In how far can Gerwani be associated with the stimulation of prostitution and lesbianism, as Mrs Sukarno claims? The New Order regime was born in blood, accompanied by the myth of sexual perversion, sexual torture and gang rapes of women. It died in a similar way, in riots, in mass killings (though fortunately on a much smaller scale) and in sexual torture and gang rapes of women. The 'old' castration myth was directed at Gerwani members, who perversely later became the objects of rapes and murders, executed, as I recenlty learnt, in a fashion similar to the rape and murder of the Chinese women who were the victims of the riots in 1998. The 'new' myth of lesbianism is also directed at Gerwani, although the organisation no longer exists and the surviving members are in their late 70s and 80s, but its effects are aimed at younger activists.

In both cases, I suggest, the ideological threat women's political activism poses to conservative groups in Indonesian society is the cause of the creation of these myths (Wieringa 1995). So what kind of an organisation was Gerwani? What great forces did it unleash that its ghost, over 30 years after its death, can be revoked in an attempt to scare young women, the majority of whom were not even born when Gerwani was banned, into political inactivity?

Gerwani occupied a unique position in the history of women's organisations all over the world. Originally it was a small group of both feminist, nationalist and socialist women, later it became the largest mass organisation of socialist women outside the communist bloc. In its relatively short history Gerwani negotiated its identity in the competing and at times converging narratives of feminism, nationalism and communism. Structurally semi-autonomous, it maintained its triple loyalty to these discourses, although the relationship between them changed. The balance of these loyalties shifted over time, and the extent of its autonomy was gradually eroded until it was seriously reduced by 1965. Gerwani gave women a political voice in the hotbed of Indonesian national politics. It kept up its optimistic, 'modern' outlook on history and women's place within it, until it was crushed by the dark, evil forces that general Suharto and his allies conjured up out of the collective, subconscious elements of the politically conservative forces in Indonesian society.

The downfall of Gerwani also had major implications for the other women's organisations in Indonesia, such as Kowani. By 1965 Kowani fully supported Manipol and Guided Democracy.⁵ During the New Order of President Suharto they had to purge themselves of any leftist elements and became a key player in the process of 'resubordinating' women.

Gerwani (or Gerwis as the organisation was called between 1950 and 1954) was set up in the wake of national independence. Their most ardent members had joined the guerilla struggle against the Dutch. They were young and wanted an organisation that could use their energies and talents. All of them had in one way or another experienced male domination in what they later called the 'feudal' structures of the 'old' society. They wanted to join the building of a 'modern' Indonesia, in which women would be fully emancipated.

However Indonesia's male nationalists and freedom fighters had accepted women as warriors `by their side', as the `second wing of the Garuda' (Sukarno 1963), only as long as they needed them. Women themselves to a large extent accepted this view, and `helped' the male guerillas, providing food and medical care. Only a few of the most active women participated in the guerilla war itself. After independence had been won a process of restoration of male power took place, and gender relations were restructured accordingly. While women received `equal rights', with the exclusion of equality in the crucial area of marriage relations, they were expected to withdraw into their own `social sphere'. Only Gerwani resisted this process of domestication and demanded the right for women to be political actors themselves. Yet for all its militancy and its insistence on equality (as social and political sectors) in the sphere of sexuality, marriage relations and `female virtue', to a large extent Gerwani did accept, as the other women's organisations did, the traditional definition of women's kodrat, if only in their devotion to two 'fathers', Sukarno and the PKI.

Yet while political struggles raged on the national political realm, at the local level women's organisations of various `denominations' kept up their co-operation. This is not surprising, for the major differences between Gerwani and the other women's organisations lay precisely in Gerwani's insistence on a national political role. The practical, daily work of most women's organisations centred around the areas on which they agreed, that is both the unfortunate consequences of women's `difference', and the demands of women's equality in the fields of education and labour. Although in this last respect immediately a critical difference must be noted: Gerwani was by far the most active defendant of the rights of women labourers and peasants.

In the accelerating political climate of Guided Democracy, Gerwani became more and more drawn to the camp of the anti-imperialist, populist Sukarno and the communist PKI, that is to the domain of `male' politics. As the organisation gained greater access to the palace of president Sukarno and the centre of power, the controversy between Gerwani and the other women's organisations grew. At the time this growing controversy was not so noticeable, as Kowani and other women's organisations also moved to the left (or felt compelled to do so); even in 1966, 8 March, the `socialist' International Women's Day was celebrated. (Wieringa 1995).

