“Cats are friendlier than dogs”: cultural stereotypes and how to break them

I was teaching about comparisons in class last week with about twenty-five tenth grade boys. I wrote three words on the board: cats, dogs, friendly. Which one is friendlier?  I asked them.

“Cats!” the entire class shouted back.

“Are you sure?” I ask again.

“Yes! Yes! Cats!”

“Nobody thinks dogs are friendlier?”

“No!”

I can barely imagine one student in America, let alone twenty-five, insisting that cats are friendlier than dogs. They may say they like cats better, that cats are funnier, that cats are more graceful, that cats are a better pet, but friendly? In America, cats are rarely ever called friendly Cats are supposed to be “jerks,” “shy,” or “moody”. 

Another time I asked a class what their favorite animal was. One boy told me his was a dog. When I asked him why, his reason was that they were “grumpy” and “noisy.” A dog, grumpy?  But in America, dogs are a symbol of unconditional friendliness and known for their excessive outgoing-ness.

Look at this grumpy creature! (from boredpanda.com)

How can Indonesians look at cats and dogs so completely differently?

First, we need to talk about religion. Most people in Java are Muslim. Many people are under the impression that Muslims do not like dogs.  Depending on whom you ask, dogs are forbidden in Islam. Totally forbidden is an extreme view (that some people do hold), but a more nuanced and accurate (if you’re looking at the text of the Quran, not necessarily local beliefs) is that dogs are not bad creatures, and you can touch their fur, but their saliva is dirty. If you touch the saliva of a dog, you have to wash your hands seven times and pray. Now, as most dog owners know, once a dog loves you, it is pretty difficult to keep the animal from licking you, and having to wash yourself so thoroughly every time you meet your pet would get kind of annoying.

And yet, some people still keep pet turtles....(from pets4homes.co.uk)

However, to say that all Muslims can’t and do not believe in keeping a dog as a pet or that they hate dogs is inaccurate. Even if they feel that they can’t touch dogs, I’ve never met a Muslim here who advocates mass violence against dogs, and they are disgusted by the idea of eating dog. However, I have seen non-Muslim owners of dogs hit their animals and dog meat is popular in some non-Muslim islands in Indonesia (eating and hitting dogs doesn’t mean the person hates dogs either, my point is that the relationships between dog and humans is complicated). I’ve also never had anyone argue that dogs are not loyal to humans or somehow evil animals (I do often hear that they are “dirty”).

from IMDB.com

The Air Bud film series about dogs that play sports are often shown on TV. I even saw the film Beethoven (the film about the large St. Bernard dog) play on television here [picture movie poster]. Considering how often films with dogs are played, and I’ve seen children in my village watch and enjoy these films, it can’t only be the minority non-Muslims watching.  Also, there are some Muslims who keep and touch dogs without any guilt. The status of dogs for Muslims is complicated and is better explained here.

All things considered, I think it’s not quite accurate to say my students don’t like dogs. They don’t think they are friendly or safe, but it doesn’t mean they don’t like them or can’t appreciate them. Most Americans don’t think pet monkeys are clean or safe, but that doesn’t mean the average American hates monkeys.

Second, regardless of religion, there are certain cultural norms. The island of Lombok (an island next to Bali) is majority Muslim, and yet when I visited there last December, I could see many dogs around the island and people were not scared or uncomfortable. Culturally, the people of Lombok and Bali are quite similar and in Bali there are also many dogs (but the majority of people are Hindu). In the case of the people of Lombok, certain cultural norms have overridden any religious attitudes.

Thirdly, one needs to look at environment. While Lombok and Bali are filled with stray dogs, Java is filled with cats. Now, when I read about schools in America or in Europe that are charmed by a single stray cat that spends time on the campus and plays with the kids and becomes adopted by the school, library, graveyard, store, etc., I feel pretty amused. 

You ain't special in Indonesia, bub (from deweyreadmorebooks.com)

 In Java there are cats everywhere. There are several cats that weave in and out of the offices, the classrooms, and the fields at school. One day my class was interrupted when a cat decided to have her kittens in a desk at school. At night, you can hear the cats crawling on the roofs, fighting, or yowling, and if you leave the windows of the house open, cats will come inside and steal food or try to sleep on couches. God help the poor Indonesians who are allergic to cats because they are ubiquitous.

Most of my students have been interacting with cats since right after they were born. And the cats have been around people since they were born as well. The few times I actually see dogs on Java, they usually avoid eye-contact with me and move right past me. Or, they are guard dogs and they aggressively bark. The dogs on Java, for the most part, are not raised with touch or friendly smiles or human affection. They do not run to you smiling and with wagging tails.

