Dorce Gamalama, an Indonesian woman with curly black hair pinned up, wears a yellow beaded dress with a matching necklace, earrings, rings, and bracelets.
“As a young boy my feelings were too soft and gentle. I was easily touched [emotionally]. My body language was very feminine. Everyone could see it. I preferred mixing and playing with girls. I felt like we shared the same soul whenever I socialized with them. I had their thoughts, feelings and soul. But unfortunately, those things were trapped in the body of a boy.” - Dorce Gamalama
Dubbed by many “The Oprah of Indonesia”, Dorce Gamalama rose from the ashes of a difficult childhood to become one of the most notable and beloved transgender icons in her home country. Despite the challenges of living in a nation with limited LGBTQ rights, Dorce met any resistance and curiosity to her transition with humor and wit, and persevered to live as her true self while also promoting a life of kindness and generosity. Dorce’s integral role in the Indonesian television industry helped shed light on trans visibility in an otherwise predominantly religious and conservative country and shifted many Indonesian people’s perceptions towards transgender people on the whole.
Dorce Gamalama was born in Solok, West Sumatra, Indonesia, on July 21st, 1963. Her mother, Dalifah, was a rice seller who tragically died of unknown causes when Dorce was only three months old. Dorce’s father, Achmad, a painter and soldier, left home just two months later, only to be found dead by the time that Dorce turned one, leaving her completely orphaned. Dorce then began being raised by her grandmother, Darama, who introduced her to music while Dorce was still quite young. When she was five years old, Dorce was then moved to Jakarta to live with her aunt, Dalima. Dorce, who had already deeply fallen in love with music thanks to her grandmother, began singing with a group called the Bambang Brothers (BamBros) but by age seven had also started working several menial jobs around the city, peddling newspapers, washing dishes, and selling cakes. Dorce noted that it was at around this time period in her life when she first experienced gender dysphoria, when at age seven she began to sense a feeling of imprisonment in her own body, ignited by the first time she wore a dress on stage playing the role of a grandmother in an Indonesian Independence Day school play.
In her teenage years, Dorce appeared on stage more and more frequently in women's clothing, and she left the Bambang Bros to instead join a trans women-led band called the Fantastic Dolls. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, the Fantastic Dolls, led by Ibu Myrna, was a popular performance group in Indonesia that consisted of “waria'' women, which in Indonesian, combines the terms “wanita” (woman) and “pria” (man) and roughly translates to “male transvestite”. At that time the “waria'' term was often (albeit controversially) used as the word for what would today be considered transgender women. Beginning in the late 1960s, far before the modern LGBTQ movement would begin in Indonesia, transgender women began carving a space out for themselves in society by forming these performance groups. These troupes ultimately shaped into an important foundation for the trans movement in Indonesia, which in the late ‘60s led to the formation of Himpunan Wadam Djakarta (the Jakarta Wadam Association or HIWAD), the first official trans women’s organization in the country. During this formative time, Dorce took on what would become her first stage name, Dorce Ashadi, which she would later change to Dorce Gamalama. Performing with the Dolls landed Dorce her first national TV appearance in 1989, for the 27th anniversary celebration of TVRI, the oldest national public TV network in Indonesia.
In 1983, Dorce became a pioneer when she underwent gender affirmation surgery in the port city of Surabaya. Professor Djohansjah Marzoeki, who oversaw and performed the surgery, stated that alongside him, a team consisting of obstetricians, geneticists, psychiatrists, psychologists and others worked to ensure that Dorce was “not pretending or imitating, but [that it was] a desire that [was] driven from her, by her determination which [was] complete.” While this was not the first time that gender affirmation surgery was performed in Indonesia, the large public spotlight that Dorce commanded helped shift the views of many people. After she underwent surgery, Dorce often met public curiosity about her body with a joke or a pun. She would often tell people that she had “no regrets, even if my ‘bird’ is cut off” or recant to cisgender women, “you (cis women) might be able to have children, but I can give pleasure.”
