{"id":254438,"date":"2021-05-19T22:17:16","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T19:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/indonesian-lgbt-magazines-find-a-second-life-online\/"},"modified":"2021-05-19T22:17:16","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T19:17:16","slug":"indonesian-lgbt-magazines-find-a-second-life-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/indonesian-lgbt-magazines-find-a-second-life-online\/","title":{"rendered":"#Indonesian LGBT+ magazines find a second life online"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Indonesian LGBT+ magazines find a second life online<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

JAKARTA, May 19 \u2013 Two men embracing on a magazine cover was more than risqu\u00e9 for Indonesia, thought LGBT+ researcher Ais, when he first discovered a trove of retro LGBT+ zines in Bali last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly it felt like I was a part of something bigger than myself,\u201d said Ais, 29, who does not want to reveal his full name due to the sensitivity of the matter, of his discovery of the zines. \u201cTurns out I have a history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The LGBT+ zines, or community-based publications printed in small batches, were distributed across the\u00a0Indonesian\u00a0archipelago during the 1980s and 1990s, a sign of more permissive times in the world\u2019s largest Muslim-majority nation.<\/p>\n

Although homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, with the exception of sharia-ruled Aceh province where same-sex relations are banned, it is general<\/a>ly considered a taboo subject.<\/p>\n

The country is also becoming less tolerant of the LGBT+ community as some politicians become more vocal about Islam playing a large role in the state.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0find\u00a0gave Ais and Beau Newham, an Australian who works in HIV prevention and support, the impetus to digitize as many LGBT+ zines as they could\u00a0find\u00a0by scanning old copies and posting them\u00a0online. Their website Queer Indonesia Archive https:\/\/qiarchive.org<\/a> went live last June.<\/p>\n

\"The
The cover of an old Indonesian LGBT+ magazine is digitized by Ais, a 29-year-old LGBT+ researcher, in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 8, 2021. <\/figcaption>
Reuters <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s any sort of material that reflects the stories of queer\u00a0Indonesians and we can digitize it, we will. That\u2019s the premise,\u201d Newham, 34, told Reuters in an interview.<\/p>\n

Equipped with four scanners and aided by volunteers, fundraising and non-governmental grants, the duo has found over 18 titles of\u00a0Indonesian\u00a0LBGT+ zines and the archive has reached 30 gigabytes.<\/p>\n

Ais said the group usually goes to the head of the community that produced the zine to ask if they would share copies.<\/p>\n

Poems to personal ads<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first LGBT+ zine in\u00a0Indonesian\u00a0history was published in 1982 and was called \u201cG: Gaya Hidup Ceria\u201d (G: Happ<\/a>y\u00a0Lifestyle), according to Dede Oetomo, a gay scholar who founded the longest-running zine GAYa NUSANTARA, which finally went\u00a0online\u00a0in 2014.<\/p>\n

Though they never received mainstream recognition, the zines circulated freely from Java island (Jaka Zine) to Sulawesi (GAYa Celebes), containing poems to personal ads, where people in search of a partner would post basic information and photos of themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was happy, because I could get lots of friends. In hindsight, those bulletins did what the social media<\/a> apps are doing today,\u201d Dede said, referring to gay dating apps such as Grindr.<\/p>\n

To evade\u00a0Indonesian\u00a0authorities, the zines were called a \u201cseries<\/a> of books,\u201d instead of bulletins, Dede said, adding this was the closest they came to self-censorship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad Queer Indonesia Archive is doing this. We never had such skills,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\"Ais,
Ais, a 29-year-old LGBT+ researcher, puts a copy of Indonesia\u2019s decades-old LGBT+ magazine on a scanner while digitizing it in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 8, 2021. <\/figcaption>
Reuters <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Archiving these zines has been soul-searching for Ais, who said his exposure to queer communities in recent years has always centered on queer persecution.<\/p>\n

While Queer Indonesia Archive hasn\u2019t yet raised any ire with the authorities, \u201cwe\u2019re in a perpetual fear of backlash,\u201d Newham said.<\/p>\n

There has been a rise in discrimination and violent attacks against Indonesia\u2019s LGBT+ community in recent years. Police have prosecuted members of the community under anti-pornography and other laws.<\/p>\n

More than 1,800 cases of persecution of LGBT+\u00a0Indonesians occurred between 2006 and 2017, LGBT+ advocacy group Arus Pelangi reported in September 2019. A survey by the think tank Pew Research Center last year showed that 80% of\u00a0Indonesians believe homosexuality \u201cshould not be accepted by society.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the COVID-19 pandemic ends, Ais and Newham plan to start recording audio accounts of older members of LGBT+ communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to archive more of our history in an inclusive manner,\u201d Ais said. \u201cThrough QIA, I hope to make people more aware of Indonesia\u2019s queer history.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Indonesian LGBT+ magazines find a second life online” JAKARTA, May 19 \u2013 Two men embracing on a magazine cover was more than risqu\u00e9 for Indonesia, thought LGBT+ researcher Ais, when he first discovered a trove of retro LGBT+ zines in Bali last year. \u201cSuddenly it felt like I was a part of something bigger than…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/05\/magazine-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[106385,74393,72673,23261,4934],"class_list":["post-254438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-19-21","tag-gay-rights","tag-indonesia","tag-lgbtq","tag-magazines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}