Mbak Bro!

Most of my students, both middle school and university, fear speaking English because they are worried about making grammatical mistakes. Every time my students say this, I always try to express that their grammatical mistakes are okay. As long as I understand the meaning, mistakes are all right. The point is communication. If they can communicate, I don’t care if they misuse the present perfect progressive tense. To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure what that tense is trying to describe.

I try to practice what I preach. I always intentionally, and unintentionally, make mistakes when I speak Indonesian with my students. To err is human. Peace Corps suggested that making these mistakes makes us seem more human to our American-glorifying students, which should in theory make them more comfortable being human with us.

The one instance I surprised myself embracing my humanness was when I responded to “Mas,” which is the identifying term for male in Java. My hair has always been short in this country. It’s just too hot to keep it long. Since having short hair isn’t common in Indonesia, especially in the village, people often mistake me for a boy. I usually just correct them and explain that Americans have flexible style options for both men and women. They usually apologize and seem super embarrassed once I correct them. Not a big deal.

But that one instance I responded to “Mas” was a bit confusing for me. Indonesia has pretty strict gender roles. I’m feminine, but I don’t really fit in. Maybe my not fitting in has allowed me to float around in terms of gender roles. I can be feminine and masculine at the same time. My close Indonesian friends seem to understand this, too, because they call me “Mbak Bro.” Mbak is the identifying term for female in Java. The original term of endearment is “Mas Bro,” which roughly translates to “dude” or “boss.” But because I’m female they’ve tried to integrate my floating personality into the term. In my opinion, it makes the endearment so much more endearing.

As soon as I realized I just responded when someone called out “Mas,” my first thought was:

“What the fuck is wrong with me? Who am I?”

But then I realized that those people don’t mean to disrespect or judge me for having short hair as a female. They are just trying to communicate. And since I want to practice what I preach to my students, I’m okay responding to that term.