Speaker 1: Five h hh.
Speaker 2: Okay, hello and welcome to Minor Compositions. For for this
Speaker 2: this week's conversation, we have one of our first uh
Speaker 2: repeat visitors, so thank you for coming along again again, Ferdie.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, thanks for having me again.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And this is a good excuse because we're
Speaker 2: getting together to sort of have a chat about your
Speaker 2: al Can we say the book the book is new
Speaker 2: for is it new for like a year or for
Speaker 2: our six months or for two years?
Speaker 3: Or I think a year maybe, because yeah, I've been
Speaker 3: doing so many book talks also in person that it
Speaker 3: felt so long already. But actually, yeah, I think still
Speaker 3: there're so not that many people that who knows it
Speaker 3: the book, so I think it's we can still consider
Speaker 3: it new.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, So so say we're having a chat, but
Speaker 2: but Ferdie's new and quite excellent book and during otherwise
Speaker 2: Muslim queer and trans transport booking Indonesia. And I will
Speaker 2: tell you upfront that that that that my knowledge of
Speaker 2: queer politics or transpolitics Indiesia is quite limited, but I
Speaker 2: was I found your book super interesting and really really fascinating,
Speaker 2: and in part because it's about the world that I
Speaker 2: know very little of. But yet as someone who was
Speaker 2: raised Catholic and sort of knows a thing or two
Speaker 2: about feelings of guilt and how religious world structures your
Speaker 2: your affects, It's like, there are things here which I
Speaker 2: recognize even though I don't know the world, oh superest.
Speaker 2: So maybe as sort of a starting point, let's say,
Speaker 2: how would you introduce this book to people who have
Speaker 2: it intelligip yet? Like what are you? What are you
Speaker 2: exploring here? Such the obvious from the super obvious.
Speaker 3: Like what do you? What do you?
Speaker 2: What do you play with your perdie?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it's important that I describe the book
Speaker 3: as like an ethnographic book, so it is basically a
Speaker 3: book that looks at different I mean, everyday forms of
Speaker 3: life rather than you know, I'm not a political scientist,
Speaker 3: I'm not a sociologist. My work is always focusing on
Speaker 3: working with people, and this is basically what anthropology is about.
Speaker 3: And sorry research base, but my research look at how Muslim,
Speaker 3: queer and trans people live in Indonesia, and this intersection between
Speaker 3: muslimness and queerness or transness is a particular focal point
Speaker 3: that I'm looking at because, in like popular imagination, the
Speaker 3: relationship between queerness and transness to Islam has always seen
Speaker 3: something as irreconcilable, as something that is difficult to Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's incompatible. And so the book actually starts from the
Speaker 3: very question on how do people sustain meaningful life when
Speaker 3: social and religious and political conditions around them do not
Speaker 3: fully accept them or or a firm of who they are.
Speaker 3: Basically mm hmm, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think there's something interesting there in you mentioning being ethnographic now,
Speaker 2: because I want to go into people about photography. But
Speaker 2: in the sense about that writing a book, getographically means
Speaker 2: not just showing up doing a few quick interviews or
Speaker 2: have to get chat with people people. It requires in
Speaker 2: depth understanding of how world making happens in this place,
Speaker 2: how culture operates, how how it regards what's more in
Speaker 2: merci level and detail, then you get in most kinds
Speaker 2: of writing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I mean people call it like participant
Speaker 3: observation basically, so you don't just participate or just observe,
Speaker 3: but you also participate in the everyday life, right, every
Speaker 3: day flow of life. But as a kind of like
Speaker 3: also as a background actually, because I myself coming from
Speaker 3: more or less similar background a Muslim queer myself. I'm
Speaker 3: from Indonesia, So a lot of the questions that were
Speaker 3: strayce as the book starting point is actually also for
Speaker 3: me biographical questions because this very question of I mean,
Speaker 3: in a simple word, people whether they're Muslims, whether they're
Speaker 3: non Muslims, or they're you know, Indonesian or not. When
Speaker 3: mostly at that time, at least when I start my
Speaker 3: research around fifteen years ago, the question that people ask
Speaker 3: is like when when they heard then I'm a Muslim
Speaker 3: and I'm queer, as this kind of stereotypical or stereotyping
Speaker 3: question asking like, oh, how is that for you? Like
Speaker 3: aren't you aren't you experiencing some kind of conflict or
Speaker 3: inner conflict? And this very question, rather than trying to
Speaker 3: answer it myself, is basically the question that I go
Speaker 3: around with with when I meet the the protagonists or
Speaker 3: the interlocutors in my filmwork. Basically of course, and not
Speaker 3: in a way like not as a kind of like
Speaker 3: a horrible question about this conflict, but actually I observe
Speaker 3: or I participate in a situation where this conflicting situation
Speaker 3: came up, and basically how they deal with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's probably interesting part of if anything, I
Speaker 2: think that that that that being participant kind of helps
Speaker 2: you and that the people you're talking with a sense
Speaker 2: that that this is this is for you isn't some
Speaker 2: sort of abstract question but somebody you also have had
Speaker 2: to wrestle with yourself about this completing you know, relationship
Speaker 2: between religious values and sort of personal ethics and and
Speaker 2: how these two fit together and how you live.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because yes and no, because I think one one
Speaker 3: additional dimension that that also actually it's become actually a
Speaker 3: key Like my main approach uh is what I call
Speaker 3: as effective ethnography. So it's very much looking at like
Speaker 3: the emotional life, the feel like the various types of feelings,
Speaker 3: atmospheres that that that emerge in their life in the
Speaker 3: context of Muslim square and transporlt making which actually allows
Speaker 3: me hm how to say it. Like in Indonesia we
Speaker 3: have this term when when people you don't have to
Speaker 3: be close friends, but sometimes when people met and they
Speaker 3: have I don't know, some kind of problems which is
Speaker 3: more like caused by emotional conflict and so on, Uh,
Speaker 3: they would kind of pour out their hearts out. This
Speaker 3: is the term like tudahan Hatti to pour out on
Speaker 3: one's heart basically is it is a way of interacting,
Speaker 3: interacting usually in intimate settings. But this is also something
Speaker 3: that I adopt as as a way of talking with
Speaker 3: the interlocutors in a way that I don't interview it.