The military and conservative groups in Sukarno's Old Order society viewed this process with dismay. They feared that this powerful women's voice might castrate their own power and translated that fear into the bizarre construct of a fantasy of the castration of the rightwing generals who were murdered by rebellious officers on 1 October 1965. The illusion created was so strong that it not only served as the basis of the subsequent massacre which led to the overthrow of President Sukarno⁶ but it is still widely believed and functioned as the ideological underpinning of the New Order rule of Suharto and his generals. There is no conclusive evidence whatsoever for the army's allegations. The women present at Lobang Buaya, where the generals were killed, were never brought to court, although they were conveniently at hand in the various prisons. The Museum of the `Betrayal of the PKI' which forms the temple of the New Order, has no sign of any kind of evidence for the castration, the eye gouging, and the `mad dancing'. Yet the echo of this fabrication is found in the mural in which the army version of Indonesian history after independence is depicted.

The Indonesian version of prescribed behaviour for women is contained in the kodrat wanita, women's ideological code of conduct. As Gerwani was felt to have deeply betrayed this code it is important to examine this originally Javanese concept more closely. For the Javanese women, two wayang figures formed the contrasting symbolic configurations around which the contest over the meaning of the kodrat evolved. Both Sumbadra and Srikandi are wives of the wayang hero Arjuna. While Sumbadra is the symbol of wifely devotion, Srikandi is depicted as a warrior princess, independent, strong. Arjuna is the symbol of virility, invincible because of his spiritual powers. His superior powers do not derive from his physical strength, but from self-control and ascesis. The corresponding masculine gender ideology depicts men as self-controlled, virile and potent, and in possession of superior spiritual and mental faculties. Men are seen to be responsible for preserving harmony and order on the national and cosmic levels, while women, 'naturally' infinitely more irrational than men and less able to control their emotions, should occupy themselves with the lower orders of society. They should also occupy themselves with things of a lower order, such as money, and a household's material means of survival. Women's sexuality is seen as potentially dangerous, women themselves are not considered capable of containing this danger, and therefore men, as fathers and husbands, are entrusted with the responsibility to control women's sexual behaviour.⁷ Women's resistance to this kodrat of gender roles is considered to be dangerous, a disruption of a 'natural' order of things which ultimately may destabilise the order of the world.

Indonesia is not unique in its conceptualisation of sexuality and women's moral conduct. As Evans (1997) argues, in China too, women's sexuality, if uncontrolled is feared as it spells danger and chaos. There are other parallels with China. When in 1927 the nationalist Kwomintang army defeated the communist units, 'modern' women were singled out both as an object of hatred and as an object of resubordination. In this case women's 'modernity' was often represented in bobbed hair. The nationalists murdered hundreds of women who had had their hair cut. These women were often sexually tortured, their breasts were cut off or their 'bodies were stripped naked in public places with pieces of wood stuck in their vaginas (Siu 1981:133). The 'New Life Movement' set up after the Kwomintang victory went about to discipline these modern women. Chinese nationalists found that the 'charge of sexual immorality was an extremely effective weapon for discrediting communist party organisers' (Gilmartin 1994:224).

Women's identity and behaviour as expressed by the kodrat wanita was hotly contested during the Old Order. Gerwani to a certain extent attacked the prevailing notion that women should be meek, passive, obedient to the male members of the family, sexually shy and modest, self-sacrificing and nurturing. Although they accepted the notion that women should find their main vocation in wifehood and motherhood, they introduced the notion of 'militant motherhood'. Gerwani's militant mothers did not limit their action range to the household and the social, but extended their ministrations to the political. Their symbol was the wayang hero Prince Arjuna's warrior-wife Srikandhi, and not his meek wife Sumbadra.

