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.
[1] 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.
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.
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.
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.
As evidenced in Proschan and Tran's historical studies, European colonial, socio-cultural, and scientific modernity fundamentally altered gender norms in Vietnam.
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.
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.
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.
"[16] This depiction of sexual impulsiveness is achieved through the image of the "trendy les", a hedonistic gold-digger who avoids the responsibilities of heterosexual marriage and child-bearing in favour of a "hyper-consumer lifestyle".
[16] In Vietnamese media, female (homo)sexual decadence is therefore portrayed through stories of les spending late nights in clubs and bars, exposed to the corrupting influence of drugs, prostitution, and gambling.
In a five-part column published in the Ho Chi Minh City's Police paper from December 1988 to August 1989, Ms. Ngoc Ha murders her ex-girlfriend in a fit of rage after she breaks up with her.
[19] Recalling Tran's analysis of the 'gender-crossing' discourse around Vietnamese homosexualities, the author concludes that parents who dress their girls as boys and vice versa will result in them growing up to commit murder like Ms. Ngoc Ha.
[21] Negative and inaccurate representations of les and Vietnam's wider queer communities, perpetrated by overarching governing structures like the state, media, and colonial modernity, have tangible effects on body and mind.
Due to unsafe school environments, LGBT people are often denied educational prospects, consequently diminishing their chances of pursuing professional careers to make a living for themselves.
The lack of educational and professional qualifications results in poverty and drives LGBT people to sex work, which, although viable as a profession, "further predisposes them to abuse, exploitation, and marginalization by society.
[26] Horton shows how pervasive instances of misrecognition and stigmatisation result in a prevalence of suicide and mental health issues among Vietnam's les and queer youth, who feel alone, invisible, without a community to turn to for assistance or reprieve.
Unlike globally translatable, and hence accessible, labels like 'LGBT' or 'lesbian', Newton writes that gioi tinh "is more complex than either "gender" or "sexual orientation", and holds contradictory, "multiple meanings".
Most importantly, both individual and community identities are paramount in granting les agency and kinship in the face of stigmatisation and misrecognition by overarching structures of governance.
To provide exegesis for her original theorization, Newton surveys existing literature on queer visibility and gendered space, but draws most importantly from ethnographic fieldwork that she conducted on Saigon's les community from 2006 to 2010.
Newton argues that, "in the face of social stigma" such as those imposed by the state, media, and external European influence, Saigonese les recognition and kinship are facilitated through a "strategic invisibility", in which they are hidden in plain sight from governing and surveillance structures.
[40] Therefore, community formation among Saigon's les are 'contingent' on factors such as state legislations, personal relationships, and gender norms, and cannot be conceived of within the dichotomous binary of positive visibility and passive, negative invisibility.
[43] Like Vietnamese les, Indonesian lesbi (another locally preferred precedent to 'lesbian') avoid stigmatisation by adopting fluid sexual presentations in order to 'pass' as heterosexual males or females.
However, Indonesian lesbi tactical kinship formations are created in response to frameworks of hegemonic religion, which, according to research material, is not a predominant concern for Vietnam's les.
In Western neoliberal contexts, spatial occupation and public visibility are often straightforwardly linked to active "resistance" and progress for queer communities, while invisibility is perceived as a "deficiency", lacking political intent.
[46] Such a myopic binarization might explain the pre-emptive, misinformed demonization of 'Third World' or 'global South' countries like Vietnam as being 'backwards' or 'undeveloped' due to their lack of visible or documented LGBT rights.
Instead, they utilize strategies of contingent invisibility to productively adapt to and appropriate hegemonic systems in order to develop burgeoning communities, kinship, and personal agency.
Sinnott observes the "lack of resonance with the concept of "coming out" among Thailand's toms and dees, who never made public proclamations of their sexuality because they were "unnecessary and overly confrontational".
Through their unique vocabulary of gendered identification and strategies of contingent invisibility, les in Vietnam elude the limitations and stigmatisations of governing structures like the state, media, and European modernity.
Rather than engage in direct confrontation or opposition, their politics of (in)visibility allows them to nurture communities and personal identities on their own terms, beyond the pervasive heteronormativity of Vietnamese civil society.