On Being Queer Abroad

There's not much (read: nothing) by way of LGBT community here as far as I can tell, so I hadn't given this topic much thought before today. I've been emailing with one of my friends (hi, Jack) about it lately, though, so I thought I'd throw some thoughts out there (how's that for alliteration) for consideration.

Being in Bali has, in some ways, been a little bit like being back in the closet. During orientation, I asked a bit about Balinese responses to queerness¹ and Pak Tom explained that people here don't have any particular problems with it, but the older generation is completely unfamiliar with it. So, as a result, I didn't tell my host family that I have a girlfriend or that I consider myself queer. Bahasa Indonesia facilitates that, since there aren't any gender pronouns. When someone asks me if I "sudah punya pacar," they're technically asking if I already have a significant other, since "pacar" is gender neutral. I can say yes, and since there's only one pronoun that encompasses both he and she, I can have an entire conversation without divulging her gender (sorry, J). (There are slang terms for girlfriend and boyfriend, "cewek" and "cowok," respectively, but it's easy to answer "sudah punya cowok" with "ya, saya sudah punya pacar di Amerika," yes, I already have a significant other in America.) So I'm in an odd in-between: I'm not quite in the closet, but nor am I particularly out.

But that raises the question of why I'm not out to them. Part of it, I think, is language: I'm not sure how to explain LGBT issues in Indonesian, and if I were to declare myself queer to my host family I'd probably need to explain it. I am out to the other students on my program, the program directors, and the language teachers (both of whom are Balinese), without much issue. (There's been a little bit of homophobia on the part of one of the students, but I won't go into that.) Interestingly, I've had no problem with the language staff; I've actually had a couple of conversations with Mirah, one of my teachers, about it because she wanted to know more. So if I haven't felt judged or ostracized by them, why my hesitancy toward telling my family?

Part of it, I think, was that I was afraid of making them uncomfortable with me before they got to know me, which is a fallacy I've fallen into in the past and that I think a lot of LGBT people find themselves worrying about. Because we queer folk are made to think that there's something wrong with us, there's a tendency to assume that everyone will automatically feel that way. So I assumed my host family would be somehow offended, and held back. (At this point, it feels like coming out would be a little bit odd, since I've only got roughly another week with them. But maybe I'm still just making excuses. Who knows?)

At the same time, I do question Pak Tom's assertion that people are completely unfamiliar with queerness. A month or so ago, I was watching a game show on TV with my ibu, and while I'm not sure what exactly was going on, I do know that two of the contestants were drag queens. (I don't think they were transgendered, but that's my own ignorance showing through.) My ibu didn't seem particularly offended; if anything she was amused. (In fact, she described them as "aneh," weird, but conceded that the particularly fabulous one was "cantik," beautiful, when I called them both that.) When I asked her about them, she said that crossdressing is fairly common in Java (the show was presumably from Jakarta) but that "they didn't have them in Bali." That's probably true; most queer people in Bali either move to Kuta, the big beach & nightclub city, or to Jakarta, or they stay closeted and eventually get married to someone of the opposite sex, since children are so important here. Still, it highlighted to me the fact that, at least in terms of crossdressing and transgenderism (transgenderness? someone correct me please?), there's a bit of a "not in my backyard" mentality. There's certainly no sense that a crossdresser would be in any danger here, just that he or she wouldn't be particularly accepted.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of all of this. A large part of me does wish that I'd come out earlier so that I could have talked with my ibu about it, but I'm also not sure what I could have said, since my Indonesian vocabulary doesn't extend very far into the realm of love and relationships. Still, it's important to lay a groundwork. I wish I were a little more familiar with queer rights and visibility here, but I suppose there's no better time to start than now.


¹ I know that "queer" means a lot of different things to different people, so I'll clarify. When I say queer, I'm generally referring to the entire Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender continuum. I do this for two reasons. First, I think that saying LGBT is kind of clunky and it's easier to just say queer. Second, I don't like to declare myself as bisexual because of all of the baggage that comes along with that (people's assumptions that I'm either indecisive or promiscuous, neither of which is particularly accurate) so I find that queer works as a general "not straight" label. Feel free to ask questions if that's not clear.