Thinking through the S(k)in

Thinking through the S(k)in: Religious Sensitivity, Transgender Bodies and Belonging in Indonesia

Open webinar in the queer webinar serie at the University of Iceland

Indonesian male-bodied and feminine identified subjects, locally and internationally known as waria, commonly claim to have the heart and soul of a woman. While waria form a visible social group, they suffer from various prevailing stigmas, of which a significant share is tied to some cultural assumptions embedded in the mainstream understanding of Islamic morality.

While most waria do not feel comfortable practising their religion in public, many describe their subjectivity along the distinction between their bodies and their inner sense of gender as God’s will. Consequently, permanent bodily modifications are associated with the notion of sin. These conceptions have enabled a specific form of Indonesian transgender embodiment. In the lecture, I address the bodily negotiations of waria in relation to their religious sensitivities and aspirations for belonging. For waria, who depart from the normative assumptions on gender and deploy an alternative subject position, that of a waria, the question of belonging is highly contested at the national level, but equally complicated on the more local communal scales. Usually, the immediate site of belonging for young waria are the waria communities at urban areas. Against the backdrop of the increasing entanglement of religious practice in daily life in Indonesian society, some waria, especially those who are active in sex work, either pay no attention to their religious practice or face it with a sense of guilt. Others, however, describe their subject position as something that genuinely derives from God, as something ‘given’. The spiritually grounded sentiments in relation to their bodies and the sense of gender on one hand, and the signs of increased focus on embodied expression of religiosity among waria on the other, signal the desire for reimagining belonging to Indonesian (Muslim) society. Religious sensitivity, while being the major cause of anxieties on both personal and societal levels, has provided waria with important frameworks which enhance their relative acceptance of their embodied subjectivity.

About the lecturer:

Dr. Terje Toomistu is an anthropologist and a documentary film-maker, a Research Fellow at the University of Tartu’s Department of Ethnology, whose prime areas of focus are gender, mobility, and affect. She often deploys artistic methods in her research. She received her PhD degree in Ethnology as well as two MA degrees (cum laude) in Ethnology and in Communication Studies from the University of Tartu. She has been a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California Berkeley and a visiting researcher at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Anthropology. She has also lived and studied in France, Russia, and Indonesia. 

 Link for Zoom:

https://eu01web.zoom.us/j/9374233505?pwd=N09Ubzc5QldOYnd5M3JOT1ZZVFNaZz09

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