Subverting mainstream in social media: Indonesian gay men’s heterotopia creation through disidentification strategies

ABSTRACT This study discusses how Indonesian gay men use social media platforms to create a queer heterotopia by practicing disidentification – the process of distancing oneself from an unwanted identity. This disrupts the heterosexual dominant text to create the concept of disidentification self. The study finds that Indonesian gay men employ four strategies to create digital content, primarily to cope with their social location: queer literacy, identity disclosure, romantic relationships, and social community activism. Online data were collected from April 2020 through September 2020, while ten gay men were interviewed in depth from May 2020 through February 2021. This study shows that Indonesian gay men develop a parasitic relationship with the dominant ideology and create a performative mode to claim subjectivity and security within the dominant group’s power domain.