A Role Under Pressure From Religious and Political Change

The number of practising bissu has declined sharply since the mid twentieth century, a decline Davies traces to several overlapping pressures: the loss of the Bugis royal courts that once gave bissu an institutional home and patronage, the spread of more orthodox interpretations of Islam in the region that regard the bissu gender category and its ritual functions with disapproval, and broader modern pressure toward a strict binary understanding of gender that has little room for a recognised fifth category.

A small number of practising bissu remain active in South Sulawesi today, continuing to perform ceremonial functions connected to agricultural rites and occasional traditional court ceremonies where communities and remaining royal families still request them, but the role now survives as a diminished remnant of what was once a recognised and respected institution across Bugis society rather than as a widely practised living tradition, and its long term continuation is genuinely uncertain. Some contemporary bissu and their advocates have sought renewed cultural recognition within Indonesia's wider conversations about traditional and indigenous heritage, presenting the role as a documented part of Bugis cultural history rather than as a challenge to religious orthodoxy.