Indonesian host’s saga adds to anxieties of LGBTQ folk ahead of election: ‘this is who I am’

“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.

“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.

If an internationally renowned designer such as Gunawan could not escape social and official censure, it stood to reason that ordinary LGBTQ people had to put up with worse, she added.

“I have qualms about our three presidential tickets since none seem to care genuinely about issues that matter to sexual minorities,” she said.

Arisdo Gonzalez, a Jakarta-based activist with LGBTQ advocacy organisation Pelangi Nusantar, shared those sentiments.

“I’m caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to casting my vote for any of the presidential candidates,” the 25-year-old said. He added that throughout the election discourse, LGBTQ issues were treated as an “afterthought” at best.

Arisdo said most politicians in the Muslim-majority nation viewed it as “political suicide” to be associated with the issue of LGBTQ rights.

A 2020 Pew Research survey found that only 9 per cent of Indonesians agreed that homosexuality should be accepted by society. While that number was up from 3 per cent in 2013, it highlights the long road to acceptance for LGBTQ people, and the risks politicians