Gender Diversity in Indonesia：Sexuality, Islam and Queer Selves

Indonesia provides particularly interesting examples of gender diversity. Same-sex relations, transvestism and cross-gender behaviour have long been noted amongst a wide range of Indonesian peoples. This book explores the nature of gender diversity in Indonesia, and with the world’s largest Muslim population, it examines Islam in this context. Based on extensive ethnographic research, it discusses in particular calalai – female-born individuals who identify as neither woman nor man; calabai – male-born individuals who also identify as neither man nor woman; and bissu – an order of shamans who embody female and male elements. The book examines the lives and roles of these variously gendered subjectivities in everyday life, including in low-status and high-status ritual such as wedding ceremonies, fashion parades, cultural festivals, Islamic recitations and shamanistic rituals. The book analyses the place of such subjectivities in relation to theories of gender, gender diversity and sexuality.

Sharyn Graham Davies is Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. She has spent a number of years living in Indonesia and has written extensively on gender and sexuality, including most recently Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders among Bugis in Indonesia, Thompson Wadsworth, 2007.