Women were stimulated by male nationalist leaders to rally behind the national revolution (1945-1950) as mothers, to help give birth to the new nation. On the domestic level women's motherhood role gave them also social and economic responsibilities. Economically women are supposed to see to it that the family is fed. This means that they are also often held responsible for the means with which to feed the family, and thus have to earn an income (Saptari 1995, Wieringa 1981, Wolf 1992). Male prestige is not so much based on their qualities as an economic provider but more on their spiritual, intellectual and political merits. Socially women are supposed to maintain harmony, not only in the family but also in the wider network around it. The emphasis on the social character of women's organisations derives from this aspect of the kodrat.

Apart from these Javanese ideas, Gerwani also upheld socialist⁸ ideals. The attraction socialist theory held for its leaders was partly its modernity, its hope for a better future for Indonesian women, if only it were possible to follow the 'line of history' (arus sejarah) its leaders discerned. In this sense Gerwani accepted the Marxist notion of the 'historical neccessity' of an ultimate socialist revolution. Many other new countries were created in the wake of the Second World War and the early 1960s, some of them of a socialist nature, such as Algeria. Nationalism and socialism seemed to be the bright new movements of the time. Gerwis was set up by young, enthusiastic women who had just participated in the enormous success that the nationalist revolution was. A sense of optimism prevailed, a wonderful future for women seemed to be just around the corner.

To a large extent Gerwani followed this line of thinking but it put its own accents. The 'new Indonesian woman' it attempted to create was 'modern', both in dress, in cultural outlook and in political vision. Gerwani's modernity was not modelled on the capitalist West, but on the examples of the socialist world. It almost intuitively, without much internal debate, adapted the Indonesian reality to aspects of Marxist thinking. Its leaders accepted critical elements of Marxist analysis of the family, especially its theoretical subsumption under class relations. But the Gerwani family was decidedly an Indonesian family, plagued by such evils as polygyny and struggling with the Indonesian political reality. Where Gerwani was confronted with domestic violence, rape, or communist men marrying polygynously, these were seen as individual, not structural problems that needed theoretical attention. As far as sexual morality was concerned Gerwani adhered more to the conservatism of Lenin than to the humanist, liberal trend of earlier streams in Marxism which denounced the restrictions bourgeois morality placed on sexual behaviour (Lapidus 1978). This sexual conservatism was more in line with the kodrat wanita than the 'free love' propagated by early Marxists and Utopian socialists.

Gerwani always kept its nationalist vigour, although at times its nationalism fused with aspects of socialist ideology. Gerwani accepted the prevailing notions of 'community' and harmony based on family values which was upheld, albeit in different ways, by both nationalist and communist leaders. Sukarno attempted to create an Indonesian identity, which deployed the trope of 'family' as collectivity, a hierarchical family, with himself as the (polygynous) patriarch. The 'communist family' the party tried to create existed on the social level of the various organisations as members of the family, led by the party as the all-knowing patriarch. Ideally at the nuclear level all members of the 'Manipol' family joined an organisation that was proper to their place in the family hierarchy: the head of the household the communist party, the wife Gerwani, the children the youth organisation, whereas other members might join the labour, peasant or cultural organisations.

The values Gerwani appreciated most in its members were independence, hard work and dedication to the struggle, for which education was a requirement. Gerwani wanted women to stand on their own feet and to choose hard work over the leisure and wealth of kept women. The organisation strongly opposed women becoming appendages of their husbands. While not entirely immune to the practice of matching a woman's standing to her husband's,⁹ Gerwani did not automatically consider the wife of a male PKI leader to be eligible for the same level position in either Wankom¹⁰ or Gerwani, as has been the case in the women's organisations of Suharto's New Order.

The debate on women's independence from men took a new turn when Mak Ompreng (Mrs Trimurti¹¹) dedicated herself to it in the pages of Api Kartini (AK), a Gerwani monthly. Mak Ompreng was witty and sharp, and spoke from the perspective of an old lady of the lower classes (although Trimurti's friendship with Sukarno in the days of the independence struggle helped give her remarkable insight into palace politics). Mak Ompreng was irreverent, as this abridged translation of her first column (on Kartini's Day in 1960) shows:

Mak Ompreng's discussion in the 1960s on regulations regarding the wife of the president seem particularly interesting against the present controversy over his daughter's candidacy. She again reverses traditional attitudes to make her point:

Similarly, Mak argued against the Western custom (which by that time was becoming more common) of calling women by their husband's names, which is un-Indonesian:

