The Perfect Woman: Transgender Femininity and National Modernity in New Order Indonesia, 1968–1978

Abstract

The decade between 1968 and 1978 was a period of remarkable activity in the state’s use of scientific knowledge about sex, gender, and sexuality to define individual bodies in Indonesia. This article, analyzes a particular locus for the deployment of expert knowledge about the body that emerged during this decade, the process through which Indonesian state experts incorporated, defined, and debated transnational knowledge about transgender femininity.