Falling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia

Notes

211 Notes Chapter 1: Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Desires Epigraph. Butler 1993, 231. 1. When referring to tombois, I use the pronominal constructions “s/he” and “h/er” as a way to disrupt the binary genders of the English language. This point is discussed more fully later in the chapter. 2. To protect their identities, I use fictitious names for all the individuals mentioned in this book. In addition, life history details are altered or purposely left imprecise to some extent to maintain anonymity of the individuals. 3. See also Boellstorff 2005b; Mark Johnson 2005; Wilson 2004. 4. See also definitions offered by Bornstein 1994; Wilchins 1997. 5. Lesbi and gay are Indonesian words derived from the English terms “lesbian” and “gay,” but they do not have the same meanings as their cognates. Gay is used in Indonesia to refer to gay men only. 6. For critiques of anthropological ethnocartography, see Boellstorff 2002; Weston 1993. 7. Waria is one of the Indonesian terms for male-bodied individuals who dress and act in a manner similar to normatively gendered women and take men as lovers. For gay, see note 5. 8. For lengthier discussions of issues related to research on lesbians, see Blackwood 2002; Sinnott 2009; Saskia Wieringa and Blackwood 1999. For discussion of problems related to historical research on lesbians, see Vicinus 1993. 9. See Blackwood 1995a, 1998, for a more detailed discussion of these individuals’ lives. 10. I use the pronominal construction “s/he” for waria as well as for tombois. See note 1. 11. Most people in West Sumatra speak two languages, Indonesian, the national language , and Minangkabau, the first language for most people born in West Sumatra. I usually conducted interviews together with my research associate, who is a native speaker of Minangkabau. Since most of my interviewees spoke Minangkabau as their first language and were more comfortable in that language, Sri took the lead in the interviews, asking questions in Minangkabau; I would follow up with some questions in Indonesian. Our conversations outside of formal interviews were a mix of Minangkabau and Indonesian. 212 Notes to Pages 8–19 12. See Kennedy and Davis 1993 on a butch-femme community in the 1930s–1960s in New York State. See Nestle 1992a, 1992b; Stein 1997, regarding the rejection of butches and femmes by lesbian feminists in the 1970s. 13. For a detailed history of the region, see Abdullah 1972; Dobbin 1983; Drakard 1990. 14. Based on shipping data from 2001–2005, http://www.telukbayurport.com, accessed September 30, 2006. 15. Based on economic factors such as facilities and services provided, Rutz (1987, 208) lists Padang as a “higher order center with partial functions of a regional metropolis ”; it falls just below six major urban centers in Indonesia labeled as “regional metropolises ” and the one Indonesian city Rutz labels a metropolis, Jakarta. 16. Exact figures are not available because state census statistics do not identify inhabitants by ethnicity. 17. See Blackwood 2000; Sanday 2002. 18. The New Order refers to the regime of General Suharto, who became acting head of state in 1966 and remained president up until 1998. 19. I also heard stories of several wealthy married women who had been involved with tombois, but I was unable to meet any of these women. 20. See Dick 1985; Robison 1982, 1996; Tanter and Young 1990. 21. The ranking of Minangkabau clans is based on the origins of the clan members. Those who first settled the village became the elite or high-ranking lineages. Later arrivals (“newcomers”) attached themselves to the high-ranking lineages to become the middle rank or client lineages. The low rank was composed of descendants of slaves, or servant kin, who served elite families and were subordinate to them. See Blackwood 2000. 22. See Boellstorff 2005a for a discussion of gay Muslims in Indonesia. 23. Of the four lesbi I met in 1990, the three tombois were at that time all in their late twenties to early thirties; the one woman involved with a tomboi was in her early fifties. 24. Her story is presented in chapter 5. 25. These migrants came primarily from the northern and coastal districts of West Sumatra , including Pasaman and Padang Pariaman, and the southern district of Pesisir Selatan. 26. See also Manalansan 1997, 2003, which call for recognition of multiple localized articulations of sexualities. 27. This problem, of course, is not just true of queer studies but has been a founding assumption in Western scholarship, as a number...