A couple years later, Dorce took things even further when in 1986 she utilized her support from medical experts to seek legal recognition of her new gender identity. Sitting alongside her surgeon, she publicly declared on TV: “I want to be recognized by the state.” Within the year, Dorce had won the legal battle and her gender was officially recognized. Though Dorce was not the first Indonesian trans woman to successfully achieve medical and legal transition in Indonesia (Vivian Rubiyanti was in 1973), Dorce was the first who also emphasized the religious aspect of her transition. Dorce, who was particularly devout, sought the support of Islamic scholars to help challenge those that were religiously antagonistic to her transition. For Dorce, this was an integral part of her transition, given the key role that Islam plays within the Indonesian legal system, especially with regard to marriage law. As part of her religious transformation, in both 1990 and 1991, Dorce went on Hajj to Mecca, and upon returning from the trip, as if reaching new heights in the state of her transition, declared: “I was reborn.”
During her prime, Dorce Gamalama had a prolific and widespread career across numerous media. She starred in several films, including Dorce Sok Akrab (Dorce Up Close, 1989) and Dorce Ketemu Jodoh (Dorce Meets Her Match, 1990) which became blockbusters and helped her gain celebrity status in Indonesian pop culture. She previously had also been involved in a groundbreaking film called Mereka Memang Ada (1982), which featured trans women in the cast and highlighted the experiences of trans women in Indonesia. The film’s soundtrack was released on cassette, and Dorce contributed two songs of her own to the tape. Throughout the ‘90s, Dorce’s face graced the small screen time and again, as she became a recurring character on several soap operas and talk shows. She also maintained a successful music career, setting an Indonesian music record by releasing a whopping nine albums within five months.
In 2005, Dorce co-wrote her autobiography alongside FX Rudy Gunawan, entitled Aku Perempuan: Jalan Berliku Seorang Dorce Gamalama (I am a Woman: The Winding Path of Dorce Gamalama). In it, Dorce boldly insisted that she had always been a woman, rather than a “waria”. She also revealed in the book that when she was twenty-three years old she married a man, whom she called “Mr. X”, but that the marriage unfortunately lasted for only two years. Also in 2005, Dorce landed her own TV series, a mid-morning talk show fittingly called The Dorce Show. The show was a major success, bringing Dorce’s presence regularly into the households of many Indonesians. Her warm, inviting and regular appearance in the homes of many garnered her the nickname ‘Bunda Dorce’, meaning ‘Mother Dorce’, a moniker with which she went by frequently thereafter.
Gamalama lived up to this new nickname in more ways than one. In addition to maintaining her exhaustive media career, Dorce kept quite busy with acts of charity, and she spent a lot of time raising funds for hundreds of orphaned children in Indonesia as well as in Palestine and Syria. She also purchased and owned several orphanages of her own which in total cared for thousands of children, and eventually she adopted three children and six grandchildren herself. She additionally donated to and oversaw the construction of several Islamic boarding schools and mosques and used her own personal residences as spaces where local women’s support groups could gather.
The Dorce Show, which was at one point nominated for best talk show in Indonesia, ran for four years until May 12th, 2009, when Dorce Gamalama announced that her series had been canceled. The cancellation of Dorce’s show coincided with the timing of the 2009 election in Indonesia, during which significant religious fundamentalist and anti-LGBT populist movements rose to power. Any progress made by the Indonesian LGBTQ+ community began to experience backlash, and queer people there more frequently endured unpredictable animosity and became the targets of religious fundamentalists. Dorce’s own personal life often became the subject of discussion by those promoting conservative interpretations of Islam, and despite all of her achievements in the country as both a performer and devout Muslim woman, Dorce’s public character suffered and she gradually dimmed from the public sphere.
Dorce’s later years were marked by a mix of odd jobs and continual health decline. She suffered from Type 2 diabetes and was debilitated by continuous bouts with kidney stones, but she nevertheless continued working, at one point starting her own floral design business in Bekasi and later on briefly working as a chauffeur for fellow celebrity Raffi Ahmad and his wife, Nagita Slavina. Dorce resigned from the chauffeur job after only one week, citing medical reasons, and declined monetary compensation from Ahmad for her work. Instead, Ahmad gifted her a video camera, urging Dorce to use it to become a Youtube star.
