In the last twenty years, the explosion of research on gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia has brought new attention to the region and revitalized discussions in disciplines such as gender studies, anthropology, and sociology. These ethnographies by Evelyn Blackwood and Sharyn Graham Davies build on intensive research in different regions of Indonesia to extend the study of gender and sexuality in productive new directions. One of the contributions of feminist theory has been a critique of the gender binary—the widespread social system that splits people into two opposite and unequal genders based on differences in their reproductive anatomy. Blackwood and Davies reveal how the gender binary in Indonesia both shapes and is challenged by people's self-definitions.
Blackwood's beautifully detailed and captivating ethnography, Falling into the Lesbi World, explores the lives of West Sumatran tombois, masculine females who identify as men, and their partners (femmes), who identify...
