  Home / Asia / Indonesia / Articles / Tales of the Waria:
Inside Indonesia's Third-Gender Community loading map..   tagged
with: warias / indonesian trans Tales of the Waria: Inside
Indonesia's Third-Gender Community  in INDONESIA, 28/05/2012
In Indonesia biological men who believe that they are born with
the souls of women are known as "warias." The term is a melding
of two Indonesian words: "wanita" ("woman") and "pria" ("man").
As a group, warias are diverse, encompassing what we in America
might call cross-dressers, transsexuals, drag queens, and
effeminate gay men. What unites them is an irrepressible
feminine spirit.  I first learned about warias in 2005, when I
saw a newspaper photograph of a gorgeous waria who had won a
beauty contest in Jakarta. I knew about the "ladyboys" of
Thailand, but I had no idea that transgender people could live
so openly in Indonesia, a country with the world's largest
Muslim population. Like many Americans I had this notion of
Islam as being oppressive and particularly