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Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan (SPP/ The School of Women’s Thought) is informed by decolonial approach, where they situate the Third World women as knowing subjects and engage in “epistemic disobedience” to the colonial, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal knowledge system. SPP disrupts not through a formal “school” but through guerrilla actions and interventions in various forms of knowledge exchange such as classes, lectures, workshops, and broadcasts.  

Launched by women in the field of arts and culture, SPP utilises the potentials of internet-based technology to traverse physical distance in the Indonesian archipelago and organise women living in the different islands as well as the Indonesian diaspora across the globe. SPP foregrounds women as valid producers of knowledge, challenging the Eurocentric knowledge system and the exclusion of women from local knowledge institutions, such as the state, customs, and religion. 

This manifesto was written in February 2022 by Fathimah Fildzah Izzati, Intan Paramaditha, Lisabona Rahman, Ni Putu Dewi Kharisma Michellia, and Raisa Kamila as part of the collective work in Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan, and it was translated into English by Rara Rizal and Syarafina Vidyadhana.

To imagine a more just future is to question and reimagine the concept of Family. As women born into educated middle class families—the majority of which are Muslims, raised or went to school in Java—we grew up with the idea of Family as a symbol of the state and its instrument of oppression. We envision a future built upon collectivity, solidarity, and care to break through capitalist, patriarchal, and heteronormative confines.

For more than thirty years, the authoritarian regime in Indonesia positioned the president as a Father figure for his people—often depicted as “immature,” “in need of guidance,” and “easily provoked.” The military regime created a deliberate distinction between the Mother, painted as the “Father’s companion” and “homemaker,” and the Political Women. We grew up hearing slanderous stories about the communist women—monsters and whores—who castrated military men, stories that were supposed to legitimize mass killings and imprisoning leftists without trials. It was a dark time where women were domesticated, dictated, and even institutionalized through a series of state regulations.

Post-dictatorship, Family is now a hot commodity. The strengthening of religious conservatism has resulted in restrictions on women’s movement and the demonization of sexual minority groups, all in the name of Family. There are similarities between the idealized image of a secular family in the authoritarian era and a perfect family according to the conservative Muslim: middle-class, consisting of a mother, a father, and their children (it used to be restricted to two children only, now it depends on “Allah’s blessing”), productive, patriarchal, Javanese. Many of our friends in East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, or Papua cannot relate to this idealized Mother figure: back then in kebaya, and now in a hijab.

As a feminist collective, we are actively challenging the many versions of Family shoved down our throats, but we reject the simplistic dichotomy of family domination vs individual struggle. In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House, Nora rejects the patriarchal values of the European bourgeois family by fighting alone. We recall Indonesian feminist Marianne Katoppo’s argument that the Asian women’s resistance should not imitate that of the European bourgeoisie, but instead be compassionate and free, drawing inspiration from the fight for worker’s liberation. Had Nora come from Minangkabau, she would have had by her side an army of women—her Amak, Akak, Uni, Angah, Mak Uo, Etek Enek—to step in and put Torvald in his place. There is a sense of collective struggle that characterizes the Indonesian family, and we recognize its potential without romanticizing it.

From our experience in Indonesia, we see several problems in the dominant family model. In the midst of the strengthening of individual neoliberal ideas, families are increasingly detaching themselves from important issues in society, when in fact, these issues are shaping and defining the way of life and perspective of existing nuclear families.

The consumptive lifestyle has become what these families are most familiar with, and as a consequence, relationships are reduced to purely transactional. Those who take up the role of breadwinners automatically become the authority figure, except when they are women or queer people. Despite being the backbone of their families, many women and queer people are disowned and even exiled from their own families solely for their “different” sexuality, ideology, or physical condition.

Difference is a burden to be avoided at all times. The practice of getting rid of those who are different is compounded by individualism. Those who are different are simply wrong, and they alone must suffer the consequences. The neoliberal creed goes, “If you are poor, it’s because you don’t work hard enough”, and the same rule applies to those who are labelled different in the family: “If you are different, the choice is to conform or leave.”

