In the last twenty years, the explosion of research on gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia has brought new attention to the region and revitalized discussions in disciplines such as gender studies, anthropology, and sociology. These ethnographies by Evelyn Blackwood and Sharyn Graham Davies build on intensive research in different regions of Indonesia to extend the study of gender and sexuality in productive new directions. One of the contributions of feminist theory has been a critique of the gender binary—the widespread social system that splits people into two opposite and unequal genders based on differences in their reproductive anatomy. Blackwood and Davies reveal how the gender binary in Indonesia both shapes and is challenged by people's self-definitions.

Blackwood's beautifully detailed and captivating ethnography, Falling into the Lesbi World, explores the lives of West Sumatran tombois, masculine females who identify as men, and their partners (femmes), who identify as “normal” women who desire men. Although such couples consider themselves to be “lesbi,” there are important differences between them and the more affluent, urban lesbians who participate in the small LGBT rights movement in Jakarta and other major Indonesian cities. Not the least of these differences is that West Sumatran lesbi couples adhere strictly to the gender binary in their relationships. This is troubling for the Indonesian LGBT movement, which has been influenced by a lesbian feminist critique of heterosexual relationships as unequal.

Tombois come to identify as boys during childhood, and as adults they enact masculinity through clothing, bodily comportment, and relationships with women. Many are fairly successful in this enactment—they “pass” enough to gain mobility in public spaces, to socialize with men, and even to achieve some measure of tolerance in their communities. Femmes generally follow the rules of heterosexual femininity, except for their choice of a tomboi as partner (although some also have male partners). In daily life, the couples often perform conventionally masculine and feminine roles, with the tomboi as the breadwinner, and the femme responsible for domestic life. As Saskia Wieringa has pointed out, such conformity to the gender binary seems to mollify kin and neighbors more than if the couple were to openly proclaim themselves the same sex.Footnote ¹ Blackwood observes that by drawing on hegemonic ideologies of gender difference, tomboi-femme couples reproduce state and Islamic discourses that contribute to gender inequalities in Indonesia.

Nevertheless, there is far more going on here than simple reproduction of gender ideologies. Blackwood demonstrates that tombois' gender presentations are often contextual—when at home with their kin, they may take on more conventionally feminine roles in order to avert conflicts and to express their commitment to the family. Moreover, tombois are aware of their female bodies and rarely seek to change them, even though such technologies have become more available in recent years. Blackwood builds on the work of theorist Judith Halberstam's Female Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998) to argue that tombois are performing a female masculinity. They act in ways that are conventionally understood as masculine, defining themselves as men in line with Indonesian state ideology, but they are also cognizant and accepting of their female bodies. And many tombois and femmes call themselves lesbi, indicating that they consider themselves to be in a same-sex, if not same-gender, relationship. Although Indonesian gay activists have recently included the category of transgender in their movement, they often define this identity as inherently different from lesbian, and it thus sits uneasily with how tombois and femmes understand themselves. Nevertheless, Blackwood suggests that these new discourses on what it means to be a lesbian may eventually become influential for West Sumatran tombois and femmes. The concept of female masculinity has provoked much scholarly debate, and Blackwood concludes that the tombois' female masculinity simultaneously reproduces and transgresses norms of gender and sexuality, and that it also contests the ways lesbian and transgender identities have been presented in Indonesian LGBT discourse.

Davies similarly explores sexuality in relation to gender in her fascinating study of Bugis calalai (female-bodied individuals who desire heterosexual women and may or may not identify as men), calabai (male-bodied individuals who desire heterosexual men and may or may not identify as women), and androgynous bissu shamans in South Sulawesi. While Blackwood explores the meaning of female masculinities and how the messy realities of sexual and gender minorities may not match with the identities promoted by global progressive movements, Davies seeks to understand the mutually constitutive relationships between gender, sex, and sexuality.

