Through my relationship with a tomboi in West Sumatra, I learned some of the ways in which my concept of “lesbian” was not the same as my partner’s, even though we were both, I thought, women-loving women. This article explores how tombois in West Sumatra both shape their identities from and resist local, national, and transnational narratives of gender and sexuality.

This description of 1990 West Sumatra shows something of how gender and sexuality are understood across Southeast Asia. The article presents identity as a negotiation between others’ expectations and an individual’s complex (socially-conditioned!) desires.