Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and Other Pacific Islanders

Chapter 14: On the Edge of Understanding: Non-Heteronormative Sexuality in Papua New Guinea

323 CHAPTER 14 On the Edge of Understanding Non-Heteronormative Sexuality in Papua New Guinea Christine Stewart Timothy and I are perched on the edge of a hauswin, a roofed, open-sided platform in the gardens of the Poro Sapot Project, an initiative of the international NGO Save the Children. The project is the only one of its kind in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to focus explicitly and specifically on what in the world of international organizations are termed “sex workers” and “MSM,” or “men who have sex with men.” It works through a system of outreach volunteers to provide HIV awareness, clinic facilities, and paralegal assistance for these sexual minorities. The hauswin serves as a drop-in center for the MSMs; the drop-in center for the other group,the female sex sellers (known by the internationally accepted acronym “FSW,” or female sex workers) is hidden behind the main office building. There is shade and privacy here in the leafy tropical garden behind the high tin fence typical of residences and offices in Port Moresby, the capital of PNG, where personal security is always at a premium. Security is even more of a problem for this project, dealing as it does with two of PNG’s most stigmatized groups, regarded as criminals by the laws of the state. Timothy is a Papua New Guinea national in his thirties of “mixed” ethnic origins,like so many in Port Moresby today.He stays with a group of friends because he doesn’t feel comfortable living with his family, although he sometimes goes to visit them. He earns his living by trawling higherclass hotel bars and clubs to sell sex, and lately has become a Poro Sapot Project outreach volunteer. He has recently returned from attending an 324 Stewart international HIV conference as one of PNG’s MSM representatives and is still struggling to understand all that he learned there: Sometimes we have tags on. I have a special kind of a tag; it’s a permanent tag on me, meaning that I’m a gay, gay meaning that I have sex with men. Some gays may be a bisexual, they are playing both ways, or some sex can be insertive-receptive, they can give and they can take, but they come under one tag. When you open it, there are lots of colors coming up. Sometimes it’s very hard to identify a straight man but he’s a gay . . . it’s a gender problem! We know where we are going to, we know how we are playing. But sometimes I confuse myself, I sometimes sit down and think, what am I? Timothy is well aware of sexual needs, desires, and activities. But he is confused , not only about how to categorize his gender and sexual identity, but also about the need to categorize it at all. Compared to many other Pacific Island societies, there is little scholarship on modern non-heteronormativities in PNG. Nor are there any conspicuously visible and identifiable groups of non-heteronormative people in mainstream PNG life, as there are farther east in the region (see Dolgoy, Kuwahara, Tcherkézoff, Presterudstuen, Good, this volume; also Morin 2008 for Papua, the Indonesian-ruled western half of the island of New Guinea).There is far less sense of shared identity than in other parts of the Pacific, and far more concealment of non-heteronormative character traits, due in part to the fact that such people attract a high level of stigma, discrimination , harassment, and violence. Sexual activity between two males is criminalized and may incur a prison sentence. This chapter draws on PhD fieldwork focused mainly in Port Moresby in the mid- to late 2000s, work intended to gather evidence that could assist in moves at the time to reform the laws about consensual sex by describing the lived experiences of non-heteronormative people in contemporary PNG. In contrast to Greg Dvorak’s (this volume) expressed misgivings about revealing issues of Marshallese sexuality, I undertook my research with the intention of eliciting untold stories in order to assist in the best way I knew: by providing evidence-based research for purposes of law reform. In contrast again to the easy-going and accepting attitude of Dvorak’s Marshallese friends, I learned that attitudes and practices in On the Edge of Understanding 325 Papua New Guinea oblige non-heteronormative people to live in fear. “Nobody’s going to...