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Culture, Health & Sexuality: An

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Contesting heteronormativity: the

fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender recognition in India and
Vietnam
a a a
Paul Horton , Helle Rydstrm & Maria Tonini
a
Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Published online: 07 May 2015.
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To cite this article: Paul Horton, Helle Rydstrm & Maria Tonini (2015): Contesting
heteronormativity: the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition in India and
Vietnam, Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care,
DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2015.1031181

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 Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2015.1031181

Contesting heteronormativity: the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and

transgender recognition in India and Vietnam
Paul Horton, Helle Rydstrm* and Maria Tonini

Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

(Received 21 May 2014; accepted 16 March 2015)

Recent public debates about sexuality in India and Vietnam have brought the rights of
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people sharply into focus. Drawing on legal
documents, secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the urban
centres of Delhi and Hanoi, this article shows how the efforts of civil society
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organisations dedicated to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights
have had different consequences in these two Asian contexts. The paper considers how
these organisations navigated government regulations about their formation and
activities, as well as the funding priorities of national and international agencies. The
HIV epidemic has had devastating consequences for gay men and other men who have
sex with men, and has been highly stigmatising. As a sad irony, the epidemic has
provided at the same time a strategic entry point for organisations to struggle for
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition. This paper examines how the fight
for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition has been doubly framed through
health-based and rights-based approaches and how the struggle for recognition has
positioned lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in India and Vietnam
differently.
Keywords: lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender; LGBT; recognition; civil society;
Vietnam; India

Introduction
Relatively little research has been conducted into the ways in which organisations dealing
with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender1 issues in India and Vietnam have navigated
the sociopolitical landscape in their attempts to secure the recognition of gender and
sexual minorities. In this paper, we focus on the role of civil society organisations in the
fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition in India and Vietnam by
considering how local organisations have negotiated, contested and collaborated with the
nation-state and international agencies. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights is a
field of ongoing contestations in both India and Vietnam, and even though there are
similarities in the ways in which the governments in these two countries deal with the
issue, there are also significant differences.
On December 11, 2013, the Indian Supreme Court over-ruled an earlier 2009 High
Court judgement and thereby reinstated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860.
According to the Law, sex between men was once again considered an unnatural offence
contrary to the order of nature (Legislative Council 1860, 152; Mahapatra 2013;
Supreme Court of India 2013). A few months earlier, on September 24, 2013, the
Vietnamese government had taken a step in the process of a possible legalisation of

*Corresponding author. Email: helle.rydstrom@genus.lu.se

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

 2 P. Horton et al.

same-sex marriages and revision of the Marriage and Family Law of 2000 by issuing
Decree 110/2013/ND-CP, which abolished fines on same-sex weddings. In June 2014, the
Marriage and Family Law was amended in accordance with the Decree, with the result
being that same-sex marriages were neither prohibited nor recognised. Yet homosexual
sexual acts have never been forbidden by Vietnamese law (National Assembly of the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam 1986, 2000; tuoitrenews.vn 17/4/2013, 15/8/2013; USAID
and UNDP 2014).
While lesbians and gay men in India today live a life as criminalised subjects under the
law and may thus be turned in to the police for persecution, lesbians and gay men in
Vietnam have gained some legal and social recognition. Lesbians and gay men in India
and Vietnam thus experience various degrees of governmental misrecognition or
recognition as expressed in laws and public discourse. As Fraser (1995, 1997, 2001) has
argued, recognition can be understood as an issue of social status and participatory parity.
Misrecognition, then, is the denial of participatory parity through the institutionalisation of
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values that constitute some actors as inferior, excluded, wholly other or simply invisible
(Fraser 2001, 24). According to Fraser (2001), recognition is a remedy for social
injustice (30) and requires not only expressions and demonstrations of equal respect but
also the redistribution of material resources as a means to include marginalised groups.
This paper draws on legal documents, secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork
carried out in the two urban centres of Delhi and Hanoi. Fieldwork was conducted in each
setting between February and May 2012 and again in Hanoi between December 2012 and
January 2013. In the Vietnamese context, this involved in-depth interviews with people at
six organisations dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, the leaders of
two clubs catering to gender and sexual minorities, and individual lesbians and gay men.
In the Indian context, the fieldwork included in-depth interviews with people working at
five organisations dealing with various aspects of sexuality, including sex education,
equality and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, as well as individual lesbians
and gay men. The data was also enriched by previous periods of fieldwork conducted by
the authors in India and Vietnam.2