After independence Gerwani fought the restoration of traditional norms of womanhood, encouraging women to overcome the `old-fashioned opinions' and `decrepit traditions' within families; activists had to show `perseverance and militancy' to conquer such attitudes within the ranks of women and to overcome the many material and logistical difficulties of public life (Suwarti, HR<sup>13</sup> 14 July 1954). In the 1950s women's militancy was especially needed internally, to build up the organisation. But it was also directed outward, to promote the national aim of `liberating' West Irian. Gerwani's efforts were directed at ensuring that women should not `be left behind', a phrase which in the 1960s referred almost exclusively to the national campaigns in West Irian and Malaysia, but which in the 1950s was linked to women's wish to become modern, i.e. 'progressive in thinking' and `truly wishing to defend the rights of women and children' (S. Djin, HR 1 December 1954).

While in the 1950s militancy and traditional notions of womanhood were felt to clash, in the 1960s links between women's interests and revolutionary activity were stressed. Gerwani no longer felt the need to accommodate its activities with a kodrat which favoured Sumbadra-like behaviour, it stimulated its members to espouse more characteristics associated with Srikandi. Under Guided Democracy Gerwani no longer demonstrated the same fear of antagonising men, declaring that women could be:

AK carried pictures of uniformed girl students carrying weapons, and the woman volunteers were regularly compared with the warrior-wife of the wayang prince Arjuna, Srikandi (AK February 1962). The `woman warrior' motif was linked to Indonesia's heritage through Kartini<sup>14</sup> ('How can I win if I do not struggle?', in HR 18 April 1962) and to socialism, e.g. in the form of Clara Zetkin, (the `great mother of the international proletariat', HR 8 March 1963) who was portrayed as a combination of warrior and housewife (Sulami, HR 9 March 1964).

Gerwani's denouncement of moral corruption dates from its early history and echoes a major concern among Indonesian women's groups in general. However, if the other women's organisations were concerned with morality in general, to Gerwani fascism and imperialism were particularly tinged with moral corruption. The similarities and differences between Gerwani and other groups are important, because after `the events' the most vehement attacks on Gerwani were precisely on moral issues: they were accused of promoting prostitution and of organising `mad dancing'. Accusations which are repeated until today, as the interview with Mrs Sukarno demonstrates. Interestingly enough Gerwani itself used the same terminology when it criticised certain cultural and moral elements.

Gerwani paid particular attention to the corrupting influence of imperialist culture (particularly US films) and to prostitution. Muslimat women, later among their fiercest adversaries, joined many of their protests around both issues.

Western imperialism was presented as corrupting Indonesian morality through Western dance and music, e.g. via the `mad dancing' of the rock culture and what Sukarno described as ngik ngak ngok music. The link between dance, music and moral corruption is not self-evident though; Indonesia also has various traditional forms in which dance and music are associated with sexuality or prostitution, such as rongg�ng and tayuban, and even the refined dances in the royal Javanese courts, such as the Bedhaya Ketawang were not free from associations with sexuality, whatever other mystical, religious or cultural functions they may have performed (see for instance Pigeaud 1938, or Florida 1992). Again, it was the association with US imperialism which seems to have weighed most heavily.

Prostitution was another Gerwani target. As with films, Gerwani found its allies primarily among the other women's organisations. Gerwani's attention to prostitution withered in the 1960s, when national politics gained prominence; it was never a central topic of analysis and did not achieve the importance it held in the women's movement before the Japanese occupation. Like the PKI, Gerwani declared that prostitution would no longer exist in Indonesia under true socialism, and that `it was not the women's fault that they had been forced into prostitution' (HR 28 September 1955). While awaiting the socialist victory, it was better that the women received some education than that they were captured and kept in the so-called `Melati bungalows' of Jakarta (HR 3 August 1959).¹⁵

Gerwani was not very outspoken about sexuality. The organisation demonstrated the same shyness on sexual matters that Indonesian women are supposed to show in public. They rejected a pattern in which people followed their basic instincts. For Gerwani, love should be mutual, based on respect and preferably take place in the context of a revolutionary and, after 1959, Manipol-oriented family. It should also be heterosexual. This was never said openly, I have not seen a single reference to the issue of sexual orientation, apart from Mak Ompreng's joke about Umi marrying a woman cited above. Yet it can be deducted from Gerwani's actions. When suspicions arose on the identity of the first chair of Gerwis, she was quietly removed from her position.

