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Indonesian host’s saga adds to anxieties of LGBTQ folk ahead of election: ‘this is who I am’
- A celebrity recently quit a TV show after being rebuked for ‘dressing like a woman’, in a case LGBTQ activists say outlines the deep prejudice the community faces
- The timing of the incident, just weeks from the election, shows officials in the Muslim-majority nation continue to believe addressing LGBTQ rights will be ‘political suicide’
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Ahead of Indonesia’s election, LGBTQ voters say they are caught between “a rock and a hard place” as to whom to support, with the silence by presidential candidates over the prejudice faced recently by a celebrity seen as a sign that the rainbow community’s rights will continue to be ignored.
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Fashion designer Ivan Gunawan shocked fans on January 8 when he abruptly quit as co-host of entertainment gossip programme Brownis, after Indonesia’s broadcasting regulator rebuked him for “dressing like a woman”.
“This is who I am and how I dress,” the entertainer said in a defiant Instagram post to his 32.8 million followers.
The saga split opinions from the public, with some supporters vowing to stop watching the show in protest, while others accused the cross-dressing Gunawan of being a bad role model.
It comes as Indonesia’s LGBTQ community has increasingly been feeling politically “left out in the cold”, said Hendrika Mayora Victoria, the country’s first transgender public official.
The public discrimination Gunawan faced only crystallises their anxieties as the nation gears up to vote in presidential and legislative elections on February 14, she added.
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“I could feel for him because I often have to face the same parochial attitude,” said Hendrika, who was in 2020 elected chair of her village council in Habi, East Nusa Tenggara.
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