International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 2 | Page 25

International Journal of Indonesian Studies

Autumn 2015

However, what made homosexuals so distinguished from other social classes was the major
contribution of the colonial Dutch government. The Dutch government ‘imported’ a new
culture of homosexuality, when around the same time, homosexuality was banned in
Europe. The very existence of the Dutch crackdown suggests that homosexuality was visible
enough to catch the eye of the colonial apparatus at a time when the colony’s future was
increasingly in doubt. Sex between men seems to have becom e seen as threatening the
racial19 hierarchy and as the product of global connection and a threat to social order
(Boellstorff, 2005, p. 54).
Social representation and gender belief system
The creation of the “State” contributed most certainly to the interdiction of homosexuality
in Indonesia. Every State represents himself through his society through the mechanisms of
social representation and the gender belief system. Social representations are about
processes of collective meaning–making resulting in a common cognition which develops
social bonds uniting societies, organizations and groups (Höijer, 2011, p. 3). 20 These social
forms make it possible to classify persons and objects, to compare and explain behaviors
and to objectify them as part of a shared social setting. While representations are often to
be located in the cognitions of men and women, they can just as often be found “in the
world”, and as such examined separately (Moscovici, 1988, p. 214).
Moscovici added that a social representation is as a “network” of ideas, metaphors
and images, more or less loosely tied together (Moscovici, 2000, p. 153). They are
embedded in communicative practices, such as dialogues, debates, media discourses and
scientific discourses (Marková, 2003). Social representations participate each time in the
global vision a society establishes for itself (Moscovici, 2000, p. 160), and operates at
different levels, including large communities like the nation and small subgroups of people
(Höijer, 2011, p. 6). Thus, as Fairclough (1992) said, social representation proceeds in society
and everyday life.
The system of representation has a power to classify, to assimilate, and to compare
the society and the environment (Giust-Desprairies, 2009, p. 45). As a consequence, if social
representation is embodied in the structure of society, it appears then as a gender system
termed the gender belief system. This system is closely related to norms that dominate in a
society, which, in this case, is the emergence of the norm of heterosexuality. Rubin (2011, p.
151) underlined this norm as,
Sexuality that is “good”, “normal”, and “natural” should ideally be heterosexual,

Page

As an “academic product”, racial theory cannot be separated from its own historical moment: it was
developed at a particular era of British and European colonial expansion in the nineteenth century which
ended in the Western occupation of nine tenths of the surface territory of the globe (Young, 1995, p. 91).
20
With the epithet « social » Moscovici wants to emphasize how representations arise through social
interaction and communication between individuals and groups. “Social”also marks that the contents of
representations are social. They reflect, in different ways, historical, cultural and economic contexts,
circumstances and practices (See Höijer, 2011, p. 4).

25

19