SOWS ON HEAT AND DISORIENTED BOARS - STRAIGHT SEX FROM BALI TO MELBOURNE.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Bagus, Mary Ida
• Date: 01 January 1997

Sexual relationships between Balinese and tourists (turis) who visit Bali are common practice. Andrew Duff-Cooper posits that "non-locals on holiday enhance their time with sex".(1) Both the tourist and the local seek out the exotic in one another, their mutual perceptions of each other being "imaginative constructs" usually with only a tenuous connection to the "social facts" and the realities these "facts" represent(2) outside their immediate context of desire and fornication. The archetypal holiday romance, as the initial experience of cross-cultural coupling, is somewhat modified once a couple makes a commitment to continue their relationship beyond the boundaries of the host-guest domain. To remain together in Bali or elsewhere requires formal recognition and sanction of the partnership in order to secure a visa (or residence) for the expatriate partner.

This paper deals with heterosexual relationships between Balinese Hindus and Melburnians who decide to settle in Melbourne, a major Australian city.(3) The overwhelming majority of these couples are Balinese males married to Australian females. Unfortunately, the only academic commentaries available on southeast Asian-Australian `marriage' relationships which result in migration to Australia concern either homosexual interactions or the `mail order bride' syndrome.(4) In focusing on Australian female sponsorship of Balinese males to Australia this paper will address issues concerning "the body in its cultural, political, and psychosocial contexts"(5) by drawing on the work of an eclectic range of `feminist' theorists. These issues arise in the contexts of `marriages' between Balinese males and Australian females that are usually formalised and certified.(6)

The major project of the paper is threefold. I will introduce discussion of inter-racial relationships born out of a touristic encounter. I will also position the protagonists against a background of the usual (and unsatisfactory) tropes employed for inter-racial couplings. Finally, I will illustrate aspects of social processes in Bali and in Melbourne which ultimately legitimise the relationships, despite their generalised categorisation as `aberrant' due to racist and sexist ideologies in both natal cultures.

The process involved in finding a permanent venue for the cross-cultural relationship born out of a `holiday romance' is fraught with both social and bureaucratic implications. The initial difficulties encountered are located in `nationality' differences as represented by passports and identity papers, but are compounded by the phylogenic identities of the protagonists. The term `miscegenation'(7) remains an ideal gloss for such relationships, particularly since the term itself reflects the dichotomised cultural baggage of post. colonised and ex-coloniser(8) which informs local reactions to the partnerships both in Bali and in Melbourne. These reactions are symbolically played out directly on the body - the gendered body, the sexually active body, and the racial archetype.

This paper is both `miscegenous' and `promiscuous' in synthesising an exegesis of (feminist) theories of the body which are integral to representation of the gendered self and the gendered other. This is often ignored or lost in discussion of inter-racial/cross-cultural relationships. `Feminist' theories proposed by Moira Gatens, Catherine McKinnon, Jane Flax, Anne McLintock, Naomi Goldenberg, Jerry Aline Flieger, Kathryn Bond Stockton, Shulamith Firestone and Elizabeth Grosz have facilitated the metastatic argument of this paper, although they often represent quite divergent theoretical stances in other contexts. I am confident that this translocation of ideas is reflective of the unexplored realities created by inter-racial/trans-cultural relationships. Post-colonialism and multiculturalism are the ideological environments of Bali and Melbourne, and these environments continue to spawn racial archetypes.(9) Sexual, racial and cultural fetishism are the only tropes available within dominant discourses on gender, race and desire. A critique of the limited academic material available on Balinese-tuns sexual relationships will provide a vehicle to develop beyond the fetishised models of female bodies colonised by males, and particularly, colonised-male bodies represented as the post-colonial `swords of Damocles' hanging over the feasting bodies of white females.(10) Thus post-colonialism is an important theme in enabling the (male) Balinese protagonists to be released from their imposed roles as foils to white male supremacy. Feminist discourse is inevitable and desirable in representing gender and sexuality within these marriages since the expression of female agency apparently, has no other theoretical site. This is because recognising and centring female agency is a `feminist' rather than mainstream approach within dominant patriarchal academic discourse. Multiculturalism is the inevitable outcome of the recognition of cultural synthesis which may take many forms. This paper is deliberately formulated as a (meta)narrative in an attempt to represent movement through the process of cross-cultural coupling, which in this case, in practical terms, means an expensive five hour plane journey from one social environment in Melbourne to the others in Bali.