Some of the cats are afraid of humans and run away, but they are rarely aggressive. One cat that used to be afraid of humans now follows me around the house, tries to sleep in my bed, greets me when I return home from school, and every time I have private lesson at my house, she will sit in the middle of the lesson, trying to nuzzle or lick the kids. Just this evening she tried to give me a large rat she caught. Throwing aside my own stereotypes of cat behavior, I can’t make any logical argument that this animal is “unfriendly.”

killing me with friendliness

There are so many cats on Java that most of them are not kept as anyone’s specific pet and they compete for whatever limited food there is. If a cat is especially aggressive, most people would probably have no qualms about having the cat killed or reacting violently; cats here are dispensable because there are so many, and they probably aren’t anyone’s pet, so probably no one is going to get to get angry if you have the cat killed or hit the cat. Cats are small and do not hunt in packs, so in a fight with a human there is simply no way to defend itself. Cats must be neutral or friendly to humans out of necessity because friendly cats get fed.

If I had only interacted with cats or dogs in Java my entire life, of course I would think cats are friendlier than dogs. The dogs of Java are never given the chance to become friendly because most people are afraid of them or don’t want to touch them. The people see them as unfriendly and continue to keep distance. And the cycle continues.

Last month, I watched the new Disney film, Zootopia. It was surprisingly very good and a nuanced exploration of prejudice and stereotypes (and also the war on drugs according to one reviewer). I guess the film really stuck with me because I just talked about animals to start a conversation about human stereotypes.

From t3.gstatic.com

I apologize for nonspecific spoilers, but the film does a good job of showing that while stereotypes do sometimes have a basis in reality, as the main rabbit character is attached by a fox as a child and later is tricked by a fox, society perpetuates and encourages certain behaviors and pushes people to adhere to stereotypes. It is later revealed that the one fox character was abused as a child for being violent and untrustworthy even before he ever displayed those qualities.

Even if a dog on Java were born with a friendly personality, he is not raised in an environment that encourages him to be friendly, so that’s not the animal he will become. In the film, the government line is that all animals are equal and can be anything they want, but while everyone says that at schools or in government buildings, actually prejudice of all kinds still exists. Just because an idea exists in the government or in mass media, doesn’t mean it is accepted at all levels of society; my students may watch many films with friendly dogs, but they still don’t think dogs are friendly animals.

Both the United States and the Indonesian government are officially pro-multicultural. The US’s slogan is “Out of Many, One,” while Indonesia has “Unity in Diversity.” Officially all races and religions and ethnic groups should be equal and have the same opportunities in both countries, but it isn’t true. In America blacks are stereotyped as lazy, more sexual, musical, cool, more prone to crime, not as book smart, less attractive (if female). Asians are smart, less sexual, awkward, weak, and strange. Whites are racist, boring, less interesting and unique, normal.

 In Indonesia the Javanese are soft, hard-working, polite, more educated. Sundanese are lazy, but pretty, and artistic. The Madurese are violent. The people of East Nusa Tengarra or Papua are black, ugly, not as clean, but sweet and somehow less “Indonesian.”

While I’ve never heard an Indonesian claim to hate any other specific ethnic group, the fact is that many people prescribe to these stereotypes. Even though most people don’t hate dogs, the fact that they aren’t treated as “friendly” changes their behaviors and lives. Just because a stereotype isn’t extreme or even completely negative doesn’t make it totally benign. In Indonesia, white skin is seen as beautiful, regardless of other features. I have seen casting calls for women and they nearly always insist that the women must have light skin. Occasionally there is a darker skinned male character, but I rarely see a dark-skinned female Indonesian on TV (outside of reality shows or singing contests). The one time I did see a dark-skinned Papuan woman in a singing contest, I said, “She’s pretty.” In response, the Indonesian woman I was watching with said, “Sure, she is pretty for someone from Papua.”

She's pretty...for a human being (from kabar.24.com)

A dark skinned Indonesian actress may not be hated, but she would be far less successful than a light-skinned actress. She would have to apologize for the color of her skin constantly. Her opportunities are simply not the same. Furthermore, if she is told over and over again that she is not beautiful, she will not carry herself with confidence--so she will in fact look less attractive.

When I first came to Indonesia, I couldn’t understand. To me there were plenty of dark-skinned Indonesian women who seemed quite beautiful to me. And I’ve heard Indonesian women comment that white men like to date ugly Indonesian women; ugly usually meaning dark or more Asian looking.  I understood the cultural stereotype, but still I was confused. Look at all the beautiful women that are dark and that you constantly interact with? How can they not be pretty? Even men or women who were in love with people who were dark would still often say their lover isn’t pretty or handsome

I am reminded of learning about slavery in the US as a child. In slave owning societies, whites and blacks were constantly exposed to one another. There were slaves that worked in the house, and some of those slaves were even related to their masters or their family. And yet, black people were still stereotyped as less intelligent and less human.

One of the ways to break stereotypes is to simply expose people to a group of people they are unfamiliar with, but history has taught that exposure by itself is not good enough. Men and women in most societies interact daily with members of the opposite sex, but that doesn’t stop them from stereotyping each other despite having many examples that contradict stereotypes.