Speaker 3: I don't prepare, you know, questions in advance and then
Speaker 3: go to see them and ask questions, but rather just
Speaker 3: fully becoming a listener basically, Yeah, and by listener meaning
Speaker 3: like to really listen to. And somehow there is a need,
Speaker 3: a dire need in a community to be able to
Speaker 3: be heard or to be listened to. And some of
Speaker 3: the stories, although maybe to say it flows naturally is
Speaker 3: a bit simplifying, I would rather say that there's enough
Speaker 3: closeness between us or report between us that allows that
Speaker 3: makes them comfortable enough to tell basically their life stories,
Speaker 3: their what what, what they're thinking, what they're dealing with,
Speaker 3: using this so called churanhatty to an extent that sometimes,
Speaker 3: because I work with different communities, they would tap my
Speaker 3: shoulder and call me, hey, what are you doing? Are
Speaker 3: you not doing anything? Can we talk? You know, like
Speaker 3: let's let's have a tough because the our last stuff
Speaker 3: has been very nice and and and yeah, so it's
Speaker 3: becoming almost like for my part it is like a
Speaker 3: service to listen to their stories. But also the tricky
Speaker 3: partook because also this is part of research, and of
Speaker 3: course they are all aware about this.
Speaker 2: Might be an aspect and maybe maybe sort of speculating
Speaker 2: here where they start to treat you as like that
Speaker 2: like nice slightly older brother that people wish they had,
Speaker 2: that they could talk to, that they didn't have in
Speaker 2: their own families, or like just you.
Speaker 3: Know, mm hmmm, I mean, of course not everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I went, I think out of I met quite a
Speaker 3: few people in during my film work. I'll explain later
Speaker 3: in which which locations, but uh, and some of them
Speaker 3: are new locations. One of them is actually a new
Speaker 3: location and the other two is uh. The new location
Speaker 3: is in ache Uh, which is in the northernmost part
Speaker 3: of Sumatra and Indonesia, and then in Jio Jakarta where
Speaker 3: actually this is my chosen hometown, and in Jakarta, which
Speaker 3: is the city where I'm born or where I grew up.
Speaker 3: But still even of course, especially in ache is not
Speaker 3: easy to to because the situation there is already very
Speaker 3: difficult for sexual and gender minorities because they have their
Speaker 3: own legal system since a while since Yeah, there's a
Speaker 3: long history of conflict and natural disaster the tsunami that
Speaker 3: changed the whole landscape there, including legal ones, and they
Speaker 3: implementary allow basically since two thousand first in first being
Speaker 3: discussed two thousand and five, and I think being installed
Speaker 3: in thousand and six, which make it very difficult for
Speaker 3: for for sexual and general minorities even just to be
Speaker 3: to be just to be there basically, So when I
Speaker 3: came there with my research topic, with my research idea,
Speaker 3: of course not a lot of people are welcoming to that.
Speaker 3: But when they do, then the relationship is kind of
Speaker 3: what translates into the book basically. But when when you
Speaker 3: said it, whether they they they treat me as a
Speaker 3: brother or a sibling, I guess it's more about they
Speaker 3: don't have anyone to really listen to. Like of course
Speaker 3: they have friends and maybe families and even partners, but
Speaker 3: sometimes actually the problems that they're having is actually with
Speaker 3: the people who are around them and with me, I guess,
Speaker 3: because I'm also a stranger in some way, but but
Speaker 3: a weird stranger who goes to all the way, you know,
Speaker 3: to to to listen to their stories. For them is
Speaker 3: also something. Yeah, they also make take use of it.
Speaker 3: They make then they try to gain as much from
Speaker 3: from the encounter as I do.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're a stranger, but we're who also shows
Speaker 2: up in the book on people's motorcycles. At times or
Speaker 2: like late nights, discussions at the salon or at the
Speaker 2: at the coffee shop or other places places feel more
Speaker 2: part of the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, right, when you go to a bar and
Speaker 3: you're speaking to strangers and then you're more open and
Speaker 3: you're more generous in your stories rather than when you're
Speaker 3: talking with people around you. Yeah, are you're intimate with
Speaker 3: mm hmmm. So yeah, I wouldn't even I wouldn't even
Speaker 3: frame my relationship with them as friends or you know,
Speaker 3: or siblings or brothers, because that's what I am. I'm
Speaker 3: there as a researcher, and I think most of them
Speaker 3: fully realize of my what my role is. Yeah, mhm.
Speaker 2: We talked about a little bit about the title. I
Speaker 2: think it's quite evocative idea about and and during otherwise,
Speaker 2: so it's not it's not necessarily very heroic sounding, but
Speaker 2: that's not the point. It's almost like finding ways to
Speaker 2: almost like get on despite great adversity or how how
Speaker 2: do you how do you? How do you think about it?
Speaker 2: I'm like, what is it come from?
Speaker 1: For you?
Speaker 3: From different places, but like from for for the more
Speaker 3: like conceptual I as. I was inspired by the works
Speaker 3: of Povinelli about late liberalism and endurance, also the work
Speaker 3: of abdu ma Ale Simone, who talks about improvised life
Speaker 3: and how in the urban global South, endurance has become
Speaker 3: a way of not only surviving but also kind of
Speaker 3: tapping into unlived or unrealized potential potentialities, right, because there's
Speaker 3: a waiting involved there, but also there is some gain
Speaker 3: in the process of this enduring or waiting for something
Speaker 3: to happen, and only it is on the other hand,
Speaker 3: for for the otherwise. Actually, I'm inspired by the work
Speaker 3: of Ashan Crawley, who with black study researcher scholars whose
Speaker 3: work was or is about for their particular term is
Speaker 3: from his book Black Pantacostal Breath, about the the breathing
Speaker 3: as a space of possibility, right, and then he defines
Speaker 3: otherwise there as something that this multiple possibilities that already
Speaker 3: exists in our lives is just not being tapped into,
Speaker 3: or it's not just seen as possibilities as such. And
Speaker 3: this reminds me all the way go to this whole
Speaker 3: form of pre pre prefigurative politics and how basically work
Speaker 3: with what is around us when we're thinking about, you know, change,
Speaker 3: when we're thinking about transformation, we're not starting from this
Speaker 3: kind of fixed destination, but rather than working with the
Speaker 3: relationship that we have, the materialities that that that that
Speaker 3: is sometimes become resources, but sometimes becomes a challenge.
Speaker 2: Right, So let me see if I if I understand
Speaker 2: saying the important thing here is not here's a narrow
Speaker 2: nel salon. It's almost like, what does this nail salon
Speaker 2: allow in terms of world making? How it operates means
Speaker 2: material support or a safe a safe space of refuge
Speaker 2: or of course of friendship. It's more like what it
Speaker 2: does for the people there, rather than what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean this is a hair salons the
Speaker 3: correct I had run by transwomen in actual basically, this
Speaker 3: is what Steven was telling about in my book, which
Speaker 3: is run by Maya, one of the main protagonists. And
Speaker 3: uh yeah, at the beginning she made theo or basically
Speaker 3: she created the Solon hair salon of course as a
Speaker 3: means to survive right to to to have a livelihood.
