Patterns of resistance and transgression in Eastern Indonesia: Single women's practices of clandestine courtship and cohabitation

Abstract

This paper explores how single women in the regional Indonesian city of Mataram express sexual desire in a social, cultural and political climate that idealizes the confinement of female sexuality within marriage. It is based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted with single women, their families and health care providers. Success for young women in negotiating sexual desire is dependent upon their ability to maintain a faultless public reputation and mediate between their desires and those of men. Many single women find ways to pursue their desires by bending the rules of courtship conventions, performing sexual purity in public, while resisting from within the hegemonic sexual culture. However, women who visibly transgress dominant sexual ideals (and in doing so offend the status quo) are stigmatized and ostracized. Single women's practice of resistance and sexual transgression in premarital relationships are represented using the examples of pacaran backstreet (clandestine courtship) and cohabitation prior to marriage.

Keywords:

• Courtship
• single women
• Indonesia
• cohabitation

Notes

For discussion of class similarities in the sexual behaviour of Indonesian youth refer to studies by Utomo (1997), Situmorang (1999) and Khisbiyah et al. (1996).

See Utomo (2003) for a substantive discussion of the issues currently surrounding the absence of comprehensive sexuality education for Indonesian youth.

Elsewhere (Bennett 2002), the author has written in greater detail on the growing popularity of pacaran backstreet as one of the many forms of contemporary courtship enjoyed by Indonesian youth.

Beazley (1999) has also noted the stigma attached to premarital cohabitation for Indonesian youth in Yogyakarta.

Utomo (2002: 222) also found that the family home was a popular location for sexual encounters among Javanese middle class youth.

For a detailed discussion of premarital pregnancy and abortion among single Indonesian women, who have no legal access to family planning services, see Bennett (2001).

There is greater ethnic diversity in Mataram, than in rural areas of Lombok or the other two cities of the island Praya and Selong. Balinese communities in Lombok are heavily concentrated in Mataram, due to its vicinity to Bali, and constitute approximately 10% of the city's total population. Inter‐marriage between Balinese Hindus and Muslims is not uncommon, and is more common than inter‐marriage between Muslims and Christians in Lombok.