By: Abdul Rosyidi
Humanity stands on the principle that all human beings are equally. In this principle, everyone universally recognizes the equality of degrees and dignity of everyone, regardless of race, gender, nation, and so on. That way, we can’t talk about humanity without understanding sexuality.
Sexuality is a form of our existence in the world. Once we are born, from that moment on we are in sexual mode. All humans are born in a sexual body. For example, I never asked to be born a man. My wife never asked to be born a woman. We never knew about being hetero. Likewise, my friends who never asked to be this and that, or to be anything different.
However, I could never negotiate the circumstances under which I was born. We were just born. And because it just happened, there is no more room to ask yourself. They said it was given. That which is incomprehensible then gets too many signifiers, interpretations, meanings, stories and myths. From there, it is always tempting to define, shape, categorize, sort by hierarchy, normalize, and abnormalize. That is the root of sexual morality.
Sexual morality profoundly influences our humanity today, including shaping how we think, act, behave, dress, relate, and socialize. When many people believe that’s the only way to understand sexuality, those guidelines become ideology. Broadly speaking, today’s world ideology is patriarchy, which believes that female sexuality is lower than male sexuality. This is what gives rise to a lot of gender discrimination or injustice because of one’s sexuality.
Patriarchy instills values it considers true through discipline in the smallest social system, namely the family. For example, I was born and raised as a man. My family and those closest to me encourage me to have traits and characters that they understand as what a man is. In the end, I always wanted to be someone like how people think a man should be.
So, when it comes to humanity, we must re-analyze those assumptions, like it or not. The process of decomposition will open our understanding of the possibility of difference and the gateway to opening ourselves up to other people’s different sexualities. There is no humanity without efforts to understand the “other(s)”.
The decomposition process is good if it starts from oneself. The sexual self must truly know its existence. When the understanding of the self is complete, the understanding of the “other” is possible. These sexual ideologies that entrap the “other” have long shackled us in bondage, even faster than other ideologies.
Letting go of those ties will lead to a widening of perspectives. As a religious person, I myself feel that the expression “man ‘arofa nafsahu fa qod arofa robbahu” is true. “Whoever knows himself knows his Lord”. To know God, a person must know himself first. But to know oneself is not simply to just look in the mirror or do a psychological test. Self-awareness is successful when a person is able to use his empathic reasoning for the feelings of others.
In this case, self-awareness departs from the same feelings for other people’s suffering. Who suffers a lot in the world? Marginalized people. It is true to say that God is on the side of the displaced, hungry, and suffered. As to know God, one must relate to their suffering. Without it, the God that one feels is merely an idol or a talisman that brings luck, happiness and wealth.
Misconceptions and Comedy
Even though we are so close and familiar with sexuality, many people still misunderstand it. When talking with friends and with the students during the training with Umah Ramah, their first assumptions about the word ‘sexuality’ are about jima’ or sexual intercourse, genitals, vital organs, and dirty talk.
In fact, sexuality is in the house, at school, in places of worship, in public facilities, on television, on social media, in government buildings, in rice fields and plantation areas, in space stations, in places where we live, or in places we never know.
It is the quality of our existence in the world. It is everywhere. So close to daily life. Affecting how we dress, look, present ourselves, how we speak and relate to others, think, be spiritual, interpret oneself, interpret the existence of others, interpret the existence of God.
Sexuality fixes itself in cultural and historical spaces. Without understanding sexuality, we can never understand culture in depth and cannot offer art or literature that is honest and moving.
Many humanists, artists, writers, and so on, “failed” to link their work with feelings, because they failed to elaborate on the most profound, widespread, most fundamental, and at the same time the most misunderstood and hated matter: sexuality.
Surprisingly, since how close it is, sexuality also often becomes a comedy that is exhibited by mostly men. I once read the writings of a phenomenological psychologist, who said that the improper humor is because sexuality is not sufficiently understandable to them. I don’t completely agree. Because it could be just a form of male arrogance who is not willing to let go of patriarchal privileges that have been claimed from the beginning. Hegemonic masculinity is too dear to be thrown away.
Or indeed, men are not good enough at expressing feelings, emotions, and affections. Because since childhood, they were raised in particular ways in a patriarchal family. I can quite imagine it when watching “Ngeri-Ngeri Sedap”.
Sexist humor, stiffness, strict parenting, unable to express feelings, afraid to cry, selfish, dominating, conquering, stubborn, and arrogant, seems to be the problem of most men. And they said, these qualities have long ruled the world.
The Masculine World
Many accuse all the problems in the world today–violence, war, climate change, and damage to nature–stem from our mistakes in managing the world. And the biggest mistake is because the way we live and manage life in the world is very masculine.
We learn to be like that from all sources of knowledge. Our cinema is filled with violence and blood. Violence is shown “always” as a solution to conflicts between humans, between friends, between interests.
Our sport is also very masculine. Highlighting competition, muscles, agility, and champions beat opponents. News of crime and violence is also spread every day everywhere, newspapers, television and social media.
The way schools educate us is also very masculine. The system encourages students to beat opponents to excel. Families also encourage their children to beat opponents to become champions. Even though violence is prohibited, the way we educate and hope for children stimulates them to continue to compete to beat and conquer.
We do not accept all that right away, but it has got into the subconscious while waiting for the right time to blow itself up. This afternoon I thought about how the ‘explosion’ was very powerful and happened everywhere. It’s just that we are not aware of the existence of such an ‘explosion’.
The ‘explosion’ can attack others or hurt yourself. If the explosion goes outward then on the surface it is seen as behavior that hurts other people, kills, and even massacres a group of people. However, if an explosion occurs inside, it can lead to self-harm or committing suicide.
So far, killing people has always been interpreted literally as the loss of life. In fact, the most common killings around us are “implicit killings”. Namely ignoring other people, especially ignoring people who need help, weak people, people who are marginalized, or suffered.
Likewise, suicides always make us wonder because they shake humanity. However, we are not too aware of depression. It could be that a person is physically healthy and alive, but they think they do not “exist”. It usually starts with a constant feeling of self-doubt in oneself, considering oneself tainted, impure, sinful, guilty, and so on.
Yesterday I heard a story. There are people who are not blind and deaf but choose not to see (neglecting their eyesight) and not hearing (neglecting their hearing). Whether it is because they do not want to care about the existence of others or it’s a form of self-neglect. But that story is more than enough for me to think, how the world is full of such explosions. While daydreaming, I ponder, which area of the ‘explosion’ am I myself in? ***
This article was translated by Napol Riel.