Granted, this isn’t to say that increased exposure is an overall bad tactic; the increasing media presence of gays and lesbians on television greatly influenced the greater acceptance of homosexuality and same sex marriage in America. And, from what I’ve seen, gender stereotypes are definitely more fluid in societies where men and women interact more freely; e.g. gender stereotypes in Indonesia are more fluid than those in Saudi Arabia, and in some ways (from what I can see) they are more fluid here than in South Korea (where more schools and work places are segregated by gender).  If we look at Civil War era America, even if a white Southern woman did not believe slavery was wrong, she was probably more comfortable around African Americans than the average white Northern women who was exposed to racist ideas but never actually interacted with any black Americans.

Anti slavery can still be racist...(from wikipedia)

Exposure is usually only successful if people are exposed in a different way that what they are used to. Even if Indonesian television was filled with more dark-skinned actresses, if they are not presented as objects of desire or as main romantic interests, this exposure will not break the idea that they are somehow ugly or less attractive.

Everyone is has physical limits (some people are short, some tall, some are naturally athletic, etc.) and their own unique personality, but within each person exist so many potential abilities, however only some of those potential abilities are encouraged by society. All of you reading might be shaking your head in agreement—this is something we have been taught as members of pluralistic societies, and yet, even if we say we agree with this line of thinking, in our personal interactions we still stereotype and push people into boxes.

I don’t mean to say it’s totally wrong to make generalizations. Generally Indonesians are shorter than Americans. That’s true and not wrong. Going further, in general I’d say that Indonesians have a more relaxed attitude than Americans. Again, I don’t think it’s wrong to notice or say this. When it gets problematic is that when we look at a stereotype over individualistic behavior. While generally Indonesians are more relaxed, if I meet an Indonesian person who isn’t very relaxed, I can’t just write off her behavior or not acknowledge it. I can’t deny her the potential to not be a relaxed person when I meet her.

Looking at the Indonesian population as a whole, I might predict that they may react to certain news in a certain way, but if the evidence shows otherwise, I need to accept that. I have to allow all populations the luxury of exhibiting all extremes of human behavior, both good and bad. I may look for logical explanations for why so many people in America support Donald Trump. And then I also need to look for logical and historical explanations for why many Middle Easterners might support a horrible dictator instead of simply writing off the Middle East as “violent” or “unstable.” [http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/donald-trump-americas-muammar-gaddafi-125108954]

 If a little girl begins to act aggressively, instead of calling her “boyish,” perhaps I should just accept that, while most girls are not as aggressive as boys, some girls are.

The important thing, I believe, when trying to break down cultural stereotypes is that they are not a disease themselves but a symptom of a certain kind of world view that a society or individual may hold. And both societies and individuals have multiple layers of world views that are going to affect their behavior. They may have a political world view that affects their politics or what they may say in some official setting, but they may also have an altogether different world view that colors their personal actions with friends, family, or coworkers. Stereotypes, especially rigid stereotypes, exist as a tool to help categorize a chaotic world and make sense; they help enforce an individual’s place in society and their psychology.

In regards to identity and psychology, we can look at sex-based stereotypes. Much of the stereotypes that men or women have about members of the opposite sex aren’t really about the other person; really they’re about defining yourselves against those things and having a clear identity. For men or women to be “normal” in most societies, they need to be adequately masculine or feminine. Masculinity or Femininity cannot exist within a vacuum; the must be defined against each other like dark and light, hot and cold.

From wikipedia

When men complain that women are emotional, perhaps it doesn’t have to do so much with what women are, but it serves as a way of absolving themselves of guilt or bad behavior; I didn’t do something wrong, the stereotype implies. Women are just simply more emotional. Or the woman who says all men are jerks. There is nothing wrong with me personally, says that women, simply all men are jerks. What complicates things is that yes, to a degree, society may encourage women to be more emotional or men to be more jerk-like,  so there might be evidence that both things are true. However, to continue to think this way about absolutely all men or all women, or to never look for the reasons why a woman might be emotional or a man might be a jerk and understand them only perpetuates those ways of thinking and makes it more and more difficult for men or women to behave in any other way.

If we look at a different example, this time with race, we can also see how stereotypes and prejudice uphold psychology and identity. I once met a young man who insisted that he has never in his life found a black woman attractive. “I am not racist,” he insisted, “but I have never been attracted to a black woman.” When I first moved to Asia, I met many Western women that insisted that Asian men were never attractive to them, even though, they were, of course, not racist. I think attraction is complicated, and I don’t mean to say that having physical preferences is wrong. Being more attracted to one race over another does not, in itself, make you racist. Also, being attracted to members of a specific race other than your own definitely does not absolve you of racism.