As women, we were taught to follow the strict blueprint of “Born-study-work-get married-have children-take care of husband-die.” It should always be like that. Those who desire a different pattern are dismissed and no longer entitled to family support.

Let us abandon such a Family.

What if we start by imagining? If we had the power to turn our imaginations into reality, what kind of reality would we pursue?

We start by refusing to use the word “pursue”, as in “pursue your goal” since it implies that the goal itself has been predefined for us by some higher authority and that our sole task was to run towards it. In this reality, we refuse to adhere to any framework where the path had been set for us in advance. We want to aspire to something that does not yet exist, something better because it is what we want for ourselves. We will not accept anything that is handed to us by a higher authority, as doing so would only tighten its grip on us.

We imagine a family of people who look after, protect, and support each other. This family need not be defined by heteronormative genealogy, but by love and solidarity. In this family, human beings are diverse and free. This is a family that flourishes not only through bodily lineage or common heritage, whether it was property or customs or identity. In our imaginary family, no one should be excluded or marginalized. We imagine a family formed by the will and consciousness to come together. This family is a space that is open and accepting, nurtured by the desire to love one another and to eliminate oppression, breaking the boundaries of class, gender expression, race, ethnicity, and nationality.

In this family, we speak and exchange thoughts and feelings in a plural language: words, tastes, motions, colours, shapes, and sounds. Working and creating in this family are something we value equally as a labour of thoughts and feelings without distinguishing which one is higher and lower according to the castes applied, such as high vs low art, works in public vs private spaces, productive vs reproductive work.

What binds these family members together is the acknowledgement of self-sovereignty and the desire to connect and care, based on love for fellow human beings and the universe. In our imagined family, responsibilities and work are fairly shared, with sensitivity to our varying abilities and desires.

The pandemic has introduced a new level of uncertainty, but our collective solidarity has convinced us that it is necessary, perhaps now more than ever, to start imagining a different way of looking at Family.

As in times of war, conflict, and natural disasters, the pandemic has forced people to seek shelter. Some will have the comfort of being around family members who protect and care for each other, but for many, this is a luxury they cannot afford. Grief, hunger, and poverty feel even more suffocating when you are trapped in a toxic family situation. Every now and then, films and novels come up with an ostensibly promising solution to this problem: to dissent, escape, and then go on an adventure to find freedom. But to us, such a promise focuses only on our individual struggles, dismissing the importance of empathy and solidarity with other people experiencing similar problems.

Uncertainty is a ubiquitous word, especially at a time when technology seems to be developing too fast. This uncertainty is present in the every day: from an increasingly vulnerable nature to the climate crisis due to the exploitation and consumption cycle of global capitalism; the lure of flexible work with uncertain wages; or even the decision not to have children because we are not sure that we can leave a better world for them. The pandemic has shown us that solidarity is key to dealing with this “uncertainty”.

Reflecting on our experience during the pandemic and the global political and economic situation today, we view that we need to create a “safety net” for all of us. And as we continue to demand the state to provide that safety net for us, we should start creating one for ourselves. The principles of solidarity, inclusivity, empathy, and equality or egalitarian treatment, as well as the democratization of basic rights are what we need in a family. The question then becomes: are these practices too much for us to cultivate, even in our smallest collective?

The family, an intimate space between at least two persons, has long been imposed with rules and norms by some higher authority who thinks it knows everything. Those in power keep changing the rules, making the idea of a perfect family forever elusive—unattainable. We want to take a moment not only to challenge this notion, but also to imagine an intimate space that allows the people in it to continue to grow, beyond the barriers imposed by state, religious, colonial, and capitalist authorities.

Through this manifesto, we are proposing a practice of living together, without violence, without marginalizing people who are deemed different. A conscious practice of care and love, characterized by openness and willingness to adapt, determined by consensus among those who are willing to take part in it. Everyone involved must have authority over themselves, and believe that a more just future for humans and the universe is something we must absolutely fight for together.

There is no panacea for making this dream come true, nor is there a shortcut to getting there. We must take the first step together, hand in hand.

First published in “Manual for Togetherness,” a manual written collectively by various people and groups, sharing proposals on how we may live together in the future, organised by Palestinian author Adania Shibli.

The Internationalist Archive