020: 183–216).

10 Thomas Lemke (2021) provides a comprehensive examination of the new materialist scholarship that encompasses immaterialism, vital materialism, and diffractive materialism. For a discussion on those materialisms respectively, see Barad (2007) for diffractive materialism, Bennett (2010) for vital materialism, and Harman (2018) for immaterialism.

11 At the time of writing, the term waria is increasingly replaced with the term transpuan, an amalgam of transgender and a shortened version of perempuan (woman) (Wijaya 2020: 161).

12 Although not formally legal under the law of the state, this lesbian marriage was covered by the media, reporting the story about two young women – ‘Jossie (sporting a masculine white jacket) and Bonnie (dressed in a feminine red gown)’ (Wieringa 2019: 117), whose marriage was attended by their parents and 120 guests (Boellstorff 2005: 64). While the Tempo article on this marriage was accompanied with a brief discussion about the social recognition of homosexuality in the West, the article in Liberty explicitly examined the social impact of such recognition (Boellstorff 2005: 63). According to Boellstorff (2005: 64) the latter can be read as an ‘incitement to discourse’ questioning the relationship between acceptance of homosexuality and the national boundaries.

13 For a more comprehensive analysis of the portrayals of gay, lesbian, and waria people in the films during the New Order era, see Murtagh (2013).

14 I use the term ‘conservative Islamic groups’ to delineate that Indonesian Muslims express their belief in various ways, and they comprise conservative, moderate, and liberal factions (see also Fealy and White 2008: 2). In short, I refuse to automatically associate Islam with homophobia.

15 Translation: Movement on Concerns about LGBT Propaganda – In the last few years, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) propaganda has increasingly manifested in many forms, implicitly and explicitly. The last propaganda cases are related to two books published by Elex Media Komputindo, films, novels, and other propaganda forms. This situation has invigorated deep concerns in society that still upholds Eastern and religious norms. We are AILA, an alliance of diverse civil society organisations that cares about efforts to strengthen the family foundation, inviting the public to actively participate in sending their letters of concerns related to the expansion of LGBT propaganda [in society]. These letters can be addressed to any regulators/policymakers. Any formats are welcome, marked with the writer’s full name or the writer’s organisation. The deadline to send the letter [to the AILA’s secretariat] is 31 August 2014.

16 Translation: 2a. Western feminism distances women away from families. They are encouraged to live separately. Detached from one another. Independent, they said; 2b. Harmonious families are the right means to combat feminist movement. (At the time of writing, these tweets had been removed.)

17 Lesbian activists have been integral to Indonesian women’s movements. For example, the Indonesian Women’s Coalition (Koalisi Perempuan Indonesia, KPI), a feminist organisation, created a particular arm called Sector 15 (Sektor 15) for lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people (Blackwood 2010: 182).

18 Some queer people use a VPN service to work around this ban, while others use Tinder to forge sociality. For a comprehensive discussion of the use of social media in queer community making and activism, see Listiorini and Davies (2017).

19 Grewal (2017) uses the case of ‘security moms’ in the US to illustrate how citizens are increasingly empowered by the state as surveillance actors.

20 This law particularly criminalises liwath (anal penetration between men) and musahaqah (an act of rubbing bodily parts or vagina between women) (Yulius 2015b).

21 For a comprehensive discussion on the debate over the anti-pornography bill, see, among others, Allen (2007).

22 For a detailed discussion on the CONQ web series, see Murtagh (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hendri Yulius Wijaya

Hendri Yulius Wijaya is an Indonesian writer. He is the author of Intimate assemblages: the politics of queer identities and sexualities (Palgrave Macmillan 2020). Email: [email protected].