Regulation of sexuality in Indonesian discourse: Normative gender, criminal law and shifting strategies of control

Abstract

This paper examines changes in the regulation of sexuality in Indonesia in the period since 1980 as seen through state, religious and lesbian and gay activist discourses on sexuality. Three different eras during that period of Indonesian history are compared. Under the New Order regime of Suharto, the Indonesian state sought to control sexuality through a deployment of gender. During the 1990s, state Islamic discourses of sexuality shifted in response to international pressures to support same-sex marriage and sexual rights. During the third period following the end of the Suharto regime in 1998, a conservative Islamic minority pushed for more restrictive laws in the State Penal Code, initiating intense public debate on the role of the state in questions of sexuality and morality. Over this time period, the dominant discourse on sexuality moved from strategically linking normative gender with heterosexuality and marriage to direct attempts to legislate heterosexual marriage by criminalizing a wide range of sexual practices.

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