Civil society resistance

Civil society has been debated in terms of its boundaries, constituents and transformative
potential. Inspired by Gramsci (1971), we examine civil society as a sphere in which
organisations and even the state engage in an ongoing war of position over definitions,
policies, strategies and priorities (see also Flyvbjerg 1998; Carothers 1999/2000; Gray
1999; Alagappa 2004). The notion of civil society, and the political visions for state
opposition with which it is imbued in its both liberal and Marxist critique of the state, is
continuously being tested, transformed and indigenised (Khilnani 2003; Alagappa 2004).
Comaroff and Comaroff (1999) have thus suggested that we should approach civil society
in accordance with indigenous visions for political change, regardless of its conceptual,
political and strategic legacy:
Civil society may be deeply flawed as an analytic construct; in this hydra-headed guise . . . it
can only be a placeholder, a transitional term at a moment of paradigmatic revolution in which
the social sciences seek to bring an unruly world to conceptual order. But it still serves, almost
alone in the age of neoliberal capital, to give shape to reformist, even utopian visions. (9)
Understandings of civil society as territorially tied (Kaldor 2003, 585) within the
boundaries of the nation-state have been challenged by increasing transnational flows in
people, money, technology, images and values (Appadurai 1996; Kaldor 2003). Such
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 3

global processes have clearly served to stimulate peoples imaginations about their
possible agency to transform their way of living and have created powerful linkages
between organisations and activists. In subscribing to locally grounded imaginations,
social movements and organisations are able to channel collective ideas about what may
be possible, and to raise common claims for influence on policies and the power of
governance.
Organisations dedicated to improving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and
recognition in India and Vietnam have been a driving force for public debate in both
countries. We explore these organisations as influential forces for the formation of
indigenous constructions of civil society because of the ways in which they articulate a
critique of the current legal and social conditions under which lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender people live and even provide alternative narratives about same-sex issues to
those offered by the state apparatus.
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Organisations and the regulatory context

Over the years, organisations in both India and Vietnam have had to contend with legal
and sociocultural restrictions. During the period when India was occupied as a colony
under the British Crown (1858 1947), Indian associations were perceived to pose a
challenge to British rule and the colonial government enacted the Societies Registration
Act, in 1860, in an attempt to keep organisations in check. This act required that all
associations incorporating more than seven people be officially registered with the
colonial authorities. The early stages of independence and post-colonial nation building
required increased cooperation between the state and organisations, and the Central Social
Welfare Board was established in 1953 to facilitate the distribution of state funding
amongst organisations. However, the government was wary of the political power of
associations and in 1976 the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) was enacted to
prevent the financing of political resistance (Sen 1999; Sampraadan Indian Centre for
Philanthropy 2004; Jalali 2008; Thomas et al. 2010).
In the 1980s, the Indian government sought to amplify its control of associations.
A Commission of Enquiry was established to investigate the activities and funding of
organisations and the FCRA was subsequently amended to increase the ability of the
government to inspect the financial transactions of organisations. In 2013, for instance, the
government froze the accounts of the Indian Social Action Forum; a network of more than
700 organisations across India, many of which focus on the rights of indigenous people,
human rights and environmental issues (Jalali 2008; Ministry of Home Affairs 2010;
Nambiar 2012; Bidwai 2013).
Such government regulation of civil society activities has also been evident in
Vietnam. Prior to independence from French occupation of Vietnam (1867 1954), the
activities of local associations were restricted by the implementation of French laws about
rights of association, which sought to curb anti-colonial resistance (Proschan 2002a,
2002b; Blanc 2004). After the August Revolution of 1945 and the ensuing War of
Liberation (1946 1954) against the French colonial power, associative networks
became a central feature of the new Vietnamese state. Following the First National
Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1935, the Party sought to organise the
populace into mass organisations (i.e., the Youth Union, Womens Union, Farmers
Association, Veterans Association and the Trade Union) (Tonnesson 2010; Wischermann
2010; Taylor et al. 2012).
 4 P. Horton et al.