Had lots of half black kids...still racist (from wikipedia

However, I would argue that finding absolutely no one of a certain race attractive in any form does imply that you are at least a little racist. The first problem is exposure; the man who didn’t like black women lived in a mostly white town and rarely interacted with black women. The Western women who moved to Asia, too, had never been exposed to many Asian men, and the media in the US does not do a good job of portraying Asian men as attractive or desirable, especially a few years ago. But it isn’t only about exposure. In order to be attracted to someone, you need to be open to that attraction first. This is why (most) people can avoid being too attracted to people who are married or in committed relationships because as soon as we know that person is unavailable, we psychologically close ourselves off to the idea of them as a potential partner.

To say that you are completely not attracted to ANYONE of a certain race or nationality allows you to express a degree of uncomfortable-ness with interacting with people of that race without seeming too racist. It allows you to treat that person differently from someone of another race without guilt—it’s not that I don’t like Asian men, says the stereotype, it’s just I’m not attracted to them, so I don’t need to get close. It could also be a psychological block; part of the person may know that being attracted to or dating outside their race or culture might be very complicated and difficult, so the person’s brain cuts off attraction to those people. It also has to do with what people find attractive and cultural stereotypes. If white or black American women decide that a man must be highly masculine to be attractive, they may insist they are not attracted to Asian men because they believe in the stereotype that Asian men are less masculine. Perhaps the young man has internalized the idea that black women are less feminine.

hmm, yes, so very manly (from lipstickalley.com)

So girly! (from menstylefashion.com)

As I have written about before, there are whole websites and forums filled with American men stereotyping all American women as entitled, spoiled, masculine, and evil, and foreign women as better girlfriends. I met a girl in high school who insisted that all American men were sex-crazed jerks but that somehow Japanese men were more caring and affectionate. She continued to hold onto this stereotype even when her friends tried to shock her by showing her hentai (animated Japanese porn). The last two examples are extreme, but as I said, in many cases, the stereotype isn’t about the person being stereotyped, really, but the person who holds those stereotypes. Instead of taking responsibility for their own shortcomings and failures, some people latch onto small generalizations or marginal trends and magnify them, only seeing things that reinforce their world view and completely ignoring anything that challenges it.

Earlier, I mentioned that people could have layers of world views. Sometimes you meet someone who lives in a politically liberal area. He or she may vote for a liberal candidate and when he is with his friends, he may say he believes in gay rights, helping refugees, ending mass incarceration, equality for men and women, etc. because he has been taught in his social circle that to not believe in these things would make him ignorant or dumb. However, he tells his girlfriend she is crazy all the time and gas lights her, he has very few friends who aren’t white, and he makes “ironic” racist jokes. At work, when he is forced to work with a client from India, he gets impatient and frustrated quickly and makes no effort to really be patient of cross cultural differences. He makes jokes about all conservatives being evil or everyone from West Virginia is a gun loving hick, and he never tries to understand the sources of other people’s political opinions. On the surface, he might firmly believe and espouse, liberal, tolerant ideals, but in practice and in his personal life he has unconsciously stereotyped and written off things he doesn’t want to think about or deal with because they question his own self-worth and identity.

On the other hand, I’ve met people who have espoused some pretty racist and intolerant political ideals because where she is from, that is the norm and to not regurgitate those stereotypes would socially outcast her. She may vote or support politics based on stereotypes. However, when actually exposed to people different from herself, she may actually be quite tolerant and kind because she feels secure in her own identity, and someone in her life emphasized empathy and friendliness. While politically she says she does not support homosexuality, a gay man has become her friend. Ultimately, she has more need for his friendship than the political need to reject him.

Neither of these two people is ideal. If we want a more tolerant society and fair society, people must be both politically and personally fair and tolerant.

But how?

On the political level, of course the laws need to be fair. Second, mass media must be changed. Lieutenant Uhura from Start Trek was important not because she was black woman on TV, but she was a black woman scientist. The sitcom Will and Grace was important not just because it had gay characters, but the gay characters were main characters with normal lives, jobs, and friends. Both of these shows were successful at changing stereotypes because they not only increased exposure, but they directly contradicted stereotypes (that black women aren’t intelligent or that gay people are less normal), and these contradictions of stereotypes were accepted as totally normal and understandably by the other characters.

from mirror.co.uk

If a government wants to eliminate certain stereotypes, it must also push the media to characterize holding those stereotypes as backward or damaging, but only to a certain degree. If a push is made too far in one direction, there is a chance of making new stereotypes or of making people feel bitter because they are suddenly made to feel guilty or less special. I am not against programs that promote minorities or their accomplishments, however, keeping in mind that not everyone is a sociologist; too much propaganda promoting a certain minority group could create backlash from different insecure groups in society. To others, this may come off as selfish, ignorant whining, but if a government can be sensitive to potential backlash, it will improve society in the long run.

