Recognising shadows: masculinism, resistance, and recognition in Vietnam

Abstract

Pride parades, LGBT rights demonstrations, and revisions to the Marriage and Family Law highlight the extent to which norms and values related to gender, sexuality, marriage, and the family have recently been challenged in Vietnam. They also illuminate the gendered power relations being played out in the socio-cultural context of Vietnam, and thus open up for a more in-depth consideration of the ways in which LGBT people have experienced and resisted these relations in everyday life. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Vietnam's two largest cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, in 2012, this article discusses the relations between these power relations, the dominant Vietnamese discourse of masculinity, or masculinism, and the politics of recognition. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which Vietnamese gay men have resisted heteronormative normalising practices in their search for the recognition of self and others. Utilising the local term bóng, or ‘shadow’, the article highlights the ways in which light and shadow can be used metaphorically to understand gay men's struggles for the recognition of self and others in contemporary Vietnam.