The Bissu: The Bugis Priests Who Belong to All Five Genders
Long before the modern world began debating gender, the Bugis people of South Sulawesi held a worldview that recognised five genders — and placed at its spiritual centre a revered figure who belongs to all of them at once: the bissu. This is one of the most remarkable aspects of Bugis culture, and it is woven directly into the Lontara manuscripts and the La Galigo epic.
Five genders, one harmony
Traditional Bugis society describes gender on a spectrum of five categories: oroané (roughly, cisgender men), makkunrai (cisgender women), calalai (people assigned female who take on masculine roles), calabai (people assigned male who take on feminine roles), and the bissu. These concepts are not about sexual orientation; they are about social and spiritual roles. Crucially, Bugis belief holds that all five must coexist in balance for the world to remain in harmony.
These categories are old — scholars trace them back more than six centuries, to a pre-Islamic Indonesia. They appear in the ancient La Galigo epic itself, which is part of why researchers see them as central to the Bugis worldview rather than a marginal practice.
Who the bissu are
The bissu are often described as "gender-transcendent" or "meta-gender" — understood to embody male, female, mortal, and divine all combined into a single whole. Some bissu are intersex, but not all; many simply present with an androgynous appearance. What unites them is their role, not their biology.
As priests and ritual specialists, the bissu act as intermediaries between humans and the spirit world. They give blessings, offer guidance, and traditionally guarded sacred royal regalia. In the old Bugis kingdoms they lived close to the courts and served as advisers to rulers; a king's legitimacy was bound up with the bissu who protected the sacred heirlooms.
The mappalili rice ritual
One of the bissu's most important duties is the mappalili ceremony, performed to open the rice-planting season. This shamanic ritual, tied to the monsoon cycle, is meant to ensure a bountiful harvest — a reminder that the bissu's role was never only courtly but deeply connected to the agricultural life of ordinary communities.
A tradition under pressure
The bissu's fortunes changed dramatically over the last century. After Indonesian independence, the old kingdoms were absorbed into the republic and the bissu lost their royal patrons. During a regional Islamic rebellion in the mid-20th century, bissu were persecuted, accused of practising un-Islamic rituals; many were forced into hiding or to live as conventional men. Later political eras continued to marginalise them.
Today their numbers have fallen sharply, and some communities now substitute calalai or calabai in rituals that bissu once led. Yet the tradition has not vanished. In villages such as Segeri, bissu continue their monthly observances and ceremonial duties, and cultural authorities in South Sulawesi have worked to preserve and showcase the tradition at festivals. The bissu increasingly frame their fight not as a modern identity-rights campaign but as the defence of an Indigenous Bugis heritage — guardians of a tradition recorded in the very script this site is about.
The five-gender system and the bissu are documented in the La Galigo epic. Read more in our guide to La Galigo.