Speaker 3: But also this is not just decision that came or
Speaker 3: I have some money or I have some investors and
Speaker 3: make hair salon. But this is something decision that came
Speaker 3: after going through live so yeah, so so like filled
Speaker 3: with violence. Basically she was a sex worker. At some
Speaker 3: point she was abused by her family members. She moved
Speaker 3: different to different cities. She works in different hair salons
Speaker 3: as well, and when she came back to her hometown,
Speaker 3: she felt that she wanted to make a hair salon
Speaker 3: that let basically doesn't reproduce all the other violent experience
Speaker 3: that that that that she she experienced before. And so
Speaker 3: that's why it's from the outside it looks like a
Speaker 3: normal running hair salon and the the workers there are
Speaker 3: mainly transfomen because in in Indonesia in general, UH, it
Speaker 3: is difficult for trans people to to have like this
Speaker 3: kind of like stable office job. So the only options
Speaker 3: UH that they have if they have skills, then they
Speaker 3: would either work or own a hair salon or maybe
Speaker 3: work in fashion design. But those who are who have
Speaker 3: no access at all, than a lot of them working
Speaker 3: as as a sweet busker right singing for money from
Speaker 3: door to door or sex workers. So these are mainly
Speaker 3: the forror uh forms of employment that that could access.
Speaker 3: So having this salon is as a place for livelihood,
Speaker 3: not just for her but also for her community. But
Speaker 3: because actually, as I told you, it's a special location
Speaker 3: in a way that it's impossible for these women to
Speaker 3: be in public uh more than they need to because
Speaker 3: they're subjected to ridicule, subject to there's a moral police
Speaker 3: there who who And then also they're kind of trying
Speaker 3: to blend in with other women wearing his job right.
Speaker 3: But also this also creates another insult of them trying
Speaker 3: to you know, play with religion and so on. So
Speaker 3: what initially started as a hairsalon slowly becomes this kind
Speaker 3: of what you said, this community. I wouldn't say safe space,
Speaker 3: but this is because exactly by hanging out there on
Speaker 3: a daily basis, it's also made it made it made
Speaker 3: it easier for them to be targeted like more by
Speaker 3: moral police or police officers who maybe doesn't want to
Speaker 3: arrest them, but you know, like for getting some cigarette
Speaker 3: money and so on, just to you know, like, so
Speaker 3: they have this place which they they can interact. But
Speaker 3: also it's quite quite fragile the safety mm hmm.
Speaker 2: One thing interesting is so, for instance, you talked a
Speaker 2: little bit about and you're talking about this in the book,
Speaker 2: how like there was political changes I think you said
Speaker 2: starting in two thousand and six, which was the nine
Speaker 2: that allowed the introduction of shrial law. But then you
Speaker 2: also remember, correct with the reading, like these outbursts of
Speaker 2: let's say more like kind of quasi vigilante community policing
Speaker 2: don't happen immediately. They happen at different points in times.
Speaker 2: But I'm not clear like what what like what causes
Speaker 2: that or it.
Speaker 1: Was just.
Speaker 3: I mean different different because I think on one important
Speaker 3: turning point was the nineteen ninety eight reform Indonesia where
Speaker 3: basically after Suharto, the authority Energyma Suharto, they basically managed
Speaker 3: to silence all sides of society from the right and leaf,
Speaker 3: from the Islamis and from human rights movement, from environmentalists
Speaker 3: to women movement. And when the head is chopped off, right,
Speaker 3: but so Arto is gone, basically there's this kind of
Speaker 3: window of openness, right, everyone was like, oh yeah, let's
Speaker 3: bring back Marxist left, this knowledge that has been censored
Speaker 3: for such a long time. Let's bring back conversation around
Speaker 3: gender and sexuality that is not you know, following the
Speaker 3: models that is made by the state and for the
Speaker 3: Islamist also there were there were for a long time
Speaker 3: being oppressed. They're being the politicized basically, which doesn't there
Speaker 3: so they didn't have a lot of channels to express
Speaker 3: their opinions and voices as well. So with this opening,
Speaker 3: what happened is then you have a lot of groups
Speaker 3: from left as well as from the human rights from
Speaker 3: queer rights are forming mobilizing. But at the same time
Speaker 3: also people from the conservative side become more active right
Speaker 3: And since then then basically you have this kind of
Speaker 3: continuous frictions in public spaces. But I think one of
Speaker 3: the I said one of them, because there's a new
Speaker 3: development that I will also share later. Another turning point
Speaker 3: was in twenty sixteen when there was a time I
Speaker 3: remember where a lot of Western country start to embrace
Speaker 3: legalized same sex marriage basically and this also translate into
Speaker 3: new circulations, but also you know, opinions debates in social media.
Speaker 3: I think one of the I remember when US legalized
Speaker 3: same sex marriage in twenty fifteen, there was a filter
Speaker 3: in Facebook right when people can use rainbow filter as
Speaker 3: their profile pictures and I think a lot of because
Speaker 3: Indonesia have a lot of Facebook users at that time,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people are using it, and that
Speaker 3: kind of surprise the conservative they didn't realize actually how
Speaker 3: many how much support there is for if not allegedly
Speaker 3: queer themselves, you know, for for same sex, legalizing same
Speaker 3: sex basically, and this creates a lot of pushback from
Speaker 3: from the conservative, one being at that time the Minister
Speaker 3: of Education and Research who tweeted that he he's banning
Speaker 3: uh student Queer Initiative in University of Indonesia and Jakarta.
Speaker 3: And because because of this statement, of course a lot
Speaker 3: of human rights activists, core activists kind of respond back.
Speaker 3: But actually the counter response from the conservative is much moresive, massive,
Speaker 3: and it translates into physical spaces as well. There's kind
Speaker 3: of like you see in different big cities in Indonesia
Speaker 3: and like banners, posters with slurs, with anti LGBT slurs
Speaker 3: basically and campaign and yeah, and then and then it
Speaker 3: kind of it's not gone, but it's kind of like
Speaker 3: because the impact continues consept like sequent like sporadically through
Speaker 3: police rates also vigilanti raids to housings, to fall on us,
Speaker 3: to parties, and actually just last month, the heat is
Speaker 3: cranked up again with the Indonesian Lama console. Oh so sorry,
Speaker 3: my story is long because this is also a long history.
Speaker 3: So recently Indonesia adopt or changed their pinal code. Right, Initially,
Speaker 3: before homosexuality was not was was was not criminalized basically,
Speaker 3: but since twenty twenty two we have a new penal code.
