Indonesia: Mama Yuli: The trans women's leader no-one messes with

[TomSea]

Mama Yuli: The trans women's leader no-one messes with
By Rebecca Henschke BBC News, Jakarta
    14 March 2017

Mama Yuli is the leader and protector of Indonesia's transgender women - or Waria, as they are known. Though revered on some of Indonesia's thousands of islands, Waria are increasingly persecuted elsewhere, as a stricter type of Islam takes root. And this makes Mama Yuli's job a lot harder.

The second time I met Mama Yuli she told me she had killed someone once. Knifed him.

I scanned the heavily made-up face carefully, the eyes rimmed by fake eyelashes and bright red-painted lips, to see if she was teasing me. I decided she wasn't.

Mama Yuli - Yulianus Rettoblaut, to use her full name - grew up in a remote village on the island of Papua, in the east of Indonesia. It was a lonely place to be when, at the age of 11, she started to realise she wasn't straight.

Continued: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39259899