She Just Wants To Walk Home Night Without Watching Her Back

Even though I am happy to hear that an anti-sodomy law has been overturned, or some government or another has added language to its civil-rights laws to protect transgender or gender-variant people (or "gender identity and expression"), I long ago realized that laws and policies are not, by themselves, sufficient to protect us from physical harm, let alone bias.  And a country's laws and policies are no guarantee of a person's rights or safety in any particular part of that country.

Indonesia is a case in point.  Even though the nation, which is an archipelago straddling the Indian and Pacific Oceans, has no laws against homosexual acts--and its people are generally tolerant--there are parts of the country that are simply dangerous for LGBT people.  In a way, that's not surprising when you consider that Indonesia's population, the fourth largest in the world, includes more Muslims than anywhere else in the world, and among the Islamic community are conservative enclaves that live, in essence, under Sharia law.

One of those areas is the Aceh province, which was so devastated by the tsunami that struck exactly a decade ago this past weekend.  Less than a year later, the province gained autonomy in a special treaty that ended a three-decade old insurgency.  As a result, Aceh can create its own laws, including the one banning homosexual acts, which passed in September.

Authorities have said they'll wait until the end of 2015 to start enforcing it, ostensibly to allow people time to "prepare for it".  But haters don't need that time: Already there have been beatings and gay and trans people have stopped going out in public as couples.  Three years ago, a transgender makeup artist in Banda Aceh was stabbed to death after she held up a stick in response to a man's taunts.  And, Violet Gray, the area's main LGBT organization, began burning documents in October out of fear that they could be raided and put the area's close-knit LGBT community--estimated at about 1000--at risk.

Aceh is often said to be the most conservatively Muslim area of Indonesia:  That is no surprise when one considers that is where the Islamic faith first came to the area.  However, many fear that such restrictive laws and a dangerous climate will not be limited to that province, and that other conservative areas like South Sumatra and East Java could follow Aceh's lead.  Teguh Setyabudi, the Aceh Home Ministry's head of regional autonomy--and a Violet Gray member--expresses hope that the new Aceh law will be overturned (under newly-elected President Joko Widodo) and stop other provinces from enacting similar laws.  

All she wants, she says, is to be able to walk home without watching her back in fear.  "Being like this is a fate, not a choice," she says. "What makes people wearing a jihab and peci"--the woman's traditional veil and the traditional cap worn by Muslim men--" feel so righteous that they can condemn other people as sinful?"

What, indeed?

What's The Difference Between Indonesia And Indiana?

At one time, the French referred to sadomasochism  as "le vice anglais."  It's rather ironic, when you consider that "sadism" is named for a Frenchman, le Marquis de Sade, and masochism immortalizes Baron von Masoch.


Now, it seems, "Islamist" groups often depict homosexuality and transgenderism as "Western" vices--along with Christianity and Judaism!  One such group is the Islam Defenders Front, which managed to shut down a transgender festival in Jakarta, Indonesia last week.

Nominally, Indonesia is, like Turkey, a secular country in which most of its people are Muslims.  However, as in Turkey and other countries, the more extreme and fundamentalist Islamist groups have taken root in Indonesia.  And they are not shy about their efforts to root out western "corruption."  Earlier this year, the IDF forced the cancellation of a Lady Gaga concert.

Of course, referring to something one doesn't like as a "corrupting influence" brought in from "outsiders"--especially if said outsiders have, or seem to have, greater privilege and prosperity--is nothing new.  Nor is blaming said outsiders for the corruption of youth and the erosion of values a society is believed to have.

This is exactly the reason why, for example, anti-Semetism is found among people who live in places where there are no Jews.  When times get tough, it's easy to blame a group of people one hasn't met and about whom one believes the stereotypes.  And it's a reason why I fear that, as the battle for scarce resources grows more intense, secular and democratic countries will fall under the spell of angry charismatic leaders who preach their own vision of their country's religion or history, and claim that some minority group is trying to undermine it.  And, of course, such a demagogue will claim that the outsiders who are "destroying" the "foundations" of the country are the reason why so many people in his country are choking under the yoke of colonial (i.e., Western) oppression and exploitation.

Since such demagogues' versions of history are almost always based, at least to some degree, on some romantic masculine vision of their societies.  They can spell only trouble for women--whether gay or straight, cis- or trans-gender--as well as men who don't fit into such a narrative.  

And it's not only the trans people of Muslim countries who are in danger.  The things I've described are happening here in the United States.  As laws are passed in an effort to ensure equal rights for LGBT people, there are religious fundamentalists as well as pure-and-simple-haters who not only want to keep us out of sight, or to destroy us altogether.  The difference between this country and those in the Middle East and South Asia is, of course, that most of the religious "fundamentalists" in America are Christian rather than Muslim.  But their hatred--and rationale for it--are exactly the same as those of the IDF and other Muslim "fundamentalist" groups.