Speaker 3: Still homosexuality is not penalized, but same sorry sex outside
Speaker 3: of marriage is so meaning Stephen, if you are not married,
Speaker 3: then you are hesterosexual. You're still going to be criminalized
Speaker 3: based on this new penal code. Right. But also and
Speaker 3: this is like an umbrella clause that the women also
Speaker 3: same sex same sex sexuality is also criminalized because it's
Speaker 3: outside of marriage or same sex marriage is not legal
Speaker 3: in Indonesia, So it's kind of like this whole logic.
Speaker 3: Yea twenty twenty two we have that, and apparently the
Speaker 3: conservative or the Islamic console is not happy that there
Speaker 3: is no actual clause that criminalize LGBT. So as Pride
Speaker 3: season recently again activate the whole social media scene. Uh,
Speaker 3: the Ulama consil come up with a plan to now
Speaker 3: or they're working together with the parliament member to to
Speaker 3: to to to criminal to come up with the new
Speaker 3: law basically against lgbt which UH too little that we
Speaker 3: know they're actually they they have a legal basis for
Speaker 3: that because our new president, the military general or the
Speaker 3: former military general probable in their National Defense Scheme under
Speaker 3: presidential regulation define different national threats and UH divided into
Speaker 3: military and non military threats, and with non military threats,
Speaker 3: for instance, atheism consider as non military threats. Online gambling
Speaker 3: is considered as non military threats, and LGBTQ culture is
Speaker 3: also considered as non military threats. And because of this
Speaker 3: is this official document. Now more and more like conservative
Speaker 3: institutions are tapping into that, and then they're really really
Speaker 3: trying to push now to change the whole yeah situation.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's kind of evilly clever that you're yoking
Speaker 2: yoking together things which could cause actual harm, like the
Speaker 2: abjective gambling to something which is just not harmful at all.
Speaker 2: But it still reminds me of the way someone like
Speaker 2: David Gribber, borrowing from bits and talks about the idea
Speaker 2: of skisble genesis, where you define yourself against the other
Speaker 2: that you're not. So so this is bad here because
Speaker 2: this is also of spending time in Singapore and talking
Speaker 2: to queer friends there and the way they talk about
Speaker 2: how how oftentimes conservatives in Singapore with Frank quitness as
Speaker 2: being the sort of like this Western import and then
Speaker 2: we're like, well, no, actually the thing that's important was
Speaker 2: not queerness, but was actually homophobia.
Speaker 3: And gender binary. Yeah, yeah, because of this binary. Actually,
Speaker 3: I think the core of it is actually binary, that
Speaker 3: that that really tried to define something that that is
Speaker 3: in sexual Sorry, in Southeast Asia or Global South is
Speaker 3: much more fluid, right, you have different different roles and
Speaker 3: positional at positionality you don't have. I mean, you can
Speaker 3: be a woman, a man, a trans woman, transman even
Speaker 3: like other kind of configurations of gender and sexuality that
Speaker 3: basically are being impovourished by this model of gender binary.
Speaker 3: And then comes to the hierarchy in it, right, So
Speaker 3: the masculine is kind of the highest in the hierarchy
Speaker 3: in comparison to the feminine. And where patriarchy comes in,
Speaker 3: where homophobia comes in, frotophobia comes in as well. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: homophobia is a Western important I agree with you, it.
Speaker 2: Does seem a certain way, which what what's underlying kind
Speaker 2: of anxiety that makes Frga discussire is almost like fluidity
Speaker 2: is bad. Stay in a box, whatever the box is,
Speaker 2: just stay there and no no, no, you can't move
Speaker 2: you keep you over here as well. No no, no, no,
Speaker 2: stay in your thing. Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's the thing. That's why I also I
Speaker 3: like this concept ambivalence a lot, right, Like, because people
Speaker 3: always the question is always either this or that right?
Speaker 3: But how about both this and that right? People could
Speaker 3: be have much more dimensions than two or even just
Speaker 3: one right. And with ambivalence, I guess it's something that
Speaker 3: because it describes the reality of the relationships and attachments
Speaker 3: that we have, Like some of our attachments, our desires
Speaker 3: can be contradictory, but it doesn't mean that we're not,
Speaker 3: you know, desiring both right, because people rarely experience things
Speaker 3: as purely positive or negative ways. They can love their
Speaker 3: families while feeling hurt by family expectations. They can value
Speaker 3: religious traditions while questioning certain interpretations. So you have all
Speaker 3: these sites in the human experience, and why do you choose?
Speaker 3: Why do you have to choose between those two.
Speaker 2: Right, I suppose that's what I was trying to get
Speaker 2: out my brief perhaps not well thought through much at
Speaker 2: the beginning, about but understanding similar issues from being raised
Speaker 2: Catholic and the moment there is that like you might say,
Speaker 2: if a religion or social world is condemning of your
Speaker 2: desires or your reality or your living, just leave. But
Speaker 2: like just saying just leave kind of glasses over the
Speaker 2: fact that that it created a world and expected and affects.
Speaker 2: Then one is basically possible to just magically exit suddenly
Speaker 2: two one of those things you still value in that world.
Speaker 3: H I do, I do have one of the plug
Speaker 3: whenis Ana actually she identified herself as an ex Muslim
Speaker 3: quare like a former so she left Islam practically. But again,
Speaker 3: like if you read her story, even after the deciding
Speaker 3: to leave the things that she finds problematic, there are
Speaker 3: still many other problems that she's dealing with as a
Speaker 3: human as from like a spiritual perspective, but also from
Speaker 3: like relationship perspective. It's almost, Yeah, that's what I think,
Speaker 3: that's what makes life possible to to to to be
Speaker 3: in these imperfect situations with at the same time always
Speaker 3: imagining different possibilities.
Speaker 2: Did you happen to come across any sort of let's say,
Speaker 2: like parts of the Muslim community, like institutionally that were
Speaker 2: more accepting or welcoming of query trans folts.
