Political Biography of the Indonesian Lesbian Bisexual and Trans Movement

<p><b>Here the history of the Indonesian LBT movement is charted from invisibility to visibility and now as it moves again into hiding.</b> In the early 1980s during the oppressive military dictatorship called the New Order in Indonesia the first organizations of Lesbian Bisexual and Trans persons were established. They were short-lived but prepared the ground for a more comprehensive LBT rights movement after the democratic opening of society in 1998. From 2000 to 2015 the visibility of the movement grew until a vicious state-sponsored backlash set in driven by majoritarian fundamentalist Islamist groups. <p/>Saskia Wieringa tracks the movement's progress and explores the persistence of the butch/femme model of relationships; the proliferations of identities; family violence and conversion therapy; religion; and the anti-LGBT campaign. In its insistence on the local dynamics of this movement the book aims to debunk the idea that homosexuality is a Western import. Chapters deal with the many religious and secular phenomena that are linked with gender diversity and same-sex relations traditionally and the erasure of many of these traditions is explained using the concept of postcolonial amnesia. <i>A Political Biography of the Indonesian Lesbian Bisexual and Trans Movement</i> is also a contribution to the growing literature on decolonization studies pointing out that its dynamics its historical course and its present condition different as they are from the dominant Western view on a global LGBT movement needs to be considered as valuable as accounts of Western LGBT histories are.</p>