The Perfect Woman: trans reproduction, sex and the self in 1970s Indonesia
In the 1970s, the Indonesian state gradually consolidated a stable set of definitions of sex, gender, and sexuality in relation to the mind/body dualism central to one modern concept of individual personhood. In addition to the first legal recognition of a change of sex marker in a Jakarta court in 1973 and the first “sex reassignment surgery” undertaken by Indonesian doctors at a Jakarta hospital in 1975, “transsexuality” emerged as a sustained topic of public interest and debate in the national media. The medical, legal, and popular rearrangements related to transsexuality in Indonesia that took place at this time reflect a neglected transnational component of what trans studies scholar Susan Stryker dubbed “the ‘Big Science’ period of transgender history” across the same period in the United States, when major universities set up programs that combined medical and psychological research with the provision of clinical services. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research conducted for my book, The Made-Up State: Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2022), I trace the sociotechnical relations that make possible sex/gender located in the body/mind to argue that gender is central to struggles to establish a monopoly over powers of recognition. In light of ongoing debates about the role of scientific and technological knowledge in defining sex, gender, and its relation to the self globally, the Indonesian story reflects the possibilities for other forms of “trans knowledge” at moments of contestation and rupture.
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The Perfect Woman: trans reproduction, sex and the self in 1970s Indonesia.
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