Gay language and indonesia: Registering belonging

Many homosexual men in Indonesia speak what they call bahasa gay‘gay language’, a linguistic phenomenon based upon bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Indonesia’s national language. Bahasa gay involves derivational processes including unique suffixes and word substitutions, and a pragmatics oriented around community rather than secrecy. Although mainstream knowledge of gay men’s existence is limited, bahasa gay is increasingly being appropriated by Indonesian popular culture. By examining bahasa gay in terms of state power and register, the article asks how this form of speaking might contribute to better understanding how gay subjectivity is bound up with conceptions of national belonging. Gay Indonesians might seem to epitomize difference; they seem to lie radically outside the norms of Indonesian societies. Within gay communities and in popular culture, however, bahasa gay appears as a register of belonging, not one of hierarchy or distance.