Nelson Mandela famously understood this, which is why, although violence had been perpetrated far more heavily by whites than blacks during apartheid in South Africa, he made and effort to not isolate white groups. South Africa is not a perfectly harmonious racial society, but it could have been a lot worse were it not for his wisdom

The government must promote minorities but be inclusive and sensitive to other groups, especially those in decline, and it must show people the political and economic advantages of being more inclusive. Not everyone reacts to logic and data, so it must play with people’s emotions and use anecdotes. Instead of characterizing majority groups as barriers to the success of minorities, it must promote the idea that the majority can help others and find heroism and identity in working to make 

things fairer.

In the case of Indonesia, the Indonesian government has tied tolerance for other religions to the national identity of Indonesian Islam and promotes tolerance for other religions as a source of pride and characteristic of the Indonesian people. Indonesia is not perfectly religiously tolerant, but that government action has certainly helped promote tolerance.

and they've got a pretty sweet abandoned chicken church (from atlasobscura.com)

Combating stereotypes on a personal level is more complicated. People my learn their politics from mass media, the government, or circles of friends, but their personal behavior comes from their parents and their closest peers going up, and they may be subconsciously held. Simply forcing exposure doesn’t always work either—as I’ve written about before, sometimes expatriates who live in foreign countries end up more prejudiced than they were before.

If you really want to break someone of a stereotype, you need to understand why that stereotype exists. There are stories of people who used to be part of the KKK or other white supremacist groups who after working years with people of other races got over their stereotypes and began to work for racial equality. In their cases, the source of those stereotypes was the social network that supported those people. The friends and the groups and the people that were most important in their lives held those beliefs. Working with someone of a different race who didn’t end up hurting him and supported him socially erased the reasons for holding those beliefs.

Eventually, most of the Western women I went to Asia with eventually became attracted to Asian men. Part of it was exposure, and the other part was that after time, the culture became less alien. The psychological shock of hoping to understand someone of that race enough to date them had worn off.

For Indonesians, the stereotype that people with darker skin are less attractive has roots historically in Asia but more importantly from European and Arab colonialism. Indonesia as a society must become more secure in its position in the world and shed the vestiges of colonialism. The stereotype is there to insist that it is not all Indonesians who are dark—simply some women are dark and they are the ugly ones.

You can show a blind man a million pictures, but he still will not know what the ocean looks like. Before exposure can work, you first need to attack the disease that is making someone blind or out of focus. Yes, rigid stereotypes are damaging and awful when perpetrated on another human being; we should never forget to help the victims of stereotypes and prejudice. But if you want to stop prejudice from being perpetuated you must ask what is damaging the person who clings to it.

A dog and a cat being friendly (from petsbest.com)

The Tyranny of True Love

The Tyranny of True Love

"Are you my true love?"

I planned to have auditions for an English contest last week. When I went to go get the students to tell them that we could start the auditions, I saw one tenth grade girl arguing with a tall boy who then started to pull her by her forearms as she became more and more upset and yelled at him. Fearing that the altercation would get more violent, I went up to both students and told the boy he had to stop and to go away, not knowing what else to say or do (disciplining children in a nonnative tongue is not the easiest task). The boy left the scene and the girl fainted, her friends surrounding her as they carried her to the campus mosque, where they fanned her and gave her sips of water.

I found out later that the boy wanted the girl to come with him while she wanted to stay at school and that they have been dating since middle school. This kind of incident can and does happen (perhaps without the girl fainting) at American high schools. Toxic relationships and obsessive behavior exist everywhere. But it did reinforce to me the sheer power, influence, and significance of romantic relationships on many of my students’ lives, emotional health, and well-being, and caused me to think about what I've seen of romantic love in Indonesia.

If this were fifty to sixty years ago, my student who fainted because of her boyfriend would likely already be married to a man that her parents chose for her. She probably wouldn’t even being going to high school, and there would be no debate over whether or not she should be with her partner or join an English competition. Even in the year 2016, some of her neighbors or cousins around the same age as her with less money or less progressive parents still don’t have the romantic choices that she does.

.

"Sometimes your true love is next to you and feels close but you don't realize it"

The woman I live with in my village, whom I call Ibu, which means mother or madam, is somewhere in her sixties. Every time I ask her age, she gives a slightly different answer. Sometimes she sixty, sometimes sixty-five. Her younger sister told me that she is sixty-seven. She never went to high school. Her parents asked her what she wanted to do when she was young. She said she wanted to cook, and they decided to marry her at age twelve, thirteen, or fourteen to a man in his twenties that she did not really know and that she was “scared of because he was an adult.” She has never, as far as I know, had a boyfriend, and even though her husband died a few years ago, she has no intention of remarrying, despite the encouragement of her friends. “I am old. For what do I need a husband?” she often asks me.

If she ever had problems in her marriage, her parents warned her not to complain. She had money and a roof over her head. What would she have if they divorced or argued?

In two years, I will be thirty, but I haven’t married yet. This is shocking for many Indonesians I meet in my village. When people ask me when I will marry in front of Ibu, she tells me not to worry. Get experience first. She wishes that I will find a man who is good to me. That I choose. But I must marry she reminds me. I must marry a man eventually.