The doi moi (renovation) policy, introduced in 1986, was implemented as a political
strategy to maintain socialism while opening Vietnam up to the market-oriented economy.
The policy instigated comprehensive sociopolitical changes in Vietnamese society and
also led to a proliferation of professional associations, non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) and community-based organisations (Sabharwal and Huong 2005; Thayer 2008;
Taylor et al. 2012).3 While Article 69 of the Vietnamese Constitution (The Socialist
Republic of Vietnam 1992) states that Vietnamese citizens are free to form non-profit
organisations called popular associations, these must be registered with a local
government office, a government ministry or an umbrella organisation, such as the
Vietnamese Union of Science and Technology Associations (Gray 1999; National
Committee for AIDS, Drugs, and Prostitution Prevention and Control 2012; Taylor et al.
2012; London 2014). Without such registration it is not possible for organisations to
operate legitimately, as they are restricted in terms of financing and publishing, for
instance (Oosterhoff, Hoang, and Quach 2014).4
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The European colonial powers sought to control the formation and activities of
organisations to prevent anti-colonial resistance and maintain power over occupied areas.
In the post-colonial era, as part of the nation building, both the Indian and Vietnamese
governments implemented regulative acts for organisational work. The ways in which
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organisations in present day India and Vietnam
must negotiate regulatory acts, which are both political and moral in character, while
striving for increased recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, is
particularly evident with regard to the HIV epidemic.

HIV prevention
When the HIV epidemic broke out in India and Vietnam in the 1980s and early-1990s, sex
between men was quickly linked with HIV in public discourse and organisational work.
The epidemic meant that a large number of international and local organisations became
actively involved in setting the agenda for sex-related policy work and thereby defining the
criteria for achieving funding. Even though gender and sexual minority communities
existed in India and Vietnam prior to the establishment of international and local
organisations dealing with HIV or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, these
communities became part of a political and moral framing of support for gender and sexual
minorities (Proschan 2002a, 2002b; Bhaskaran 2004; Blanc 2005).
The first reported cases of HIV in South India, in 1986, led the Ministry of Health and
Family to establish the first National AIDS Committee, followed by the National AIDS
Control Organisation (NACO) in 1992. In 1999, with development assistance credit from
the World Bank, NACO implemented the first National AIDS Control Programme (NACP
I), which focused on targeted interventions aimed at perceived high-risk groups (Sethi
2002; Bhaskaran 2004; Gabler 2012). Technical assistance and international funding was
provided by bilateral partners, United Nations system organisations, multilateral
organisations, foundations and NGOs. Due to the vast funding made available through
the Programme, there was a huge increase in the number of registered organisations
working with HIV. Many of these had only limited experience in dealing with HIV as they
had quickly added it to their list of focus areas (Misra 2006; Nambiar 2012; Thompson
et al. 2013). The number of organisations involved increased with NACP II (1999 2006)
and NACP III (2007 2012). In 2007, NACO withdrew its support for a large number of
organisations working with HIV in the wake of allegations about their misuse of funding
(Nambiar 2012).
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 5

