Les is a colloquial Vietnamese term of identification for more globally common labels like lesbian, queer woman, or female homosexual. It is derived mainly from scholarship by Vietnamese-American ethnographer Natalie Newton, who is, at present, the only Western scholar to have centred Vietnam's les as her subject of investigation. Her articles have been frequently cited as reference or point of entry to issues concerning Vietnamese queer communities.
As a research topic, Vietnamese homosexualities have only recently garnered scholarly interest. A large majority of scholarship has been produced in the 2010s, not allowing much time for significant historical evolution or reinterpretations. Hence, besides Newton and a handful of other academics, scholarship on homosexuality and LGBT issues in Vietnam is limited. Consequently, research on the demographic subset of Vietnam's les is even rarer. However, the relative lack of sources might in fact productively and aptly explain the conditions of life and kinship for Vietnamese les.
In fact, scholarly neglect mirrors, and can even be attributed to, the marginalization of les due to the intertwined, compounded discriminations against both women and homosexuality.UNDP and USAID, Being LGBT in Asia: Vietnam Country Report (Bangkok: UNDP, 2014), 38. In her writing, Newton echoes the observation that the lack of direct scholarship on Vietnamese les strongly suggests that their agential forms of self-identification and community formation obliquely eludes homophobic interpellations and institutions. Therefore, instead of focusing on global liberal structures and discourses that similarly attempt to interpellate, define, and identify les, such as gay marriage laws, LGBT rights in Vietnam, or NGO activity, this entry will focus on les personal identifications and kinship structures, and how they differ from definitions imposed on them by governing macro-structures.
Governing structures and regimes
European modernity Nineteenth century European modernity, in the forms of French colonialism, European gender values, and medical discourses on sexology, has significantly impacted the present-day treatment of Vietnam's les. Further examination of the influence of these external regimes will provide useful historical insight and possible explanations for the current stigmatisation of female homosexuality in Vietnam.
French colonialism influenced and imposed changes in Vietnamese socio-cultural norms, thus elucidating how and why Vietnamese gender values changed over time. Frank Proschan historically explores French colonial constructions of Vietnamese gender. Through his analysis of gendered and sexually ambiguous figures like the eunuch and effeminate boys, Proschan argues that "the colonials were confounded by the Vietnamese sex/gender system," in which they perceived no distinguishable characteristics between men and women.Frank Proschan, “Eunuch Mandarins, Soldats Mamzelles, Effeminate Boys, and Graceless Women: French Colonial Constructions of Vietnamese Genders,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8, No. 4 (2002): 436. To the French, the Vietnamese did not conform to European gendered idea(l)s and naturalized, normative behaviour that was properly attributed to the respective genders.
According to French gender norms, "cultivated and civilized" women were expected to be "corseted and gowned", creating a seductive hourglass figure indicative of sexual fecundity.Proschan, “Eunuch,” 442. In contrast, Vietnamese women were deemed to be lacking in femininity because of their squarish build and narrow hips. Furthermore, they dressed like men, undertook "the most difficult of masculine labours", and had repulsive blackened teeth from chewing betel and smoking cigarettes.Proschan, “Eunuch,” 442, 444. Vietnamese men were, by comparison, seen as universally effeminate and lacking masculinity. By European standards, the Vietnamese were backwards and uncivilized people because of their indistinct and androgynous gender presentations.
In his examination of historical perceptions of male and female homosexuality in Vietnam, Richard Tran also explores the impact of nineteenth-century European medical discourses on the development of Vietnamese sex and gender values. Through extensive archival analysis, Tran shows how male and female homosexuality in Vietnam was synonymous with gender-crossing, or more specifically, the transgression of heterosexual gender norms through the manifestation of physical or psychological attributes of the opposite gender. Male effeminacy and female masculinity are examples of gender-crossing.
Tran argues that the figure of the 'gender-crosser' was constructed and pathologized by two factors: the Vietnamese state and late nineteenth-century European sexological discourses that permeated Vietnamese society during the period in question. This section will focus on the latter discourse.
According to Tran, nineteenth-century European sexology was defined by two overarching lexica: anatomical and psychiatric. Both contributed to the solidification of 'gender-crossing' discourse, which was pervasive in France. In the first instance, medical scientists would "search the body for visible proof" of functioning sexual genitalia (or lack thereof).Richard Tran, “An Epistemology of Gender Historical Notes on the Homosexual Body in Contemporary Vietnam, 1986-2005,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 9, No. 2 (Spring 2014): 11-12. Masculine women, effeminate men, and hermaphrodites were therefore deemed to have "blurred or indistinguishable" sexual features.Tran, “Epistemology,” 12.