Speaker 3: So maybe just like that, just to give a context
Speaker 3: of time, when I start these research, it was two thousand,
Speaker 3: I mean, I have this idea of doing or I
Speaker 3: apply here and there for my PhD proposal. Since twenty ten,
Speaker 3: I think, so at that time there wasn't that many
Speaker 3: So but slowly, as I start doing my research, more
Speaker 3: and more initiative are being organized. In Jukja Karta, for instance,
Speaker 3: you have in Indonesia, or in Islamic tradition, you have
Speaker 3: a so called Pasan trend, which is basically a religious
Speaker 3: a school to learn about Islam. Right. And also this
Speaker 3: is a very popular educational practice in whole Indonesia where
Speaker 3: people either fully go on through the Pasan trend system
Speaker 3: or they combine it with formal education, so they would
Speaker 3: go to circular school during the day and then study
Speaker 3: study in the Pasan trend during the evening and also
Speaker 3: spend the night there. But the thing is it's very gendered,
Speaker 3: meaning only male students go to the male Centran and
Speaker 3: then the female students go to the female center. And
Speaker 3: this doesn't give a lot of space to trans people,
Speaker 3: right because so in Jojja actually they initiate the pasandrain
Speaker 3: for for for transfer for trans women, inviting also clerics
Speaker 3: who are quite progressive. I would say, uh. And because
Speaker 3: there are more and more progressive interpretations of the Qur'an
Speaker 3: because basically in Islam, the thing, the very thing that
Speaker 3: that made homosexuality a big no no is there is
Speaker 3: a there's a the story of lot right, I think
Speaker 3: you have it also in Bible uh. And with the
Speaker 3: progressive interpretation is basically the the frame uh, the the
Speaker 3: city of Sodom, right, Uh, The inhabitant of Sodom was
Speaker 3: not punished by God because of their committing homosexuality, but
Speaker 3: because they were basically practicing a lot of uh inhuman
Speaker 3: like slavery, uh, sex without consent and so on. So
Speaker 3: so this initiative for instance, and then actually when I
Speaker 3: a few years back, there is a very open transman
Speaker 3: uh also cleric uh his name is Amar Alpha Car
Speaker 3: who uh initiate uh Quranic uh reading online or queer
Speaker 3: people again with more empowering, more affirmative interpretation of Quran.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's becoming more and more, I would say,
Speaker 3: especially among the younger generations, but not during the time
Speaker 3: when I did my research, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was not so surprising that when world's changed,
Speaker 2: they had to change either very slowly or all at once.
Speaker 2: So maybe you only saw a little bits of things
Speaker 2: happening here and there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I managed to capture the moment when Yeah, this
Speaker 3: transitional moment, I guess, because I think what happened with
Speaker 3: internet and information is I think more and more people
Speaker 3: like you have a lot of this kind of initiative
Speaker 3: as well globally in South Africa, in the US, right,
Speaker 3: so people catch up with that quite quickly.
Speaker 2: Mhm. Oh, this is gonna be a strange question. But like,
Speaker 2: how do the spaces that you're you're visiting from trans
Speaker 2: folks relate to other kinds of say marginal spaces that
Speaker 2: might be talking about like like punk kids or like
Speaker 2: weird artists, or is there any sort of overlap between
Speaker 2: the world or they takenally separate.
Speaker 3: It's different in different cities. I think the capital of
Speaker 3: Mandace there's a lot of punk kids communities as well,
Speaker 3: but also they are actually quite very marginalized as well
Speaker 3: from the moral perspective, from the ria perspective. So there
Speaker 3: are quite a few I wouldn't say coalition, but like
Speaker 3: they they they hang out together sometimes here and then,
Speaker 3: but not really like at that time. Also, there's not
Speaker 3: really more mixed organizing. I would say, again, this is
Speaker 3: a different with the current times because they are more
Speaker 3: and more punk slash queer. They spaces emerging in Georgia
Speaker 3: in Jakarta. But during that time, I think again because
Speaker 3: it was a transitional time, it felt like each are
Speaker 3: fighting on their own, you know, like because they're all. Yeah,
Speaker 3: intersectionality at that time wasn't so much being a thing,
Speaker 3: So people still struggle in silos. Basically, I would say,
Speaker 3: even among the gay men and the trans women, they're
Speaker 3: quite clear separation and sometimes they're also quite some conflict
Speaker 3: there due to the gay man doesn't want to be
Speaker 3: seen around trans women because they want they don't want
Speaker 3: to be you know, found out in a way, and
Speaker 3: the trans women doesn't like the guts of the gay
Speaker 3: men because they think there are arrogant and so on
Speaker 3: and so forth. So these little kind of fractions happening
Speaker 3: that to an extent that actually in Actually I had
Speaker 3: to do my field work with the gay men in
Speaker 3: one town and with the trans woman in another town.
Speaker 3: They're one hour away from each other, but still like
Speaker 3: American effort that so then there's no kind of because
Speaker 3: gossip and rumors, this is always something about the queer
Speaker 3: trans I think in any community it has become the
Speaker 3: bane of like in every interaction.
Speaker 2: Basically, I think this is the one thing doesn't think
Speaker 2: well is recognized with there's well of of of of gossip,
Speaker 2: which is category sociologically aren't just throwaway but actually are
Speaker 2: important key parts of how communities bind themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But also what is interesting a
Speaker 3: lot of in this rumoring and gossiping, some of them
Speaker 3: also use it as a as a space to kind
Speaker 3: of practice their moral judgment. I would say, So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of moralizing, so a lot of borrowing from
Speaker 3: religious religious teachings and values and sometimes also othering that
Speaker 3: is happening within the community. And this is what I'm
Speaker 3: also I wanted to say this earlier about how a
Speaker 3: lot of members of the community that I saw or
Speaker 3: that I met also felt that they were born as
Speaker 3: Muslim first, and then they realized that they become queer
Speaker 3: or they're queer or their trends right, So for them
Speaker 3: having kind of like religious identity is also as as
Speaker 3: important as having sexual and gender identity, because myself also
Speaker 3: included I I'm not a practicing Muslim. Now I'm a
Speaker 3: nominal Muslim. I'm an id based Muslim aka Muslim in Indonesia.
Speaker 3: But but I grew up, you know, with religious teachings
Speaker 3: from not only from schools, but also in in in
Speaker 3: daily practice at home from my parents. So this is
Speaker 3: something that felt. Yeah, sometimes it's a bit for others
Speaker 3: who who who who have the opinion, yeah, you can
Speaker 3: actually leave a religion, but actually, in the context of innesia,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's sponssible. I mean, of course you
Speaker 3: can convert always, but there's so many, so much social
Speaker 3: sanction that comes with it, if not legal sanction. So
Speaker 3: being convert or being at this as I told you
Speaker 3: it was written in the regulation that it's it's right,
Speaker 3: mm hmm.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's a certain sense which the convert
Speaker 2: is always going to be kind of a stranger, let's say,
Speaker 2: the most the most social aspects of the world that
Speaker 2: you're brought into because because you're you're joining it rather
Speaker 2: than have always been there.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean it's different. Like in Malaysia, even
Speaker 3: it's it's it's illegal to convert, like so the law
Speaker 3: says that every Malay are Muslims, so if they are
Speaker 3: born in Malayan family, then they have to be Muslim
Speaker 3: with no possibilities of moving to other religion. And Indonesia
Speaker 3: is less strict than that, but still there's a lot
Speaker 3: of risk that come.
