ABSTRACT

Historical contextualization is important in work on gender and sexuality (e.g. Blackwood, 2005a; Grewal and Kaplan, 2001; Jackson, 2003a; Peletz, 2006; Reddy, 2005). In his work on Indonesia, Oetomo argues that although there are risks of essentializing past practices in efforts to legitimize present ones, pressures from conservative, capitalist and modernist forces have met with resistance from opposing liberal forces that have successfully used the dynamic dialects of past and present to promote the position of people of different genders and sexualities. Oetomo further states that:

While transgendered ritual specialists [such as bissu] may not fully regain their respected, glorious positions, they are beginning to be able to empower themselves to survive in current society and, perhaps equally important, contemporary transgendered people and people of non-hegemonic sexualities can use this history strategically to empower themselves.