Yay...I guess?

Her grandson is nineteen years old. He recently broke up with his girlfriend because she wanted to marry, and he wasn’t ready. He is still a small child, says Ibu. He isn’t really. He is more than six feet tall and not thin. A nineteen year old is a legal adult. Probably still too young to marry. But no, he isn’t a small child.

Ibu went to Saudi Arabia when she was in her thirties against her husband’s wishes. She worked as a maid there for nine years. She sent back a lot of money, and her husband was able to build a few houses for their family with her money. Her family has more money and land than many other families in our neighborhood. But she left behind a little three year old boy while she was in Saudi. And that little boy died of a fever while she was gone.

Ibu’s older daughter is in her forties. She was married a few times and divorced before she married her current husband, who is the father of her two children and whom she has been with now for almost thirty years. He married her even though he had never married before, and she had been divorced. When she was sick last year, her husband massaged her and cooked for her. “It isn’t fair if the wife has to do all the cooking,” he told me one day.

Ibu’s granddaughter started dating her husband in high school. They have a four year old daughter now. She is a math teacher, and he works in a factory. Ibu’s children and grandchildren were able to marry for love and choose their partner.

My student can break up with her boyfriend. She can find a new one. She and her friends will talk about love and couples and complain about being single. They will share Facebook posts about true love and the nature of soul mates.

Indonesians are some of the most active social media users in the world. I get three to ten friend requests from Indonesians I may or may not have met in person on Facebook every week, and would likely get even more if I accepted all the requests I received. If I open my newsfeed on Facebook, a huge portion of the posts and statuses made by Indonesian friends are about being single and lonely. About dating. And about finding your true love.

On my birthday, one of the women who works in the office at my school took my hand warmly. “Cepat Jodoh,” she wished me with a giggle. Almost everyone who wished me a happy birthday added that line as well. Cepat jodoh. Find your true love fast.  There is a partner for everyone I am told. God has a plan for every soul, and every soul has a true love.

"You will surely meet your true love!"

A twenty-eight year old male elementary school teacher I am friends with once showed me a picture of him and his girlfriend that he broke up with a few years ago. I watched him as he photoshopped brooms sweeping her face away, out of the picture. “Her parents didn’t approve of me,” he told me. Months later, I heard she is getting married to another man. I did not see him around at that time, but his friends said he was galau—confused, depressed, out of it. He wrote odd posts on his Facebook.

His friend, also in his twenties, was in love with a Javanese girl. He is Sundanese. His family didn’t approve of the match. When he was galau, he sat in the corner of his house and wrote about love in the little English he knew on the white board that I used to teach the local elementary school kids.

Jodoh kamu, your true love, is someone else, his friend reassured him. He is younger, only twenty-one. He wants to get married fast. He has a new girlfriend every few months. Each time he has a new girl, he tells me he will marry her.

A twenty-nine year old man with short curly hair smoked a cigarette as he looked out onto the road. He used to have long dread locks and more piercings, and his back is still covered in an elaborate tattoo. “I want to find a wife. I need to find a wife,” he told me. “But who wants to marry a man with no job and who just got out of jail after three years?” he asked me without bitterness, but with sadness and a toothy grin. “But I know I will find my jodoh. Definitely, she is out there.”

Of course Americans also have some obsession with true love. Single people can find hundreds of English articles with advice or reasons about why their still single and haven’t married yet. There are plenty of movies (especially those marketed to women) showing how unhappy women are until they find a boyfriend or husband. Most action or adventure movies made in America have some romantic pairing.

"Six things for getting the best partner/true love"

American pop-culture obsession with “true love” has also not been free of criticism or rebellion either. People of my generation are familiar with the joke that Disney films gave us unreal expectations of true love. 

Eh, some of these are arguable...

Also, I think this is actually reasonable

On the feminist pop-culture website, The Mary Sue (http://www.themarysue.com/), one can find numerous articles praising films that show or promote friendships or familiar relationships instead of romantic ones (especially female based ones) and other articles calling for more homosexual, asexual, and aromatic representation. To the perhaps one percent of humans that have no romantic feelings, everyone else’s obsession with love is grating, they say. Does marrying your “true love” have to be everyone’s ultimate goal and purpose? Aren’t there other things to life? Some American cultural critics have begun to ask. And what happens if you don’t find someone who loves you unconditionally, who wouldn’t climb every mountain, who wouldn’t give you the moon if they could, or who has no interest in bathing with you in the sea?

What happens when your lover isn’t a perfect fit for you? Do you make it work? Do you leave him for someone else, who is better for you? Do you do something dramatic just to see how your lover reacts? Do you chase the person who is good for you from a practical stand point, or do you always chase the person whom you dream about, even if he is an undead vampire?

