With Indonesia’s current climate, many forms of expression and identities are often misrepresented or even demonised. However, it does not stop and even encourages people to push more progressive ideas and discussions into the public space. In light of this, enters Humane Magazine, an independent digital media that centres on Indonesian LGBTIQ community.

According to founder Felix Furler, Humane Magazine is a media that “emphasises the importance of storytelling and representation of gender and sexuality diversity.” Through the lens of the local LGBTIQ community, the media would define and describe the contributions made by Indonesian queer individuals to the local culture.

At first, Felix came up with Humane as a project in his third year in university. “Back then, I thought that as a queer individual, I need an Indonesian-speaking media that represents queer individuals who talk about their queerness, gender diversity, or sexual minority groups,” he recounted. “Yes, there were other queer media too in Indonesia, but they were here before I was born.”

He added that he wished the presence of Humane Magazine would open a safe space for gender and sexual minorities in media as he found these people to be misrepresented in the mainstream media too often. He wanted Humane to be a media that speaks about the fact that LGBTIQ individual do create, too. The media has released six issues of online publication to date.