Nurfika Osman – Rights activists on Friday said a man who was detained for forging his documents to pose as a woman was actually the victim, instead blaming the Indonesian government for forcing him to hide his identity.
Rahmat Sulistyo is being investigated by police for changing his identification to state that he was Fransiska Annastasya Oktaviany, or Icha, after his real identity was uncovered by neighbors who had become suspicious after he married a man.
"Icha forged the documents because the government doesn't recognize the gender role that Icha wants to play," said Inez Angela, an activist from GWL INA, an association for gay and transgender people. "Why do we have to blame Icha here?"
Inez said gender and sexual identity were complex issues and no one should be forced to play certain roles based on the prevailing sociocultural system. "There are people who are born men but they have thoughts and emotions like a woman, or vice versa. But we are also human," he said.
According to Inez, transgender people in Indonesia have never had an easy time getting IDs, a problem that he has been dealing with since 2006. "That is why many transgenders choose not to have any ID at all," he said.
Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, a former lawmaker for the National Awakening Party (PKB) and current director of the Women's Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Apik), said the country's legal system did not accommodate people who were different. "The fact is that only through legal recognition can they fight for their rights formally, within the law," she said.
According to Nursyahbani, problems such as Icha's case would continue to arise so long as people's identities were regulated by the state. "An individual does not have the right to talk about what they feel and what gender role they want to play here," she said.
Nursyahbani said the 2006 Law on Citizenship Administration did not accommodate a transgender identity even though the transgender community at the time had pushed lawmakers to include them. "We are still living in a world where it is always male and female; we are trapped in this traditional binary gender model," she said.
Baby Jim Aditya, a prominent psychologist and HIV activist, said it was wrong to believe that sexual orientation was innate and fixed.
"Sexual orientation is a combination of genetic, hormonal and environmental influences and it develops across a person's lifetime – patterns of emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to men, women, both genders, neither gender or another gender," she said.
"When it comes to sexual orientation, Indonesia is always debating which is wrong or right, sinful or not. This leads people like Icha to use a social mask in order to be accepted in society. Icha dresses like a woman, forges his ID and marries a man."
Baby Jim said some people unfortunately still believed that transgender, gay, lesbian and bisexual people were actually suffering from a mental illness.
"People should know that since 1993 we've had the PPDGJ [Guidelines of Classifications and Diagnoses for Mental Illness], and the police officers who quiz Icha should learn psychology and sexual orientation more deeply," she said.
Sri Agustine, a lesbian activist, said the worst part of Icha's case was the fact that people believed he had hidden his gender from his husband for six months. "I don't think that if you're living together for six months you wouldn't know your partner," she said.
Icha was married in September after the couple met on Facebook and agreed to marry following a brief courtship.
Icha's identity was revealed when neighbors this week stripped his clothes off following months of speculation about his gender. The marriage has since been declared invalid. The activists said the neighbors' treatment of Icha was also a human rights violation.