In this they sided with the emphasis on sexual austerity in for instance China. There, as in other socialist countries, monogamous heterosexual marriage was portrayed as a naturalised state. All other lifestyles, such as female celibacy or 'deviant' forms of sexuality were seen as abnormal, caused by sickness or psychological disorders. 'Socialist monogamy' was portrayed as emancipatory. On the whole female sexuality, if properly controlled, was seen to stimulate the development of a higher social and moral order, while unfettered and autonomous it might endanger society and even lead to chaos (see also Evans 1997). Gerwani too was very adamant in its marriage policy: monogamy was the norm. PKI leaders who took mistresses or who married polygynously were made to withdraw and Gerwani itself did not accept women who were secondary wives.

Gerwani took a firm stand on a few individual rape cases (such as that of Maisuri) but it did not take up the issue of rape systematically. After the Maisuri case no other campaigns were waged and in the 1960s the issue was almost totally neglected, apart from some routine references to the evils of imperialism. Young girls were warned `not to go out alone at night' (AK May 1960).

Yet for all its emphasis on 'modernity' Gerwani made clear that the 'modernity' it was striving for was not the sexual looseness of the West. Gerwani tried to steer a middle course between `oppressive, old' customs and modern ways. A revolutionary women's organisation which kept a clear eye on the specificity of Indonesian culture was seen as the only way to bring this about.

This particularly Indonesian form of morally upright family life was found in the concept of 'true Manipol families' in which all members would be geared towards the revolution. After the defeat of the struggle for a new marriage law, which had been a dominant theme in the women's movement in the early 1950s the discourse on the 'true Manipol family' came to dominate the debate on the relations between marriage partners.

The aspirations and activities of this `true Manipol family' were to be dedicated to the national tasks defined by Sukarno (Manipol, Nasakom) and supported by the `Communist Family'. Recreation, study, work, education were all to be totally in line with the lofty, though vague goals of the revolutionary forces. However, a number of aspects of family life were omitted, in particular the way power was supposed to be distributed among the members of a `true Manipol family', ideas about the sexual division of labour, love and sexuality. Especially for women life was hard in these 'true Manipol families', as they had to carry the full burden of domestic and social responsibilities.

The `feudal' or `backward' situation in which the husband was free to do as he liked while his wife did all the work, prepared his food and accepted his whims was no longer acceptable. The new role of a woman, in a family dedicated to the revolutionary struggle, would be that of `sister, comrade in struggle and faithful wife'. The husband, meanwhile, should understand this new situation and be prepared to be her teacher, `for that would be most needed ... in the organisation' and in such a life `every second would be filled with intimacy and there would be no emptiness and isolation' (HR 9 March 1959).

Thus while Gerwani discussed the problems women in the household faced, its analysis was that women were burdened very heavily by all their domestic duties, especially because of the economic conditions which also caused them to have to `do all the work alone as they could not afford a domestic helper'. They also cited `feudal remains which meant that women's position was not equal', and `capitalist/feudal oppression' in general, which caused women to be `backward in understanding, consciousness and culture so that women wanted to struggle but didn't know how'.

Women in `true Manipol families' were to have a high political consciousness, for only then could the family 'destroy all efforts to divert the revolution to make our families militant and firm fighters to rapidly create a socialist society' (general report of Gerwani's Central Leadership, in HR 5 November 1964). A revolutionary consciousness was thus key. The major element to develop such a consciousness was political training, but cultural factors were also important, especially for women, the educators of the future generation of anti-imperialist fighters.

Gerwani almost never discussed the sexual division of labour, and publicly the existing division of labour was rarely attacked. The major change that Gerwani advocated was not so much that men share domestic duties, but that women become engaged in revolutionary activities, assisted (in some unspecified way) by the socialisation of domestic labour and (if this clashed with their domestic duties), possibly with their husbands' 'help'. Men's work in the household was not encouraged in the name of some feminist ideal of justice and equal sharing, but for the sake of the revolution.