Speaker 2: I mean, we could get into into a very interesting
Speaker 2: discussion about the very weird history of British colonial categories
Speaker 2: around racist religion like Fredistan. Correctly, the British Empire used Malay.
Speaker 2: They basically mean any dark skinned Muslim person. So first
Speaker 2: in seventeenth century British Empire code, a person from Saudi
Speaker 2: Arabia was Malay m M, which of course is completely
Speaker 2: nonsensical because what happened that's thousands of miles away.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. In Malaysia it is kind
Speaker 3: of continued until now this kind of racial racial segregation.
Speaker 3: Indonesia doesn't have that because we although we are Muslim
Speaker 3: majority country, especially in eastern part and central to eastern
Speaker 3: part of Indonesia, we have also Christian majorities, right, But
Speaker 3: again doesn't mean that if you're a Christian living in
Speaker 3: Christian majority region in Indonesia and they are queer, that
Speaker 3: you would be saved as well, because within the minor,
Speaker 3: within this minority minority, there's also quite a strong conservative power.
Speaker 2: Working mm hmmm, and that conservative resident can compress itself
Speaker 2: and some of the ways even though it's not the
Speaker 2: same religion.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. I had I had this, I had this,
Speaker 3: I had this audience question. I think it's his uh,
Speaker 3: his European. So his question after my book presentation was like, oh,
Speaker 3: so what are you saying? So is it the fault
Speaker 3: of Islam or is it the fault or Indonesian culture
Speaker 3: that people are homophobia, because like, is there any in
Speaker 3: my presentation that suggests that. No, it's not my point
Speaker 3: at all. It was like, you have homophobia across religion,
Speaker 3: you have homophobia across cultures. Right, And then this person said, well,
Speaker 3: but what about Bali because I was in Bali and
Speaker 3: they're quite open. It was like, well, you went to
Speaker 3: a tourist area. If you go to Balin to go
Speaker 3: to I mean, if you are locals, you'll see that
Speaker 3: being queer and friends. Also they have a difficult life
Speaker 3: there because also there's a lot of rejection.
Speaker 2: It seems to me the I mean, I don't want
Speaker 2: to say that you don't have your own political or
Speaker 2: ethical values here, but excuse me, this book is less
Speaker 2: about like understanding the root causes of homophobia, orph war,
Speaker 2: but war. It's like, here are people making the world,
Speaker 2: getting on themselves, and this is how it works, what
Speaker 2: what it makes for them, and you're still exploring that
Speaker 2: and being with that more so than like trying to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's why it happened. It's almost like saying this is happening.
Speaker 2: These things do continue regardless of what the law says
Speaker 2: or what the state says. These worlds exist.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. A friend of mine, uh, a colleague of
Speaker 3: man told me, because there's no there's nowhere if I
Speaker 3: refer to Marx, there right in my book. But he said,
Speaker 3: my book is really Marx's way, because there's this constant
Speaker 3: like I approach my study always.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Maybe because I don't know if all anthropologists agree, but
Speaker 3: I found as someone who worked with people on the
Speaker 3: grassroots and struggling against or struggling within the context of oppression,
Speaker 3: struggling against states, struggling against passive institutions. Is that it's
Speaker 3: like a dialectic rather than forever, like there's no win,
Speaker 3: there's never any long win. There's and there's also never
Speaker 3: any long loser. Right with history, it's like things are
Speaker 3: like they kind of interrelate, they things things. When things
Speaker 3: on the left are becoming more sophisticated, so that's the
Speaker 3: right wing, you know, Like so they find new new
Speaker 3: ways also to to and is kind of this kind
Speaker 3: of back and forth, these dialectics, I think, what is
Speaker 3: what defines live and and of course the fights are important,
Speaker 3: but if we focus too much on the fights of
Speaker 3: the winners and the losers, we forgot like the kind
Speaker 3: of like the long run of things.
Speaker 1: So how.
Speaker 3: There are casualties there there that there there are people
Speaker 3: also need to breathe, to to to to take care
Speaker 3: of each other. So that the so called liberation project
Speaker 3: is not it's not a it's not a messianistic movement,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not it's not as chathological. It's it's
Speaker 3: always it's always there will be always a pushback and
Speaker 3: then and then when the times come, then it's time
Speaker 3: to like like to reconsolidate, but also to really again
Speaker 3: check what we have around us, rather than to just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: we all fail uh and then we give uh, which
Speaker 3: creates a kind of frustration and anewy and paralysis which
Speaker 3: I actually also understandable. But from what I how, I
Speaker 3: see it as actually people just need to take some
Speaker 3: some rests, some respite, and then they can continue their
Speaker 3: strugg fight again uh again for the long run.
Speaker 2: Right, I think what I think I find intioning about
Speaker 2: the way you wrote the book. This would be difficult
Speaker 2: to phrase, but when you see when you, for instance,
Speaker 2: watch like media or or read fiction, oftentimes you only
Speaker 2: have queer and trans characters who exist to be sort
Speaker 2: of fill in for like they have to deal with
Speaker 2: the university of being repressed and that's why they're heroic.
Speaker 2: And but the old exists to be fulfill that role.
Speaker 2: You never get people just they're just there to be
Speaker 2: there mhm. And it's almost like you're exploring how these
Speaker 2: worlds maybe operates the wrong world, how the practices of care,
Speaker 2: of listening, of doing things together, how important they are
Speaker 2: not because they're taking part in a heroic quest against
Speaker 2: homophobia and all these almostly because They're just important because
Speaker 2: they're world and themselves. They have value in themselves, it's
Speaker 2: what they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think what I'm trying as much as
Speaker 3: to do is yeah, because I don't mind heroic stories.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I also find some values and stories
Speaker 3: of affectinghood. Right. But but the thing is mm hmm.
Speaker 3: For me, what is more important is to stay loyal
Speaker 3: to to to the stories that are shared to to
Speaker 3: to by by the protagonists in a way that, as
Speaker 3: I told you, we have all these things together, we
Speaker 3: can be careful or sorry, how do you how does
Speaker 3: it like compassionate? If not careful, we can be compassionate.
Speaker 3: But also at the same time doesn't mean that we
Speaker 3: can't disagree with each other, right, And that's the thing,
Speaker 3: like if we we we anchor all this this complexity
Speaker 3: into certain only certain one value over the other.
Speaker 1: Is that.
