Digital homophobia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the emergence of digital homophobia in Indonesia as an assemblage of homophobic discourses imbued with a language of urgency, technological infrastructures, and punitive laws on non-normative sexualities. The internationalisation of LGBT rights has provided discursive capital for anti-LGBT groups to generate affective qualities (fear and moral panic), positioning queer people as a ‘threat’ to national identity, ‘traditional values’, and ‘vectors of disease’ intent on ‘converting’ others to homosexuality. Moreover, technological infrastructure, such as social media, fosters and amplifies the circulation of homophobic rhetoric. Such technologies have enabled citizens to persecute and shame LGBT people directly, and increasingly demand that the state enact punitive laws on gender and sexuality through the use of online petitions and other online surveillance practices that affect queer people beyond the digital space. These movements are legally justified by existing regulations, often associating homosexuality with pornography and social indecency, manifested in local and national laws that do not always specifically target homosexuality. As a result, digital homophobia moves beyond the online space, deeply affecting the material life of the Indonesian queer community and activism. For instance, activists, fearing reprisal, have begun carrying out their activities surreptitiously. This analysis makes a contribution to existing scholarship on global homophobia, surveillance, and technocultural and sexual globalisation by highlighting the interplay of technology, homophobic discourses, and public policy in responding to the proliferation of international LGBT rights discourses.