Despite Gerwani's growing militancy, the organisation never fundamentally attacked traditional norms of womanhood as contained within the kodrat. Even Trimurti, one of the most `feminist' Gerwani leaders who felt free (as Mak Ompreng) to write scathing criticisms of male domination, dared not go so far. In her speech on Gerwani's Third National Congress she declared that women had the same duties as men to be socially active but that this weighed heavily on women, because `their biological tasks (the kodrat of their lives) ... required that their work not `hurt or reduce their womanly duties as mothers, educator, guardians of their offspring' (HR 15 January 1958).

The fear that 'emancipation would mean that men would be told to go to the kitchen', that gender roles would be eroded was countered in HR with reassurances that such fears were: 'really stupid [for this] `had nothing to do with emancipation... women will always be women. Their two functions cannot be separated. Women as Mothers and women as fighters in the spirit of Kartini are one ... with their whole souls' (Sulami, HR 19 June 1957).

Women's political functioning was seen as derived from their functions as mothers and moral guardians. In the struggle around West Irian for instance, the most 'suitable' work women could do was to raise the consciousness of West Irian women, to educate them and to be active in the health campaigns (HR 30 October 1957). These political tasks were all extensions of women's supposedly 'natural' role in the household, and women were to cope with these different demands by planning their time well.

In the 1950s the organisation was very careful not to be accused of unfeminine or anti-male behaviour. Co-operation with men for a happy family and a new society was the key:

To this end, women should dress nicely, prepare special dishes for their husbands, make clothes for their in-laws and playthings for the children, to `prove that besides their organisational activities, they still pay attention' to their families (Suwarti, HR 19 September 1956).

The content of what Gerwani considered to belong to the 'natural' realm of women, changed over time. In the mid-1950s Gerwani leaders stressed women's femininity, apparently fearing that the militancy of Gerwani cadres might antagonise men. For example, in 1956 Umi Sarjono herself opened the discussion in a speech for the Third Plenary in which she admonished the cadres to maintain a womanly attitude:

Women were to combine their duties in the household with the demands of the organisation. 'Neither of these tasks should be neglected' (HR 21 November 1956). Thus in the 1950s the organisation was very careful not to be accused of unfeminine or anti-male behaviour. Co-operation with men for a happy family and a new society was the key:

To this end, women should dress nicely, prepare special dishes for their husbands, make clothes for their in-laws and playthings for the children, to `prove that besides their organisational activities, they still pay attention' to their families (Suwarti, HR 19 September 1956).

In the 1960s, with its insistence on the overall mobilisation of Indonesian society for the national goals the President had formulated, the discourse is more on mutual assistance between men and women than on femininity, and on motherly militancy rather than on dedication to household duties. The resistance Gerwani experienced at the militancy it propagated indicates the strength of the traditional women's kodrat which prescribes servility and meekness for women. As women' the kodrat prevailed (albeit in a militant form), as 'workers and citizens' equal rights was called for, and 'as wives' they sought the sisterhood of other women's organisations. To Gerwani these various parts were not seen to demand contradictory analytical responses, but were perceived from a holistic perspective in which these contradictions were dialectically reconciled.

In those last years Gerwani did not only try to preserve certain elements of the essentialist kodrat based on so-called 'natural' differences from men, it also proclaimed women's equality with men: 'we are humanity'. During Guided Democracy the rhetorical emphasis shifted from marriage abuses towards equalling the revolutionary militancy of communist men. Sumbadra was eclipsed by the militant Srikandi.'

Since the early 1980s there have been various waves of press reporting in which sensationalized accounts appear of women loving each other.¹⁶ At that time, Indonesia had no gay or lesbian movement, the word 'lesbian', or lesbi was hardly known. Although the media coverage initially was not downright insulting, the women were presented in a stereotypical fashion (butch-femme couples) and their choice was seen to deviate from 'normal heterosexuality'. The suggestion was that this 'perverse' and 'exotic' custom was introduced into an 'innocent' Indonesia by a decadent West. Especially in publications in the late 1980s lesbianism was seen as a disease that with some proper effort and the dedicated treatment by well-trained psychotherapists could be cured.¹⁷ By that time same-sex activities had become associated with such decadent practices as prostitution, promiscuity and other 'modern' and urban vices as discos, the use of drugs and the wild abandon of urban night-life.¹⁸ The discussion by the media of a new term for such activities, 'lesbianism' also meant that intimacy between women became more suspect. Whereas earlier women-loving-women could go undetected if they took care not to violate certain norms of accepted feminine behaviour they now found themselves under suspicion. At the same time small groups of women adopted a self-styled lesbian identity (see Gayatri und; Wieringa 1987)