Dorce’s health continued to decline, and she reportedly was hesitant about going through surgery to remove her kidney stones, instead opting for more traditional medicinal remedies, such as drinking holy water from the Zamzam Well in Mecca and making simple dietary changes. While fasting during Ramadan in 2021, Dorce fell ill from hypertension and she began to meticulously plan out the details of her impending Islamic funeral, picking out everything from the burial plot site to the kafan shroud (traditional burial wrapping cloth). On Wednesday, February 16th, 2022 Dorce ultimately passed away at age 58 in South Jakarta, having been diagnosed with COVID-19 three weeks prior. The diagnosis, paired with Dorce’s numerous other underlying health conditions, increased the severity of complications associated with the virus.
Dorce’s untimely death reignited her name in the public sphere, particularly because shortly before her passing she declared in an interview: “[I would like to be buried] as I am now. Because after my surgery, I have a female genitalia, so women should bathe me, and bathe [and bury] me as a woman.” Dorce also added, however, that because she was a devout Muslim, the decision would ultimately lie in the hands of the country’s Islamic leaders. Dorce’s announcement and subsequent death sparked a controversial debate within Indonesia, with multiple prominent figureheads taking opposing sides. Taufik Damas, for one, a scholar affiliated with the country’s biggest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama, argued to no avail that gender identity was a ‘personal choice’ and that Dorce should be identified as a woman according to her own wishes. On the flipside, the Indonesia Ulema Council (MUI), the country’s top Islamic scholarly body, released a statement that the body of a trans person must always be buried according to their gender assigned at birth. As a result, and despite her final wishes, Dorce’s family and religious leaders decided that she would be bathed and buried as a man.
Despite this tragic and complicated ending to the otherwise joyous and generous life of Dorce Gamalama, the public reaction to Dorce’s life after her passing was full of reverence for the groundbreaking star. Despite the fact that Dorce never considered herself an activist and was not particularly enmeshed in the Indonesian transgender community, her position as a prominent celebrity who happened to be transgender rendered her a key role model nonetheless for countless young gender and sexual minorities living in Indonesia, many of whom grew up with Dorce on their family’s television screens. Despite her gender nonconformity, Dorce’s generally positive representation in Indonesian mainstream media allowed her to unintentionally help desensitize issues of gender and sexual diversity for many in what is a deeply religious and conservative country with a troubling track record towards the treatment of LGBTQ people.
According to Carahanna Marianne Sam, a trans campaign manager at an NGO in South Jakarta, Gamalama made a huge impact simply by being visible: “I hope we can have more Dorce Gamalamas in Indonesia. She’s still a hero. Just by being out there and existing, she already has done more than half of what the rest of us have done.” By staunchly pushing for the right to live as her true self and by openly pursuing activities that brought her joy in life and then spreading that joy to others, Dorce Gamalama, even after her death, will continue to serve as a Bunda for generations to come.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Davies, Matt. Indonesia's War Over Aceh: Last Stand on Mecca's Porch. New York, Routledge, 2006.
Dalidjo, Nurdiyansah. “Remembering Bunda Dorce – Indonesia’s First Trans Superstar.” Queer Indonesia Archive, 2022, February 24. https://qiarchive.org/en/remembering-bunda-dorce
Hegarty, Benjamin. The Made-Up State: Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia. New York, Cornell University Press, 2022.
Marzuki, Peter Mahmud. An Introduction to Indonesian Law. Malang City, Setara Press, 2012.
Murtagh, Ben. Genders and Sexualities in Indonesian Cinema: Constructing Gay, Lesbi and Waria Identities on Screen. New York, Routledge, 2013.
Oetomo, Dédé. “Dorce Gamalama: an accidental role model for gender and sexual minorities in Indonesia.” The University Of Melbourne, 2022, March 1. https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au/dorce-gamalama-an-accidental-role-model-for-gender-and-sexual-minorities-in-indonesia/
Wakefield, Lily. “Trailblazing Trans Woman Dorce Gamalama Buried ‘As A Man’ After Family Ignored Her Last Wishes.” Pink News, 2022, February 17. https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/02/17/dorce-gamalama-death-trans-indonesia-covid19/