In psychiatric discourse, anatomical and physiognomic abnormalities were mapped onto psychological deviances. A popular psychiatric theory was inversion, which claimed that weak mental faculties gave rise to homosexual desires.Tran, “Epistemology,” 12-3. Together, these European medical regimes pathologized and invalidated homosexualities. Most importantly, both paradigms appeared frequently in Vietnamese historical sources, likely through French colonial transmission, contextualizing the current marginalisation of Vietnamese les and queer communities.
As evidenced in Proschan and Tran's historical studies, European colonial, socio-cultural, and scientific modernity fundamentally altered gender norms in Vietnam. Prior to the arrival of European colonial modernity, "Vietnamese society did not show particular prejudice to people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identity."UNDP and USAID, Vietnam, 11. For more details on the history of homosexuality in Vietnam from the 14th Century, see UNDP and USAID, Vietnam, 11-15, and Natalie Newton, “Homosexuality and transgenderism in Vietnam,” in Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia, ed. Mark McLelland and Vera Mackie (New York: Routledge, 2014), 255, 264. In fact, sexual and gender pluralism in Vietnam was observed from as far back as the fourteenth century. In 1476, two women were even reportedly cohabiting and having sexual intercourse, with one of them miraculously becoming pregnant.UNDP and USAID, Vietnam, 12. The women were neither demonised nor criticized for their homosexual relationship.
Following Proschan and Tran's arguments, it is therefore unsurprising that "the very first discussion of homosexual practice... as a sin [in Vietnam]" came from French colonial literature of the late nineteenth century.UNDP and USAID, Vietnam, 13. European condemnation of 'alternative' local gender and sexual practices was subsequently inherited by Vietnamese authorities, and have persisted until the present day.
The Vietnamese state The Vietnamese state is another major institution that seeks, either directly or indirectly, to demarcate and delimit the lives of Vietnamese les and queer people. Likewise, a historical analysis of existing scholarship will uncover the controlling mechanisms of state and societal structures on Vietnam's queer communities.
Notably, both Tran and Newton discuss the Social Evils Campaign launched by the Vietnamese state. According to Tran, the campaign was initiated in 1996. It claimed to manage and ban "serious social evils" like "drugs, prostitution and pornography".Tran, “Epistemology,” 15. Spaces deemed to 'promote' these vices, such as karaoke bars and clubs, were raided and shut down.
Tran also mentions the State's Cultured Family Program, introduced during the Renovation Era, that promoted a paradoxical "modern propriety" among Vietnamese women, encouraging "a return to traditional gender norms", domesticity, nuclear family structure, and essentialist "feminine attributes".Tran, “Epistemology,” 14. These state-driven campaigns thereby produced the gender-crosser as a foil: a deviant, dangerous figure that threatened Vietnamese cultural values and society.
Like Tran, Newton argues that the Vietnamese state's social evils campaign "indirectly" targeted and regulated non-normative genders and sexualities.Newton, “Homosexuality,” 259. Although she agrees with Tran on the method and effects of such state-sanctioned campaigns, she differs in the campaign's chronological development. While Tran writes in the context of the mid-1990s, during Doi Moi, Newton claims that the State's social evils campaigns began "since the 1950s", during Vietnam's socialist era. There are other minor inconsistencies in Tran and Newton's accounts of the same event. While both include drug use and prostitution as state-defined social evils, Newton additionally mentions gambling, while Tran includes pornography in the list of vices.
Barring these minor discrepancies, what is most important to note is that while these campaigns did not directly target les or Vietnamese queer communities, coupled together, they sought to regulate the ideals of the body, gender and sexuality by promoting conventional gender roles and traditional family values. Furthermore, by punishing 'alternative' feminine embodiments and likening them to 'evils' through both campaigns, the State effectively warned against and curtailed the possibilities of being les in Vietnamese society.
The Vietnamese media The Vietnamese state also acts in collusion with other social structures like the media industry in order to spread an undesirable representation and reputation of les and queer people. Most notably, in 2002, the state-directed media in Vietnam declared homosexuality as a social evil, likening it to a moral pollutant, and broadcast calls for the "arrests of homosexual couples".UNDP and USAID, Vietnam, 17. Consequently, there was an increase in police raids of LGBT establishments, and the community became further isolated. The media is therefore a powerful tool that influences popular opinion and perpetuates negative perceptions of les and homosexuality in Vietnam.Similarities can also be found in the Thai context. See Megan Sinnott, Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-sex Relationships in Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 193-4. Ethnographer Megan Sinnott notes how the Thai state-controlled print media portrays homosexuality as “a psychological abnormality that reflects [and causes] social and national ills.” Television programs were also ordered by state officials to stop screening images of kathoey, gays and lesbians, in order to stymie the ‘negative’ influence of gender and sexual deviance.