Twilight: A teenage girl's choice between a walking corpse and a dog. (not my original joke, but relevant here :) )

I don’t know enough about Indonesian pop-culture to know if there is any kind of backlash at the obsession with true love here. However, my English club students told me that they wanted to make a movie in English titled “Blood Coffee”. The girl writing the script explained to me the story. There is a deadly psychopath killer who kills people when they drink coffee because his own parents were killed in front of him as they drank coffee. However, he falls in love with a beautiful, intelligent young college student. 

“It sounds a bit like Twilight,” I told her after she explained the first scene involves the killer driving by on a motorcycle, charming all the female students except the romantic lead, who is suspicious. 

“Just think about your story as you write it,” I advised my student. “If the lead guy is really a killer, and the woman is really good, do you really think she should stay with him? Even if he doesn’t kill her, he’s still not a good person.”

“Well that is the problem,” she told me. “At the end, they don’t end up together because he is a killer.”

“Yeah. I think that’s better,” I told her.

“Yeah,” she responded, the light freckles on her round cheeks crinkled as she began to smile, “but you know, there will be a sequel.”

In every society the purpose of marriage and of the nature and validity romantic love transforms and is constantly in flux. When I lived in South Korea, I found that many people cared a lot about having a boyfriend or girlfriend or getting married, but they were less interested in talking about the intense feelings of true love or that meeting a certain person might be destiny. Instead they were more interested in the rituals of courtship. At a certain point in a relationship men are expected to buy an expensive present for their girlfriends or future mothers-in-law (often an expensive purse). Christmas was marketed as a couple holiday, and it was important to be seen eating ice cream together, to be seen holding hands as a couple on a street, or seen wearing matching outfits. 

Er, can't say I ever was a big fan. of the matching..

Typically, weddings are short, efficient affairs in which it is important to take pictures of certain set acts (such as throwing the bouquet) but those acts don’t have to actually be done in earnest. From what I could see, Korean pop-culture liked to assure people that they all could become a couple, with the experience and the rituals associated with dating and marriage being more important than the actual specific person one falls in love with. I think general couple-style marketing is less popular for Indonesians because the belief is that everyone has an individual perfect match.

Perhaps to Ibu, who never had a chance to choose her husband, the fact that my female student has a boyfriend and that she can break up with him and find someone who is her perfect match, who really loves her, is beautifully empowering and progressive.

However, consider a perpetually single and aging office lady working at a company in Jakarta, who opens her Facebook and sees so many statuses and pictures. So many are about “true love,” such as one with two Anime-style characters with big eyes staring lovingly at each other in front of the stars including affirmations that everyone is destined to love and marry someone special. She is suffocated by this concept.

My friend who cannot marry his Javanese girlfriend is stuck somewhere between old and new cultural norms and has been given no clear answer.

Furthermore there is definitely a potentially dangerous heterosexual and monogamous bias to the pop-culture concept of true love in Indonesia. In the Pre-Islamic and Pre-Christian traditions of many ethnic groups in Indonesia, gender was viewed very differently, and far more fluid. Even after conversion to Islam, Indonesia has had communities of people for hundreds of years known as waria that challenge binary gender norms (interesting articles and more information here and here). While there have been some cases of violence and prejudice affects the opportunities of people with different sexualities and non-binary genders, Indonesia has been fairly tolerant. However in the past few months, many Indonesians politicians and psychologists have called non-heterosexuals sick and in need of psychological care (more info here).

The somewhat sudden emergence of very vitriol anti-LGBT rhetoric is complicated and has many sources and explanations, but I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t influenced by obsession many Indonesians have with “true love.” Everyone has an opposite sex partner, says the thousands of memes on Facebook. How could someone not want beautiful, star crossed love?

Some politicians say that homosexual rights and acknowledgement and tolerance are a Western concept and undermining Indonesian sovereignty. But considering how old the waria community is in Indonesia and that many ethnic groups had non-binary concepts of genders, and that many Indonesian tribes historically practice polygamy, is tolerance for non-heterosexuals or diverse forms of marriage really a foreign, invading, and disruptive concept? Instead, on some level, isn’t the idea that everyone has a jodoh, a destined opposite sex partner chosen for you by God that he or she will love unconditionally and that will marry them and make them happy, relatively new and disruptive?

However, I don’t mean to say that the obsession with true love is completely modern or foreign. Pre-Islamic myths in Indonesia are filled with love stories and even though gender was perhaps more fluid, men and women were seen as complementary and each gender had power and magic and connection to the universe (or destiny). Certainly, too, you can see the roots of “true love” in Islam. Islam has very strict gender roles, and it is considered necessary for all Islamic people to marry. Also Islam encourages egalitarianism across different classes and races. As Indonesians become wealthier and more educated, marrying no longer becomes necessary to survive as an individual or to improve your family’s power or standing.

