Bissu

The Bugis people of South Sulawesi in Indonesia traditionally recognise five gender categories rather than the two most societies work with, and bissu occupy the position considered to combine masculine and feminine qualities into a single unified whole, a totality that neither ordinary men nor ordinary women are held to possess on their own. This combined nature is what traditionally qualified bissu to serve as ritual specialists mediating between the human community and the spirit world, presiding over ceremonies tied to agriculture, royal courts and life cycle events in Bugis indigenous cosmology.

Davies' ethnographic study of gender among the Bugis documents the keris, the ceremonial dagger widely associated with Indonesian court and ritual culture, as part of the ritual regalia bissu historically employed in their ceremonial functions, particularly in the courts of Bugis kingdoms such as Bone and Wajo, where bissu held recognised positions attending the ruler and presiding over palace rites. Becoming a bissu traditionally involved recognised signs identified in childhood, a perceived combination of gendered traits and behaviour the community read as marking the child for this particular ritual vocation rather than treating bissu status as a role anyone could simply choose to take up.

The number of practising bissu has declined sharply since the mid twentieth century, a decline Davies traces to several overlapping pressures: the loss of the Bugis royal courts that once gave bissu an institutional home and patronage, the spread of more orthodox interpretations of Islam in the region that regard the bissu gender category and its ritual functions with disapproval, and broader modern pressure toward a strict binary understanding of gender that has little room for a recognised fifth category.

A small number of practising bissu remain active in South Sulawesi today, continuing to perform ceremonial functions connected to agricultural rites and occasional traditional court ceremonies where communities and remaining royal families still request them, but the role now survives as a diminished remnant of what was once a recognised and respected institution across Bugis society rather than as a widely practised living tradition, and its long term continuation is genuinely uncertain. Some contemporary bissu and their advocates have sought renewed cultural recognition within Indonesia's wider conversations about traditional and indigenous heritage, presenting the role as a documented part of Bugis cultural history rather than as a challenge to religious orthodoxy.