Gender Diversity in Indonesia is a follow-up to Davies's more specialized 2007 ethnography, Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders among Bugis in Indonesia (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth). It is structured so that the first five chapters include a very detailed discussion of gender and sexuality in the context of the Indonesian nation-state, Islam, and Bugis society, which is interwoven with ethnographic data. In these chapters, Davies also lays out the basis of her argument that gender is a pervasive category of difference and inequality in Indonesia. More specifically, building on much recent literature, she demonstrates how gender difference and inequality are systematically promoted by culture, state, and Islam in Indonesia. The next three chapters are devoted to her case studies of calalai, calabai, and bissu.

Davies' examination of calalai is especially noteworthy, as there are actually few calalai in South Sulawesi, and those who become calalai are pushing up against very strong norms of what it means to be born female. Intriguingly, Davies suggests that for many calalai and calabai, sexuality informs gender. In particular, because the pressure on females to marry heterosexually and bear children is pervasive, Davies proposes that calalai become persuaded of their masculinity because there are no available cultural models for being a masculine woman. Remarkably, calalai do not face much overt harassment, but they live within far stronger constraints than calabai. Similarly, calabai also explore the opposite gender—in this case taking on femininity. Davies says that calabai notice the discordance between themselves and masculine ideals at an early age, and they shift toward femininity as an alternative. Like waria in other parts of Indonesia, calabai emulate conventional Indonesian womanhood and seek out relationships with heterosexual men, yet their playful gender performances also contest masculine and feminine norms. Some calabai are comfortable with the idea that their sexed bodies do not match their gender presentations, while others attempt to resolve this dilemma by feminizing their bodies through medical interventions. Calabai have recently achieved a degree of tolerance through performances in cultural festivals and beauty pageants; indeed, they seem to have become symbols of Bugis cultural uniqueness. Nevertheless, Davies is rightly concerned about the potential impact of recent legislation against pornography, which may pose difficulties for calabai performances.

Davies proposes that the relative acceptance of calabai and even calalai derives from the cultural precedent of bissu shamans. She maintains that bissu shamans are a remnant of older Southeast Asian ritual practices that involve the incorporation of both male and female within a single entity, but that like other ritual specialists, bissu experienced a steep decline in prestige after the seventeenth century. Recently, bissu have experienced a revival, partly due to artistic works such as theater director Robert Wilson's 2004 production of I La Galigo, which used bissu in an avant-garde exploration of the Bugis creation myth. While bissu have a complex relationship with Islam, Davies argues that bissu activities are finding new forms of legitimacy through participation in cultural performances, and that they will continue to be a respected part of Bugis life. As such, they also help to provide a crucial precedent for differently gendered people.

Blackwood and Davies portray rather different possible futures for tombois, femmes, calalai, calabai, and bissu. Blackwood suggests that the Indonesian gay rights movement may ultimately compel tombois to identify either as lesbian women or as transgender, similar to how butch lesbians were marginalized by the American LGBT movement. While Davies does not seem to think that calalai are disappearing, she emphasizes the difficulties they face compared to calabai, who seem to have found a social niche. Nevertheless, she acknowledges that the calabai identity may also be shifting as more calabai gain access to the means to feminize their bodies.

In Indonesian, as in Western society, there is a common-sense assumption that sex difference determines gender. Both of these ethnographies offer evidence against this presumption. While Blackwood shows how the Indonesian discourse that insists on attaching female bodies to feminine gender identity and desire for men (and vice versa) perpetuates the gender binary, she also eloquently illustrates how tombois and femmes disrupt the tidy links between these categories. Similarly, Davies demonstrates that even within the gender binary, there may be multiple gendered subjectivities. In the last decade, many scholars have explored the experiences of transgendered people—that is, those who cut across socially constructed sex/gender binaries. Blackwood and Davies contribute a crucial regional Indonesian perspective to this literature, examining how such hybrid subjectivities are produced within binary sex/gender systems, and how they simultaneously strengthen and challenge such systems.