True love implies that someone’s background is not important. What is important is that they are a good match from you, a gift from God, just as Islam insists that all races and classes of people are equal under God. Furthermore, the Indonesian state battles against the divisions between different tribes by promoting a shared language, moving people around, and having a national slogan of “Unity in Diversity”. That the country can be unified despite its differences is already encouraged, so why can’t romantic love also be powerful enough to overcome other factors that in the past limited marriage prospects?

Although Islam and Christianity are both male-biased, Indonesia’s traditions of female goddesses, matrilineal inheritance (for some tribes), and comparably (to many other parts of Asia) liberal acceptance of woman in positions of power, has contributed to the idea that men and women can be partners and need each other, a definite influence on true love. Dutch colonialism and the Christian example of monogamy too probably has factored into the idea that polygamy is not exactly proper or ideal even though it is allowed by some sects of Islam.

"Praise God, God has finally had me find my true love"

I think it also must be noted that pre-marital sex, is pretty taboo here. That isn't to say that it doesn't happen. It does and there are of course cases of pregnancy out of wedlock, pregnant couples being forced to marry, and a booming prostitution business. If I were to guess, I would guess that the rates pre-marital sex are still, however, much lower than you would find in Western countries for most Muslim Indonesians, especially those who live outside of urban areas, if simply because it's hard to ever be alone in a village, especially with a member of the opposite sex. Even in large cities, the police sometimes raid hotels or apartment buildings, looking for unmarried couples (even if this practice isn't legal by Indonesian law). Usually this is done to make a point; such as in around Valentine's Day (which is denounced by many Indonesian Muslim groups). Also many hotels in conservative areas require guests (even foreign tourists) traveling as couples to show a marriage certificate if they want to sleep in the same room. Women used to be subject to virginity tests if they wanted to join the police force and virginity has a lot of meaning for both young women and men. Even if a couple manages to have sex a few times outside of marriage, the fact that they will be heavily monitored by their community means that it probably can't happen regularly. Even couples who are not interested in having sex but simply may want to spend time alone with each other will often have a difficult time doing so because there is always the suspicion that they might have sex.

Of course in the West, teenagers are not supposed to be having sex either, but, of course this taboo more or less disappears for young men and women (for most communities). The fact that this taboo continues through adulthood for many Indonesians can perhaps intensify relationships and feelings. Young men and women may rush into marriage or may become more emotionally serious and invested in new partners and push for marriage earlier simply to get a chance to have sex or extended privacy with their partner. Because people are only expected to have sex with their jodoh, the need to find that person becomes more intense. If a person does have sex with someone, it can lead to greater feelings of guilt and responsibility.

Most Muslim Indonesians do not have the luxury of experimenting with multiple partners extensively before they marry, even emotionally because there is a fear that if you get too close to a lover you will end up being physical with them. To reference Twilight again, it's no wonder the film is popular here. If critics praised anything about the films it was their ability to capture intense sexual tension and the pain of longing for someone close to you physically but with whom you are not allowed to be intimate.

Divorce is allowed by Islam, and many people who marry young do divorce here. However, there is a stigma attached to the practice. Divorced people are more gossiped about (especially women), and are more judged in positions of power. While divorcing is an option, it isn't ideal. In many ways, it seems to have become even less acceptable for younger generations than older ones.

The social situation then for young people is that they want very much to fall totally and completely in love, but they must be extremely careful with whom they do that. Every relationship or romantic action they take is weighted by more consequences, which can add drama to even the slightest of romantic or sexual attractions.

Finally, no doubt there is the influence of modern Western pop-culture. Superhero movies, action movies, Star Wars, and other fantasy films and books are hugely popular here. Nearly every American blockbuster film features some kind of romantic subplot.

However, I am no expert on Indonesian history or anthropology. And Indonesia is too big and too diverse of a place to make blanket statements about love and marriage, which vary hugely historically and between the many cultures and tribes that live on these 17,000+ islands. But in my little village in West Java, it is hard not to see true love an as obsession. It is hard not to see true love battle with old ideas about marriage, society, and norms, and intelligent life plans. I am glad that most of my students do not have to marry someone they do not want marry. But I worry about the toxic disappointment of not finding a jodoh, of overlooking abusive behavior out of fear of being alone, of obsessing over relationships that may not be practical or accepted by their families or societies. True love had a revolution, but now it’s begun building its own brand of fascism bent on turning everyone into a hopeless heterosexual romantic who will marry just one person, no matter what they actually may want or what may be good for them.

"Your true love is not about who you get quickly, but it is something that God already has chosen and you will definitely receive"

“I made a promise to my mother not to marry until I have a house,” a single male teacher at my school told me. “But I had a dream about my jodoh. I saw her in my dream. I haven’t met her, but I know she is waiting for me. I know the place I will meet her. She is small and wears a hijab, but I couldn’t quite see her face.” He loves to sing the song “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden.

A few weeks later he admits that he likes a tall American friend of mine, with long, uncovered hair. “I never thought of dating a foreigner before,” he tells me with a shy smile.

Love. She is a fickle and cruel mistress.