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Chapter 5 - Visiting Indonesia’s Anti-Extramarital Sex Legislation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2024

Jason Hung
Jason Hung
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

ABSTRACT

This chapter visits the latest legislation on passing the criminal code of criminalizing people who practise extramarital sex in Indonesia. I argue how criminalization alone, without relevant socio-economic empowerment and well-organized institutional mechanisms presented in Chapters 3 and 4 respectively, cannot crack down on the sex industry. Supported by the relevant scholarly discourse presented in this book thus far, I believe that commercial sex activities should remain rampant, to some degree, in the domestic underground economy, or more local prostitutes should be trafficked to neighbouring sex tourism hubs, including Bangkok, Pattaya, Phnom Penh and Manila, to work as migrant sex workers. I stress the importance of both local and regional collaboration to tighten intra- and international anti-prostitution policies to curtail the supply of sex workers within Indonesia and Southeast Asia at large.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter visits Indonesia's latest criminalization against extramarital sex, including commercial sex. I discuss how contextually important it is for Indonesia, as the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, to discourage, if not eliminate, extramarital sex, both commercially and non-commercially. I, then, engage in the scholarly discourse on how the country cannot crack down on its extramarital sex without eradicating the socio-economic and institutional root causes of commercial sex. In Southeast Asia, sex tourism, prostitution and sex trafficking are rampant and normalized to some degree (Curley 2014; Dahles 2009). Eradicating these root causes is the ultimate solution to Indonesia's decision to punitively bar local populations from engaging in extramarital sex. Both intranational and international policies will be highlighted and summarized in this chapter to present how Indonesia can address the issues of sex work and trafficking at its best in the long term.

CONTEXTUAL IMPORTANCE OF CRACKDOWN ON EXTRAMARITAL SEX IN INDONESIA

In Indonesia, per Islamic law, extramarital sex has been religiously and politically seen as immoral, wrongful and socially undesirable (Crouch 2009). Premarital sex, extramarital sex, queer sex and commercial sex have all been labelled as immoral sex in Indonesian society. Owing to gendered freedom restriction and cultural norms, there is a general expectation throughout Indonesia that men will have extramarital sex, as per Sex and Sexualities in Contemporary Indonesia: Sexual Politics, Health, Diversity and Representations (Bennett and Davies 2015).

Type
Chapter
Information
Visiting Sexual Exploitation
How Should Indonesia Strengthen Its Policies to Curb Sex Work in Response to Its Extramarital Sex Criminalization
 , pp. 79 - 95
Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
Print publication year: 2024

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