Speaker 3: It's hard to mm hmm. It's it's too like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you you can't be sterile around this, around this, because
Speaker 3: this is the the texture of everyday life, right. And
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of an example of this so
Speaker 3: called care work. For instance, I think again the case
Speaker 3: is Maya. She's been taking her friends queer or not
Speaker 3: queer to to to to to the hospital because she
Speaker 3: she she has quite some access to the nurses and
Speaker 3: the system because she she worked for hivng OH for
Speaker 3: a while. But because she was seen very often in
Speaker 3: the hospital, people start to gossip that, oh, yeah, MAYA
Speaker 3: have HIV, which actually a big stigma still in parts
Speaker 3: of Indonesia, including Anji, enough to make people stop going
Speaker 3: to her hair salone, for instance. So after hearing that
Speaker 3: that story, she she she literally came through the door,
Speaker 3: like banging the door, and well like because there's no
Speaker 3: one else, she just like start shouting at me. But
Speaker 3: she's not shouting at me, she's shouting at the person.
Speaker 3: But basically she was like, do you realize what I've
Speaker 3: been doing all this time? I'm doing it pro bono
Speaker 3: and no one cares. And this is what I got, Like,
Speaker 3: this is like people talking bad about me? Right, So
Speaker 3: what is the purpose in all of this? Right? That
Speaker 3: that's what so even in in like yes, people can
Speaker 3: perform care, but also there's a limit to it. If
Speaker 3: there's no support, there's no recognition that comes with it,
Speaker 3: then it becomes yeah, she is not only a burnout,
Speaker 3: but also like yeah, she she she she she, she
Speaker 3: quite uestions all of her work. That's far right, what
Speaker 3: would actually uh very important I found, But then yeah,
Speaker 3: I was also very depleting because there's no one care
Speaker 3: for her in the meantime. So the care is again
Speaker 3: the resources that we think is uh never ending or endless,
Speaker 3: but actually no, there's a limit to it. And if
Speaker 3: if there's no effort, no conscious effort, intentional effort put
Speaker 3: into that to care is about to be in a
Speaker 3: relationship and it's as it requires procality, then what happened
Speaker 3: is you have all these burnouts and conflicts and frictions, right.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, Yeah, it seems important that that that almost
Speaker 2: like the lack of recognition of what she's doing there
Speaker 2: actually another burden because it's almost like but it's not
Speaker 2: recognized that has has has has other effects that are
Speaker 2: quite bad.
Speaker 3: And this is not recognition from the other side of
Speaker 3: the community or those who poser, it's actually recognition from
Speaker 3: within the community. Also, sometimes people take tests for granted,
Speaker 3: right because this is what activist is supposed to do,
Speaker 3: This is what our leader has supposed to do, is like,
Speaker 3: so this kind of create this weird hierarchy.
Speaker 2: It's also tricky because you know, I can see it'd
Speaker 2: be very easy to assume that like if you have
Speaker 2: a very small community, that everyone would know what's going
Speaker 2: with everyone else. And then if someone's doing the kind
Speaker 2: of support work for years, that everyone else would already
Speaker 2: know that. But you know, but but yeah they don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But this is also just one case
Speaker 3: in point. I think in general, in general, it is
Speaker 3: possible to create this this this how do you call it? Like,
Speaker 3: I still not I'm not sure about using safe space,
Speaker 3: but there's this space where people could be right. But
Speaker 3: at the same time, also as I told you, it's
Speaker 3: very fragile because the moment there is politicians saying something
Speaker 3: or something came up in the news, and there will
Speaker 3: be the ones who will be forst targeted. M Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: You say, I'm it was a friend or that, But
Speaker 2: how did your friend think your book was? Was was Marxist?
Speaker 3: Now? Because of the I don't know, maybe because and
Speaker 3: because I have made so much focus on the materiality
Speaker 3: of it, right like uh, I uh, maybe she's comparing
Speaker 3: it to this more I would say humanistic queer scholarship
Speaker 3: that tends to look at desire and forms of intimacy,
Speaker 3: while I look at more like materiality and how relationships
Speaker 3: are kind of mediated by a change of resources, and yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's much more. Yeah, I don't know material base.
Speaker 2: I guess it's it's just funny because if I was
Speaker 2: gonna reach for comparison and now I'm probably gonna totally
Speaker 2: offend you. So you could probably yelp me, I probably
Speaker 2: reached loss for marks, which more for like Mitch Donie.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm not familiar with that.
Speaker 2: He's Another problem is that does a lot of photographies
Speaker 2: like you bo called Limb's Table, which is about the
Speaker 2: diner in Chicago, Chicago. Basic summary with books is here
Speaker 2: is a martialized community. It turns out they're actually building
Speaker 2: a moral community for themselves and here's how it works.
Speaker 3: Mmmmmm mmmm yeah I can I can say that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean you can say that, of course, but everyone
Speaker 3: has their opinion. I'm not saying my work as a Marxist.
Speaker 3: This is also just one interpretation. But I guess I'm
Speaker 3: starting with that, sorry, because I do believe this idea
Speaker 3: of like, uh, dialectics and in politics and social life.
Speaker 2: Yeah cool, cool, Well, we're getting up into around the
Speaker 2: hours a public book with sort of a few things
Speaker 2: to nudge you to towards a conclusion or myself conclusion.
Speaker 2: What would you say for some of the I, you know,
Speaker 2: thinks about people who read the book, what would you
Speaker 2: ideally like people to take away from having read your
Speaker 2: book of Like, here's what I here's what I learned
Speaker 2: from from reading Ferdy's book. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: a big thing. It could be something quite small, because
Speaker 2: sometimes the small things are maybe the most important.
Speaker 3: At least for I mean, there are many many kind
Speaker 3: of targets, right, I think for the community themselves, I
Speaker 3: guess I think it's important because and although this is
Speaker 3: also this is something that I got feedback from someone
Speaker 3: who read or someone who use the book of parents
Speaker 3: who has a trend child who has difficulty in talking
Speaker 3: about these things, and then they read the book together
Speaker 3: and then have a you know, common like have a
Speaker 3: conversation around it. It's about Yeah, the for me, it's
Speaker 3: about creating space for conversation basically about how how difficult
Speaker 3: it is actually to build worlds together.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 3: I think it's with Graver who says, like when we
Speaker 3: when we're we're we we enter into collective situation, a
Speaker 3: collective situation like an assembly, right, Like, we felt very
Speaker 3: moved by it, and we want to to to Actually,
Speaker 3: what's happening next is that we want to to to
Speaker 3: It's about trying to recreate the same collectivity again, which
Speaker 3: actually most of the time doesn't work because then that's
Speaker 3: where all the care work comes in, the administrational work
Speaker 3: comes in. So this, this, this very idea of collectivity
Speaker 3: is a means for liberation, but it doesn't that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that like you can't just rely on this or
Speaker 3: objective via collectivity as it is, but it is something
Speaker 3: that you need to constantly work on, uh, in an organization,
Speaker 3: in a group of people, in a group of friends.
