Seminar 3 Aug – Queer Visibility in Indonesia – Ben Hegarty

On 3 August, the Gender and Sexuality Studies “First Fridays” free public seminar will be presented by staff member Ben Hegarty. Find out more and register here. 

Historical Perspectives on Queer Visibility & National Belonging: Indonesia

“The past two years have seen the term LGBT shift from an unknown acronym to household term in Indonesia, overwhelmingly framed in negative terms. Many commentators have labelled these transformations as both unprecedented and a break with a long tradition of tolerance for gender and sexual diversity. While sympathetic to these concerns, queer visibility in Indonesia has long been met with a broad range of responses ranging from outright hostility, to begrudging tolerance, to open celebration.”

In this seminar, Ben  reflects on how historical and/or cross-cultural perspectives continues to offer a vital vantage point for scholars of gender and sexuality studies; a way to resist universalising notions of rights as a one-way movement towards modernity.”

Benjamin Hegarty is a Research Fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Deakin University. He received his PhD in anthropology from the Australian National University on the topic of transgender femininity and national modernity in New Order Indonesia (1967-1998). This research will appear in a forthcoming Transgender Studies Quarterly special issue on Trans-in-Asia (eds. Howard H. Chiang, Todd A. Henry & Helen Hok-Sze Leung).