ABSTRACT
In this chapter the sexual slander against the women’s organization Gerwani is discussed. No orgy took place at Lubang Buaya, the air force training field where three of the generals were killed and all the bodies tossed down a well. As elsewhere in the country the women had been training there for the Confrontation with Malaysia, a policy of President Sukarno. These lies formed the basis of the army propaganda campaign against the PKI. All over the country women who had been imprisoned were accused of having taken part in the castration of the generals and they were routinely searched for a Gerwani tattoo. They were also accused of having prepared for this orgy by singing a popular song, ‘Genjer-Genjer’. This myth is also acted out in Oppenheimer’s 2012 film The Act of Killing. This myth created the first sexual moral panic to discredit communism. In recent years a second sexual moral panic has emerged, whereby homosexuality is now seen as being parallel to communism. Communist and LGBT groups are both alleged to wage a so-called proxy war against the Indonesian state. The campaign of homophobia has been used to fuel the alleged danger of the ‘red scare’ and vice versa. Communism has already been banned since 1966. Anti-LGBT legislation was being discussed in parliament at the time of writing.