This paper implicates three separate but often overlapping worlds that are the locus of Balinese-Melbourne heterosexual relationships. These worlds influence the identities of the couples and inform public attitudes towards mixed marriages. The fact that these partnerships indicate `straight sex', and thus overt and generally `legitimate' practices, openly positions them within their `three worlds' context- Balinese village systems, the tourist areas of Bali and also in Melbourne. The decision to settle in Australia bypasses any serious ongoing engagement with greater Indonesia although, since the Balinese partners are (usually) Indonesian citizens, the Indonesian immigration bureaucracy particularly may continue to occupy their consciousness.(11)

A Balinese Focus on Pigs

There is a temptation to ignore the relevance of the Balinese village to the discussion of relationships between Balinese and turis since most of their interaction usually takes place outside the natal village domain.(12) Despite this it is important to include the village influence since it informs the choices and actions of Balinese people wherever they may reside. There is no doubt that ideas concerning gender, appropriate behaviour between the sexes and marriage emanate from the villages and permeate attitudes formed in reaction to tourism in the tourist domains of Bali. The majority of Balinese who marry Australians are from rural villages in Bali and even those who originate from more urban environments are influenced by the village-type systems of identity formation, which is what makes them ethnically `Balinese' in the broader Indonesian environment.

The world of the Balinese village, which may or may not be separate from a tourist domain, is the point of origin of the Balinese partners and often plays host at some time or another to the Balinese-Melbourne marriages. Dennis Altman (see article in this journal) has questioned whether the development of certain attitudes towards (homo)sexuality in southeast Asia indicates rupture or continuity of `traditional' thinking on such issues as conformity and identity. I argue that `rupture' is one aspect of `tradition' which intimates a `continuity' of social processes. The miscegenous example of inter-racial heterosexuality in a post-colonial environment may partially answer his query. The issues raised by these relationships are reacted upon from different, but not necessarily opposite, directions. These differences are located within the village marriage systems, the nation-state explanation of citizen-like behaviour and personal taste. Obviously in Bali there is also mass tourism to be accounted for. My focus is on incorporation into the family/village environment and how Balinese (extended) families deal with this phenomenon.

The marriage system/s recognised by Balinese people is/are informed by inherited social position, gender and wealth. Concepts of cultural embodiment, within Bali Hindu village systems focus on both the physical and the metaphysical body. Patriarchy and generally patriliny inform the process. The terminology for matrilineal arrangements clearly shows that they are regarded as aberrant. This is not to say that they are uncommon, but they are acting against an `ideal' order in the identity formation of the marriage partners and any subsequent children.(13) Metaphorical terminology relates the matrilineal brides with female pigs, since any man who marries into such a situation is said to run away with a female pig (pelaiban bangkung). The phallogocentrism of this concept is clear. It describes male agency and there is no equivalent metaphoric concept to activate female passivity in this case. Thus it is not only within dominant Western discursive paradigms that "legal practices and discourses surrounding marriage also assume this conception of sexual difference by allotting conjugal fights to the (active) male over the (passive) body of the female".(14) The symbology of the pig is clear in that it directly refers to female wealth since women raise the pigs in Balinese households. The reverse interpretation is offensive in that it reduces the couple to animal status, a shift which connotes both low status and base animal sexuality in a strongly hierarchical society. This association is further evidenced in the metonyms for `loose woman' (bangkung buang) - a sow on heat; and a `casanova' (kaung paling) - a confused/disoriented boar.

Clearly an `ideal' marriage system is recognised in Bali. This system is based on male precedence and female subservience to the male line. It is further reflected in inheritance rights. Common...