The HIV agenda also led to the objectification and instrumentalisation of sexual
categories in India. The efforts of state, bilateral and foreign NGOs to implement a
culturally appropriate programme for HIV prevention resulted in the creation of categories
of identification that were used for economic and strategic purposes. For instance, the
terms kothi (receptive partner) and panthi (insertive partner) were used strategically to
group a plurality of sexualities into clear categories deserving of attention and funding.5
The kothi category eventually became a best-practice prevention strategy that was
endorsed by several HIV-related civil society organisations (Cohen 2005; Kole 2007;
Chakrapani, Newman, and Shunmugam 2008; Nambiar 2012; Thompson et al. 2013).
HIV prevention also presented a challenge for the government, as a number of
organisations working with HIV prevention began to challenge Section 377 of the Indian
Penal Code, arguing that by criminalising what was referred to as homosexual sex, it
constituted an obstacle to the implementation of safe sex and HIV prevention programmes.
In 1994, for example, AIDS Bhedbav Virodhi Andolan, a Delhi-based organisation
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working with HIV prevention, filed a petition against Section 377. While the petition
was not heard in court, the challenge had been made and would later be followed up by
other organisations.
Government regulation in Vietnam has also been criticised for constituting an obstacle
to HIV prevention, but for different reasons than in the Indian context (Khuat, Nguyen,
and Ogden 2004; Vijeyarasa 2010). Following the implementation of the policy of doi
moi, there was increasing government concern about the potential effects of Vietnams
new openness to foreign influence and the prevalence of what were deemed social evils
(te nan xa hoi) and poisonous culture (van hoa doc hai). Social evils were believed to be
a consequence of increasing foreign influence which posed a threat to Vietnamese values,
and the label social evil has since been used to categorise a wide range of social
practices, such as drug addiction, gambling, sex work and sex between men.
The first reported case of HIV in Ho Chi Minh City in 1990 served to reinforce the
belief that something needed to be done about the threat of negative influences, and in
1995 the Vietnamese government initiated a campaign to eliminate social evils
(Rydstrm 2006, 2010; Ngo et al. 2007; Vijeyarasa 2010; Horton and Rydstrm 2011;
Horton 2014). Hence, in 2000, a large number of state bodies joined forces to fight HIV,
including the National AIDS Committee, which was incorporated into the National
Committee for AIDS, Drugs and Prostitution Prevention and Control, which already
embraced 16 ministries, the mass organisations, and the Department of Social Evil
Prevention and Control (Khuat, Nguyen, and Ogden 2004; National Committee for AIDS,
Drugs, and Prostitution Prevention and Control 2012).
The National Strategy on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in Vietnam until 2010
with a Vision to 2020 was released in 2004 and a HIV technical working group was
established to promote dialogue between the government, mass organisations, donors,
international and national NGOs and groups of people living with HIV (National
Committee for AIDS, Drugs, and Prostitution Prevention and Control 2012). Furthermore,
Decree 54 was issued, which aimed to increase public awareness about HIV and identified
men who have sex with men as a particularly high-risk group (Colby, Cao, and
Doussantousse 2004; Blanc 2005; Khuat, Le, and Nguyen 2009). Similar to the case in
India, technical assistance and funding came from a wide range of sources (National
Committee for AIDS, Drugs, and Prostitution Prevention and Control 2012). The
availability of funding may also have led to some less reputable groups and clubs catering
to gender and sexual minorities being set up as a means of securing funding, as suggested
by Cham, the leader of a Hanoi-based club:6
 6 P. Horton et al.

[T]he question is very delicate, so I dont want to mention the name of any clubs here. They
[i.e., the groups/clubs] think that they are working on behalf of the gay community but they
are not honest at all because they just created a structure to get money . . . . They have a
director and people who work there, but they dont work for the gay community.
The focus on sexual health has also meant that those organisations wishing to deal with
other issues related to the lives of gender and sexual minorities have had to do so through
an HIV and men-who-have-sex-with-men lens in order to receive the necessary funding
for their work. The men-who-have-sex-with-men lens has been particularly influential in
securing funding in the Vietnamese context and has entailed the conflation of very diverse
individuals, groups and communities into a singular stigmatised category. Similar to their
Indian counterparts, Vietnamese organisations have had to compete for funding by
producing categories that are perceived to be more deserving than others (Cohen 2005;
Seckinelgin 2009).
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The fight for lesbian and gay rights

