Introduction
Towards the end of August 2025, protesters swarmed into the streets of major cities across the country following a blatant display of inappropriate behaviour by some members of parliament.
The House of Representatives (DPR) had just recently approved a controversial package of benefits and perks for lawmakers that confound regular, middle-class Indonesians. These include stratospheric housing allowances, travel benefits and salary boosts, at
Some lawmakers’ behaviours – seen as arrogant and tone-deaf – ignited the aforementioned wave of demonstrations that quickly grew into one of the largest in the post-Reformasi era. Amid students hoisting hand-painted ba
State’s Response
The establishment’s response to this air of discontent, however, fell short of satisfactory, choosing to follow a familiar script instead of earnestly acknowledging the protesters’ demand.
In a televised speech accompanied by elites of political parties, President Prabowo Subianto instead cast the protests as an attempt to destabilise the country and an act of terrorism, especially after violence erupted. Reinforcing this is the claim by the ex-chief of the national intelligence body, Abdullah Mahmud Hendropriyono, who stated that the whole drama was orchestrated by a foreign provocateur.
Such allegations reframe these protests less as an expression of the public’s dissatisfaction with the government’s policies and performance and more a security threat.
Prabowo himself has had a penchant for conjuring the spectre of foreign agents attempting to stir chaos in Indonesia, and thus, in this regard, his latest statements are only a rehash of his old playbook that was prominent in previous, failed presidential bids.
More recently, during the 2020 Omnibus Law protests, when students and workers demanded labour protections, Prabowo as then defence minister claimed that “foreign provocateurs” had stirred unrest.
This tactic is also employed by the police. Papua’s mass demonstrations in 2019 were dismissed as the product of international meddling, rather than the voicing out of long-standing local grievances.
In making such claims, the state is deliberately portraying itself as a rational masculine guardian while, at the same time, painting the people as feminised dependents, too emotional and naive to act with reason or agency.
This is easily done because states are never gender-neutral; they rely on the patriarchal traits of protection and dependency to legitimise their authority. In the above context, the Indonesian state falls perfectly into this patriarchal stereotype, believing itself to be the sole masculine actor tasked to shield its feminised citizens from supposed foreign seduction.
This is because in cultural construction, rationality has always been associated with masculinity, while emotion with femininity. By invoking the image of “foreign agents”, the government masculinises itself as the rational defender, while feminising the people as emotional, impressionable and easily manipulated.
This suggests that the state believes itself to possess a hypermasculine identity. The elites embody the role of a “strong father” who claims to know best, treating his “citizens” as fragile dependents. In this regard, the protests, rather than an exercise of democratic rights, were reshaped into a stage for the state to demonstrate its masculine authority.
From Feminisation to Delegitimisation
This feminisation of the citizens’ protest has a direct political effect by serving as a mechanism for dissent delegitimisation.
When protesters are portrayed as irrational, naive and easily manipulated – traits stereotypically coded as feminine – their demands are dismissed as unworthy of serious engagement. That way, demonstrations are no longer seen as rational critiques of government policy but are instead reframed as hysterical outbursts, childish tantrums or dangerous disruptions.
The securitisation theory helps clarify how this reframing operates.
Through speech acts, political leaders can transform an ordinary democratic expression into an existential threat. In the above context, the elites have framed the protests as foreign-orchestrated and thus securitised these acts of dissent. Once securitised, these protests are shifted from the realm of democratic politics to the domain of national security. This move justifies extraordinary countermeasures such as heavy policing, mass arrests and even surveillance, some if not all of which have been pursued by the state following the August protests.
In other words, dialogue is replaced by disciplinary control, and coercion becomes a legitimate tool to suppress the crowd.
What makes this securitisation gendered is that repression itself is framed as an act of care. If citizens are feminised dependents, then disciplining them is not a form of abuse but a paternal duty.
When security forces cracked down on the August protests, the official line was that the officers were restoring order and trying to protect the people from manipulation. Coercive force was framed as a necessity, and delegitimisation as patriotism.
In this sense, hypermasculinity and securitisation work hand in hand. Hypermasculinity constructs the state as the rational father, while securitisation justifies his discipline. Together, they subvert democracy. Citizen protest becomes a disciplinary problem, and they also become subjects to be managed rather than participants to be heard.
Political Consequences of Hypermasculinity
This narrative is not just rhetoric; it is performative. The concept of performativity demonstrates how repeated discursive acts shape and create political reality.
Each time the elites claim that demonstrations are foreign-orchestrated, they are not merely describing events but also constructing identities. The state is re-created as the rational masculine protector, and citizens are re-created as feminised dependents. Repetition naturalises this division until it feels like common sense and normal.
The impact of this hypermasculine framing on Indonesian politics is profound. One of the most visible effects is the erosion of accountability. When every wave of protest is dismissed as the work of malicious outsiders, the government can conveniently avoid facing its own failures. Economic inequality, corruption scandals and even environmental degradation are not seen as the results of policy missteps but reframed as problems imported from beyond Indonesia’s borders.
This narrative shields the elites from scrutiny, slowly hollowing out democratic accountability. A political system that consistently evades responsibility in this way becomes less responsive to its citizens, leaving the public with fewer channels to demand change.
Another con
Over time, these responses harden into institutional practices. Security forces grow accustomed to treating demonstrations not as democratic participation but as threats to be contained. The result is a shrinking civic space, where the fear of repression discourages citizens from expressing their views openly, further weakening Indonesia’s democratic character.
The continual feminisation of dissent also weakens the civil society in general. When citizens are cast as irrational dependents, their organisations – whether youth groups, feminist networks or grassroots movements – are denied legitimacy. Their critiques are not considered on their merits but are cast aside because of who they are perceived to be.
This undermines political pluralism, narrows the space for debate and reduces the quality of the democratic system. Instead of being valued as part of democratic agents, civil society actors are treated as irritants to be managed.
Conclusion Indonesia’s protests in 2025 are an apparent demand from citizens