However, although the concept 'lesbianism' may have been new, and derived from the West, same-sex practices among both women and men were not. Historical references to homosexual practices are rarer than in for instance India (Thadani 1999), but the occurrence of same-sex relations among both men and women, transvestism and cross-gender behaviour has long been noted by travellers and other observers in the 'Malay archipelago'. Karsch-Haack (1911) has summarised some of the most important sources until the first decade of this century. In his section on male homosexuality he devoted over thirty pages to what is now called Indonesia, in which he gives numerous examples of transvestism (called banci in Java), hermaphroditism,¹⁹ paederasty and sodomy. He writes of male priestesses among the Dayak, the Buginese and the Toraja, about transvestite male-to-female dancers in Java and about boys at the courts of Aceh and Bali who were used for anal intercourse by older men (1911:185-218).

Karsch-Haack devotes considerably fewer pages to women (only three) in which he dwells on the dildoes (some of) the women used: in Aceh the women made them of wax, as did the women in Bali, while Dayak women used a combination of wood and wax. He remarks that in East Java one can find transgendered women who dressed and behaved like men from an early age. They were referred to by the same name as used for the men, wandu which is Javanese for banci (1911:488-491).

Although Karsch-Haack uses far fewer sources on women than on men this does not necessarily imply that women engaged in same-sex practices in fewer cases than men did. About Bali e.g. he suggests that women engage in 'tribady' in similar fashion as men engage in paederasty, but in a much more covert way. This remark points to two important problems when comparing same-sex practices among men and women. In the first place gender relations are such that women, in line with their kodrat, are supposed to be gentle (halus), meek and sexually shy, while men are stimulated to be more sexually aggressive, coarse (kasar), brave and outward-looking.

In the second place male observers, such as travellers, administrators and scholars tend to ignore women's intimate domains, or are denied access to such information. On the one hand this phenomenon is caused by women's culturally-imposed shyness towards men, on the other hand by an at times callous indifference of male observers of the specificities of women's social and sexual domains.

Other cases of gender inversion are available for the royal courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta in Central Java. Lady soldiers, 'Javanese Amazons' as Carey and Houben (1987) call them, were dressed in male attire. These soldiers were admired for their military prowess and were also trained in dancing, singing and making music (Kumar 1980).²⁰

Same-sex erotic relations among women have also been observed. During the reign of Pakubuwana V a 'lesbian scandal' was reported at his central Javanese court of Surakarta. The Dutch translator Winter, who knew the court intimately, writes in 1902 that ever since the Pakubuwana V had discovered that the women who had been found to have intimate relations with each other would be lying beside each other, playing with their dildo, 'he had made it into a law that to prevent this harmful practice, as they might never be interested in love with men any more, he would never allow his permanent servants to sleep at night out of his view, so all of them had to lie in front of the door to his room, in a row, sex feet from each other' (Winter 1902:39). It is interesting to note that the Pakubuwana did not ascribe the pleasure the women found in each other as caused by 'heterosexual deprivation', as is so often done for the harems of Eastern kings (see for instance Murray and Roscoe 1997). To the contrary, he was afraid they might like it so much they would not want to sleep with men any more (Blackwood and Wieringa 1999b). As Gayatri learnt from her late grandmother, who lived within the walls of the royal court of Yogyakarta, no man, not even the king, is allowed to set foot within the keputren, the women's space. In these polygynous households the women of the keputren engage in female friendships, which may involve same-sex intimacies, without fear of exposure (personal communication with the author).

Another indication of female-to-male gender inversion is found in the concept of ardhnariswari, an originally Sanskrit term which translates as 'mistress or queen who is half male'. This was for instance said of K�n Dhedhes, a queen of Singasari in the thirteenth century. She is seen as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga, whose destructive powers, if tamed by a potent husband, 'could be transmuted to fertile and beneficent influence crucial to the cosmic harmony of the realm' (Carey and Houben 1987: 15, quoting Lind).

