Commentary - (2021) Volume 8, Issue 5
Endah Triastuti*
Department of Communication, University of Indonesia, Kota Depok, Indonesia
Received Date: September 6, 2021; Accepted Date: September 20, 2021; Published Date: September 27, 2021
Citation: Triastuti E (2021) Indonesian Gay Men’s Heterotopia Creation through Disidentification Strategies. Health Sys Policy Res Vol. 08 No. 5: 96.
Description
The part of the core study on Indonesian gay men’s awareness of sexual health. Indonesia is part of United Nation’s Fast Track approach aiming to accelerate HIV prevention and treatment service [1,2]. Fast-track approach includes program to achieve zero new infection case of HIV/AIDS in 2030, addressing the importance of human rights by eliminating stigma and discrimination [3,4]. However, in the Southeast Asia region, Indonesia is the remaining country with the increasing endemic of HIV/AIDS [5]. 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.
Indonesia’s desire for modernity led to the marginalization of gay communities [6-8]. It had deteriorated sharply in 1980s as the global health program introduced Indonesia to HIV/AIDS as a ‘gay men’s disease’ [9,10]. Indonesia dominant society that is highly heteronormative intensely create stigma against gay community. The dominant structure, such as media, regulatory body, schools, and religious identify Indonesia gay men as a social evil who are promiscuous, a circuit wild party attendance, and drug users-who spread HIV/AIDS. In what follow, these stigmas have created marginalization [11,12], and criminalization against gay community [13,14]. As the result gay community keep themselves out of sight to prevent threats from dominant society [15,16]. Consequently, this complex interplay of factors keeps them hidden from Fast-track approach.
The published manuscript attempts to investigate Indonesia gay men’s effort in subverting the dominant society’s identification that somehow misrecognizes stories of selfformations to disidentificatory subject [17-19]. It is evident in the study that Indonesia gay men form of disidentification to produce knowledge and awareness that subvert the stigmas revolves around HIV/AIDS. The disidentification includes revealing research based knowledge that HIV/AIDS cases are higher among heterosexuals. My study reveals that through online disidentification gay men build a powerful peer network to participate in debunking the dominant readings.
Conclusion
The disidentification urges partnership in building sexual health awareness through social network. At the same time, it empowers other gay community’s members to join public sphere and create their sense of agency, including seeking and accessing information on sexual health. The manuscript shows social media platforms are potential tools to promote sexual health for gay community members as well as to encourage gay’s sexual health support network, thus should be considered to be included in sexual health programs, especially for marginalized communities.
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