Masculine Identities and Male Sex Work Between East Java and Bali
The author started his book with the explanation of Surabaya and Kampung Malang as his first field research. According to him, Surabaya is Indonesia’s second-largest city. As the capital city of province of East Java and the home of the country’s navy, Surabaya is located in the mouth of the Mas River, and along the edge of the Madura Strait (p. 16-17). Surabaya is closely linked to the birth of the Indonesian nation as it is in Surabaya that the battle for independence began and peaked in 1945 (p. 17). Between 1998 and 2008 Surabaya witnessed a decade of profound urban transformation, as the municipal government strove to achieve order and legibility to complement the needs of the emergent middle class (p. 17). Located south along the Mas River, Kampung Malang spans an area of no more than one square kilometer. It is actually a cluster of about 100 neighborhoods, each comprising about 100 officially registered residents, for an approximate total of 10,000 inhabitants. Kampung Malang, observed by the author, is characterized by an excessive number of buildings under construction, empty lots, and half-finished buildings (p. 23).
Kampung Malang is widely regarded to as a slum neighborhood, a lorong [narrow corridor]. In the lorong, clusters of alleyways commonly known as gang link the slum area to more affluent parts of the city (p. 24). Among the men in Kampung Malang, successful masculine identities relate closely to the ability to provide for the family, and to fulfill the quite onerous community expectations (p. 31). It can be said that men must work (p. 31). How can they get the job’s information? Berkumpul (literally socializing, aggregation, coming together, sometimes also bergaul) is a male institution among the men of Kampung Malang (p. 32). Through this activity, kampung men share information about job opportunities exchange goods, and spend time together (pp. 32-3). Berkumpul is also associated with recreational activities, such as pigeon racing and gambling (p. 41). Young street gangs are perhaps the most manifest form of male aggregation in contemporary Kampung Malang. Observing the gangs, the gangs are the social cement that contributes to the construction of a sense of shared identity (p. 50). Through gang membership, youths attempt to turn their luck around and begin to fight their own way into adult life (p. 53). In present-day Kampung Malang, there are about a dozen youth street gangs (geng) that populate the area. They consist of youth aged 13 to 17 and many youth gangs originate at school where young teenagers start to form friendships and begin to think about their future (p. 58). Each gang controls its own territory in the neighborhood, what is usually known as the gang’s turf (lahan) (p. 59). The notion of the gang is associated with discipline (disiplin) and physical invulnerability (ilmu kebal).
Gang members flock to the city streets to be close to where they perceive the circulation of money is (p. 73). Out on the city streets, some youths make money by trying to leech on to the world of semi-illegal crime, such as that of female sex workers and this is quite common among older gang members from Kampung Malang (p. 75). From the observation of the author, as I explained before, the migration (merantau) to outside Kampung Malang is very important in order to garner experience and wealth. The area of South of Bali (the tourist areas of Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak) is an area where they come together as a gang. According to Graeme MacRae, cited by the author, since the 1980s, an increasing flow of people from other parts of Indonesia, especially East Java, has travelled to Bali in search of work and a better life (p. 94). Javanese migrants constitute the majority of migrant male sex workers in Bali, and they are known in Bali as ‘money boys’ (p. 97). The author did his research in Villa Mangga where he lived there also as a ‘member’. He interviewed 20 men from East Java with an age range of 18 to 26. For the Javanese sex workers who live at Villa Mangga, the gang provides models for thinking about oneself in relation to the group. Central to their short career is the complex fabrication of male identities through the manipulation of bodies (p. 102). The author found that they do not perceive themselves as homosexuals. They think of homosexuality as something that can be fabricated (membuat) (p. 102). In this sense, homosexuality is not related to sexual desire or sexual orientation, but is a category that refers to a set of distinctive public practices that a person learns through initiation by peers and that are, ultimately, linked to sex work (p. 102). One of their ‘rituals’ is fighting (tawuran). The gang member is cheered on by the other members, and the initiate is known as the fighter, or the warrior. A series of ritualized physical offenses is this directed toward the initiate, including, for the most part, punches, kicks, bites, and (cigarette) burns (p. 104).
“We are slaves of our own making” is an excerpt sentence revealed by one of the informants from Alcano’s research. What is meant by this phrase is “we use violence and make this body to share and we do it by ourselves”. It means that the violence is needed in order to ‘produce slaves’ (p. 107). In this sense, violence is a creative tool in the construction of a particular approach to masculinity for the sex market. Masculinity is first reworked for the sex market and marked on the body through violent practices (p. 108). New gang members learn a codified set of practices that are considered appropriate for the homosexual sex market (p. 108). Gang members pay a great deal of attention to crafting their body in order to mimic what they perceive and describe as a ‘real’ (asli) homosexual man (p. 112). One of the sub-chapters of this book discusses how they build a relationship with their girlfriend. They do a secret relationships (pacaran backstreet) and this activity causes stress (stres) because they, as a young male sex workers, risk their professional reputation, their credibility and their profits if found in the company of women by their male partners (p. 120-1).
This book is finished by the chapter ‘After sex work’. In this chapter, the author observed the survival of informants after they did as a male sex work. For them, the conceptualization of their life experience brings them a transition to adult life. Within the gangs in Kampung Malang and in Villa Mangga, young men have found ways to come together and have created networks of solidarity and reciprocal support (p. 178). This book has an aim to show that there seems to be a corridor of internal migration linking young underemployed youth from East Java, and Surabaya in particular, to the world of sex work in South Bali.