Engel, center front, a bissu in the town of Bone in South Sulawesi.Kate Lamb
For centuries the bissu were a permanent fixture in a dozen royal courts in South Sulawesi. They served as spiritual advisers and healers to the king, guarded regalia and performed sacred rituals during weddings and harvest time. Bissu traditionally lived in royal palaces and were given their own land and rice fields. While the number of bissu varied, each kingdom had a head and deputy bissu, and big ceremonies required the participation of at least 40 priests. Bissu were permitted under colonial rule, but when the Dutch finally relinquished Indonesia in 1949 and the royal courts were handed over to the state, transgender priests were persecuted in waves of attacks.
“When Indonesia gained independence, the bissu lost theirs,” explains Halilintar Lathief, an anthropologist from Hasanuddin University who has studied the bissu phenomenon for decades.
During the turbulent times after independence, the Islamic movement Darul Islam took control of swaths of territory in South Sulawesi and sent the bissu running for their lives. In the 1950s, the Islamic group Muhammadiyah banned the bissu, and in Bone, an Islamic mob decapitated the bissu leader and paraded her head around town, swinging it by her long hair, so that no one would ever dare to be one again. Later, during the brutal communist purges of 1965, people deemed to be of “deviant” sexuality were hunted down and killed. Because the bissu were suppressed for so long after independence, many people in Sulawesi are unaware that the bissu are part of the ancient Bugis culture that existed before Islam spread across Indonesia, which is now the most populous Muslim-majority nation in the world.
During these waves of attacks, many bissu went into hiding, some living in caves in the jungle. One bissu from a village near Sigeri learned to dress so convincingly as a woman that to this day no one in the village knows she was born male. “The rumor at the time was that if someone saw a lady-boy or transgender, for seven days their good deeds would not be accepted by God. They were banished,” explains Lathief. “All of that trauma lasted several generations. It is amazing there are actually any bissu these days.”
This was the environment that Engel was born into.
From a young age, Engel, who was born male and prefers to be identified by male pronouns, was beaten and insulted for being calabai. Today the memories are still painful to recall. “I wondered why I was born like that when there were real women and real men,” says Engel in tears. “Why had I become such bad luck for myself, for my family?”
Engel eventually left home. He learned to dance and opened a small beauty salon. But after a constant barrage of insults as well as discrimination and ostracism from his family, he started to question what he lived for. It was then that he met an elderly bissu who taught him the traditional mantras and rituals. Today Engel prefers to dress like a woman but wears the loose robes of Arab men out of respect to his parents, making an exception only when entering a transgender beauty contest or performing a bissu ritual.
At the celebration of Bone, government officials described the bissu as part of a unique cultural heritage. Outside the party, however, locals barely know what they are, confusing them with the sex workers who frequent the park at night.
In Bone there are only two bissu left. A three-hour drive away in Sigeri, where there were once 40 official bissu, including a few women, there are now four. In neighboring Gowa, there are none.
“The old ones,” Lathief says with a sigh, “are going one by one.”
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