Abstract
This chapter explores the emergence and deployment of SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression) discursive technologies by Indonesian LGBT activists in responding to the rising anti-LGBT panic. Through the interventions of activists, SOGIE technology actualizes and gains its power capacities in relation to different assemblages. As such, this chapter turns to three moments in which the SOGIE technology has articulated specific ecologies in different contexts, that is, the creation of a common political allegiance across diverse subjects with non-normative genders and/or sexualities and the production of SOGIE minorities; the emergence of SOGIE expertise; and the professionalization of SOGIE in transnational LGBT activist circles. The term ‘SOGIE ecologies’ does not only point to the set of environments transformed by the arrival of SOGIE and its relations with different assemblages, but equally importantly, it also encapsulates the ways SOGIE generates a different set of relationships and power relations in those environments.
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- 1.
There was even an accusation of plagiarism directed at Sam Killerman. See Goguen (2013). This may have been one of Killerman’s reasons for publishing his revised edition of the model in 2017.
- 2.
For discussions of the fluidity of gender expression and its relations with other identity aspects (such as, race), see, among others, Abelson (2019), Blackwood (1998), and Panfil (2017). For example, Panfil explores the ways in which black male gang members perform different gender expressions in different settings, that is, masculine in public and more feminine in queer-friendly space or when they are with their gay friends.
- 3.
See also Sedgwick (1990).
- 4.
See, among others, Hoang (2015) and Mercer (2017). In his book, Mercer challenges the straightforward assumption of one-dimensional masculinity and explores the myriad forms of male masculinity manifested in gay pornography, while by examining sex work industry in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Hoang explores how the entanglements of gender, race, class, and national identity generate diverse types and practices of masculinity and femininity.
- 5.
Recall, the institution of bissu recognises five genders, and occupies a special status in Bugis society. For a comprehensive discussion of bissu, see Davies (2010).
- 6.
Blackwood (2008) demonstrated that ‘lesbi’ in Padang saw themselves in a binary division of ‘male’ (tomboi) and ‘female’ and the importance of maintaining such difference in lesbi relationships. However, Blackwood acknowledged the arrival of the concept of transgender proffered by Western queer discourses, which gradually channelled tomboi into the transgender category by Jakarta activists.
- 7.
Halley (2018, 18) argues, “For all its supposed neutrality and objectivity, feminist expertise—like other forms of expertise—plays deeply ritualized and strategic power politics.”
- 8.
For a comprehensive discussion of ‘distributive turn’ in queer politics, see Adler (2018, 175–211).
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Wijaya, H.Y. (2020). Intimate Ecologies: SOGIE in Motion and Entanglements. In: Intimate Assemblages. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2878-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2878-1_6
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