Srikandi, wayang hero Arjuna's warrior wife, is known to have engaged in transsexual activities, as told in the Kandihawa play (Gayatri und, citing Wiryoatmojo). She is described as changing her sexuality and taking the name of Kandihawa, in order to marry a woman called Dewi Durniti. When Durniti complained to her father that s/he was not a real man, Kandihawa went to a priest to ask his help to gratify her/his wife's needs. Kandihawa was provided with male genitals, went home and slept with her/his wife, who fell pregnant and gave birth to a son called Bambang Nirbita.

In present-day Indonesia banci (or wandu) are still to be found in the modern cities of Java, such as Surabaya and Jakarta. They are also called wadam (from wanita- woman, Adam)or waria (from wanita and pria man). Waria are so common that several cities have waria associations, such as the Surabaya Waria Union (Oetomo 1996: 265). In present-day Indonesian cities there are also crossdressing, transgender women who have sex with other women, and who seem to have a harder time than the waria have. They are socially less visible, and their transgression of accepted gender borders is less accepted. As a result they face severe harassment from their surroundings and are socially marginalized (apart from the few who are lovers of successful female artists). There are many other, more hidden ways in which women express their erotic or sexual attraction to each other. All these forms of sexual practices are Indonesian, are rooted in specific Indonesian customs and traditions and are not imported into or imposed upon Indonesian women by either a decadent West, or by 'foreign ideologies' like socialism.

To the contrary 'modernity' came to Indonesia in the form of colonialist powerholders who brought with them a bourgeois, Calvinist morality,²¹ and a morally upright version of socialism as propagated by the PKI and its mass organizations. In both cases these ideologies did not stimulate 'decadent' sexual practices, such as gender transversion or same-sex intimacies. Rather they propagated a family model based on normative compulsory heterosexuality and introduced or at least strengthened homophobia.

The accusations directed at Gerwani after 'the events' of October 1965 are not supported by Gerwani's ideology or practice. The organisation opposed prostitution, defended rape victims and fought against the 'moral corruption' associated with `mad dancing' and ngik ngak ngok music. Its sexual policy was actually rather puritanical, with a certain emphasis on egalitarian values. The monogamous heterosexual family was the norm. Of course this is to a certain extent a deviation from the cultural norms of at least the Javanese population. On the other hand, in the seriousness with which Gerwani kept to its role as 'moral guardian' of their (Manipol) families and society as a whole they conformed to the prevailing kodrat.

Gerwani was innovative in a number of ways: it did advocate a measure of change of the sexual division of labour, although it stuck to the position that domestic duties actually were women's realm. It also stressed that Gerwani activists should not be meek and submissive, following the example of Sumbadra. Gerwani's women should no longer be sexually subservient to their men, but be their companions. They should work hard, study, be sincere, simple and persevering and optimistic about the bright socialist future awaiting both men and women. What probably frightened conservative people most was the combination Gerwani cadres represented: mothers who were politically aware and militant patriots and who were challenging men, in the public realm, which was traditionally seen as a male reserve.

An analysis of the 1965-66 campaign of sexual slander in Indonesia in which socialist women were demonized in order to smear the PKI and bring president Sukarno down, not only reveals the lies that were used (Wieringa 1995) but also tells something about the backdrop of sexual oppositions through which political conceptions, in this case the birth of the 'New Order'²² may take place. Since then women's courage, their political and social independence and physical autonomy was firmly associated with unspeakable acts of sexual debauchery and sexual perversion. New Order women's organizations such as Kowani were entrusted with the task to keep women in their proper place, to 'resubordinate' them after the hectic days of women's political activism in the early 1960s (Wieringa 1985). This is a task Kowani at any rate is still taking seriously, as demonstrated by Mrs Sukarno's innuendo about the 'infiltration' of Gerwani members into feminist organisations.

However, far from organizing a prostitution racket or of promoting the 'understanding of lesbianism', Gerwani was an organization that helped set up a 'modern' sexual morality, heterosexual and monogamous. It never even discussed issues such as 'lesbianism', a concept that was not used in those days. If it had engaged itself in a discussion on the topic it would probably have denounced the forms of gender inversion, crossdressing and same-sex erotic practices that have existed in various forms in particular communities in Indonesia as 'feudal remnants'.