Speaker 3: So just don't take prevented anything that goes into that, right,
Speaker 3: including care, including this agreement, including how to listen to
Speaker 3: each other, how to deal with conflict. But for of course,
Speaker 3: for the bigger audience that doesn't know much about most
Speaker 3: of them trans or trans communities, or about how they live,
Speaker 3: how they think, I hope this kind of gives them
Speaker 3: early way up to to two to understand that that
Speaker 3: that uh, having a different sexuality and having a different gender.
Speaker 3: Also they are in yeah, we are all human, you know,
Speaker 3: like uh uh, we have our failures, we have our
Speaker 3: success but but at the at the very end, we
Speaker 3: are as vulnerable as everyone else. Like as uh, I
Speaker 3: think speaking of inner conflict, as you said, you don't
Speaker 3: have to be a Muslim, you don't have to be
Speaker 3: queer to to to have this inner conflict. People have that.
Speaker 3: All people have that in different ways. So in a
Speaker 3: sense also give so then people could give more grace
Speaker 3: to others, uh uh, or their failures and their difference.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: In certain ways, what's more more interesting is less that
Speaker 2: there is an inner conflict and more what people do
Speaker 2: as they respond to the inn conflict and how they
Speaker 2: make sense of it and how they relate to it,
Speaker 2: how they're processing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think, I think, I think even even
Speaker 3: when it although its name is inner conflict, it's never
Speaker 3: in any individual thing actually because a lot of it
Speaker 3: involve relationship, involve talking with others, involved solving it with others,
Speaker 3: but also uh the other way around, like attacking out
Speaker 3: and rejecting others.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, yes's funny. It prefers with like I
Speaker 2: don't know, like it like the inner conflict between us
Speaker 2: or something were words but an interiority, but the entire
Speaker 2: arty is always expressed it relationally.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah exactly. That's also I think what I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do, which is not easy because to write
Speaker 3: about once interiority. I think a novelist could do that successfully. Also,
Speaker 3: a novelist can do that in the kind of like
Speaker 3: But because I did this ethnographic research, there's I only
Speaker 3: see like the tape of the icebergs of what these
Speaker 3: people are thinking, are feeling basically mm hmmm mm hm cool.
Speaker 2: Cool. Well, I'll ask you just two more things. I'll
Speaker 2: say that I really enjoyed the book, and I hope
Speaker 2: this conversation will lead more people picking up and having
Speaker 2: having a go at reading it. But so the two
Speaker 2: things that maybe sort of end with tonight. One mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Who do you want to play you in the film version?
Speaker 2: Oh no, that's seconitely. Where are you going next in
Speaker 2: terms of projects or thoughts.
Speaker 3: Or I don't know. I'm not good with pop cultures.
Speaker 3: Who actors definitely like a white actor. No, it's hard
Speaker 3: because I also I have very little note of Indian actors. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I mean you can.
Speaker 2: Also go with like I'd prefer to be an anime,
Speaker 2: or I want a cartoon version, or or I'd prefer
Speaker 2: to be cartoon animals.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, actually I.
Speaker 1: Like this.
Speaker 3: Film, right, maybe something around around that pion very cool? Cool,
Speaker 3: And you're what was your second question?
Speaker 2: H distract it by just like what are you doing next?
Speaker 2: You're working on the project.
Speaker 3: Or So when I did my PhD, I kind of
Speaker 3: avoid working with activist groups because this is also by process.
Speaker 3: I learned that because of exactly there's a lot of
Speaker 3: what I call dirty laundry within activist scenes that at
Speaker 3: that time I felt that I don't know how to
Speaker 3: deal with this like ethically, because there's so much dirty
Speaker 3: laundry within the activist scenes. And then I'm not a journalist,
Speaker 3: but still as a researcher, I need to to bear
Speaker 3: witness to it. And so rather than going through that lane,
Speaker 3: so I avoid engaging with them altogether. But now ten
Speaker 3: years later, uh, confronted by this reality that actually things
Speaker 3: not only not get better, but also get even more
Speaker 3: I call it more sophisticated, like it's more kind of uh. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're also the structure of violence, the so called structure
Speaker 3: of violence is also becoming more agile, uh, and more
Speaker 3: more hard to deal with. I felt that actually I
Speaker 3: need to engage with activists more because I guess what
Speaker 3: stops them or what what?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: What contributes to the difficult that they're facing now is
Speaker 3: also because they're not engaging or they're not dealing with
Speaker 3: this kind of complexity enough. Because activists they want to
Speaker 3: be pragmatic, right, they want to have their goals, they
Speaker 3: want to have their action points and so on, but
Speaker 3: they also forget about what goes in between that. Who
Speaker 3: who will buy the toilet tissue where the toilet tissue
Speaker 3: is it's not there? Who will uh fix them for fridge?
Speaker 3: Who will provide the food? No one's taking care of
Speaker 3: that because everyone is too busy being at the forefront
Speaker 3: right But actually, as you know, as you as we
Speaker 3: all experience right now, when the so called violent structures
Speaker 3: has becoming, it's everywhere almost everywhere you go physically by
Speaker 3: from the state, from the institution, from the university, from
Speaker 3: the corporates, from their writing activists, from the political parties,
Speaker 3: even from people you see on the street. We need
Speaker 3: that space, We need that space for healing and reparation
Speaker 3: also within us. So my next project is about exactly
Speaker 3: wanting to look at the role of called radical care
Speaker 3: environment also care beyond humans in relation to queer and
Speaker 3: transactivism in not only in Indonesia but in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 3: because I want to engage with Malaysia. We mentioned it
Speaker 3: already and maybe several other countries.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, that sounds like super interesting and I'll look
Speaker 2: forward to hearing more about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure about writing a second book because
Speaker 3: it took me twelve years to finish the first one.
Speaker 3: But let's see, maybe the second one will be faster.
Speaker 2: Not all things have to be books, but Dad, I
Speaker 2: just can take many forms. Maybe it'll be a laundromat
Speaker 2: where you can people do their clothes together, clean, clean
Speaker 2: the dirty laundry. Right, but thank you very very much
Speaker 2: for that. That was super interesting party.
Speaker 3: Thank you Stefan, and yes, thank you for making the type.
Speaker 3: I know you are in a difficult situation now hop everything.
Speaker 3: I hope you can endure it and then also have
Speaker 3: some otherwise possibilities come up out of it.
Speaker 2: I will find ways to endure otherwise.
Speaker 1: Doing the doping bink Doggi