The linking of homosexuality and HIV has impinged upon the activities of organisations in
both India and Vietnam and has also seen considerable cooperation and crossover between
those organisations dealing with HIV and those fighting for lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender rights. This was illustrated in 2001, when police in the Indian city of Lucknow
ransacked the offices of the Bharosa Trust, a civil society organisation that works with HIV
and other sexual health issues. The police used Section 377 to arrest some of the Trusts
workers for the alleged promotion of unnatural offences (Csete 2002; Gupta 2006).
The Trust had been established by Naz, a Delhi-based organisation working with HIV
prevention, and the police raid spurred Naz to file a petitition calling for the reading down
of Section 377. While the case against Section 377 was dismissed twice, the challenge had
once again been made, and the campaign led to an increase in the presence of sexuality
organisations in India. It was in response to the Naz petition that the collective Voices
Against 377 was formed to push for the reading down of Section 377 (Misra 2006; Narrain
and Gupta 2011; Voices Against 377 2014). The focus of the movement supporting the
petition shifted from a health-based one claiming that Section 377 hinders the prevention
of HIV, to a rights-based one claiming that Section 377 constitutes an unconstitutional
act of discrimination towards gender and sexual minorities (Misra 2006; Narrain and
Gupta 2011).
As Surya, an activist who was involved in the movement against Section 377,
explained, the movement would not have been possible without the HIV agenda. The
movement was largely a movement of kothis, as gay men themselves could not have
made that difference. Yet, it was Section 377 that provided the focal point around which
the civil society movement could be built:
The 377 case created an outside enemy toward which everybody could focus their wrath, their
anger, their frustration, everything. So the case became the pole around which everything
rotated. You know . . . it became kind of the emotional anchor for the whole community.
On July 2, 2009, 15 years after the initial petition was filed by AIDS Bhedbav Virodhi
Andolan, the Delhi High Court pronounced the reading down of Section 377 (High Court
of Delhi 2009; Mitta and Singh 2009). While the legal pronouncement was called a
landmark judgement for the rights of gender and sexual minorities in India (The Hindu
2009), it soon resulted in protests from religious and political representatives. Some
politicians were discontent with the ruling, declaring that it would taint Indias moral
status and provoke an increase in cases of HIV (The Times of India 2009). The opposition
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 7

to decriminalisation resulted in several appeals being sent to the Supreme Court from
various religious groups and concerned citizens, and to the eventual over-ruling of the
High Courts decision (Mahapatra 2013; Supreme Court of India 2013). According to
Surya, even prior to the 2013 ruling, and regardless of the eventual decision, the challenge
had been made and the genie could not be put back in the bottle:
All these thousands of people, are they going to go back into the closet? Now that they have
taken us to stand in the focus, theres no way that they can ignore us. So I mean we would have
won, we have already won; at least the decriminalisation barrier is won . . . . We may not have
won [the legal battle] because the legal Supreme Court decision is still due, but we have won
the emotional, political and psychological battle.
The focus of the movement against Section 377 led to a blurring of the character of
organisations and the focus of their work. Nazs campaigning against Section 377 ensured
that this organisation, which used to deal with HIV prevention, began receiving
considerable attention as a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights organisation
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(Saravanan 2012). While some donors, such as the World Bank, have recently begun
funding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights organisations, the majority of such
funding continues to be reserved for HIV prevention (Singh et al. 2012). Nazs position
has meant that it has been able to redirect funding to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender rights initiatives of other smaller organisations.
However, not all groups have welcomed funding. Following the 2009 judgement, the
number of organisations dealing with gender and sexual minority rights increased, with a
number of non-funded collectives being established. These smaller collectives have had to
rely on the engagement of volunteers and some have opted not to accept funding as a
means of ensuring their independence. Prem, a member of a non-funded collective in
Delhi, explained that the collectives decision to reject funding allowed it to be a true
grassroots organisation:
There are organisations willing to fund us. Do we want that? . . . I do not. But the thing is,
I like the fact that the admins recognise . . . that if they are going to take funding from
someone . . . it is going to come with strings attached. And because its going to come with
strings attached, its going to be the other peoples agendas, not their own.
Other peoples agendas here concerns questions about accountability, inclusivity and
representation. The shift in focus of the movement against Section 377 meant that
categories were conflated and mistranslated. As Surya explained, the English language
does not have an equivalent word for kothi. So in the English press it remains a gay
movement of gay people, so even kothis become gay in that sense. Pallavi, an activist at
one of the organisations that make up Voices Against 377, suggested that there is a risk
that certain groups are shoehorned into a focus on gay politics:
The constant trap that activists get into is to think that the gay way to speak politics is the only
way by which you can speak politics, which is not true at all. Because people have different
kinds of struggles and those struggles come from a completely different context, its so
important to understand the context in which the struggle emerges and to try to understand
where exactly the struggle is taking them.
Lack of accountability has been a source of criticism levelled at lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender organisations in both India and Vietnam (Katyal 2011; Newton 2012). Such
critique is central to discussions about these organisations relations to state power and
their ability to challenge state promoted narratives concerning homosexuality. However,
as Pallavi argued, one cant blame these NGOs entirely, because you bend to funders
demands . . . . Funding is a problem.
 8 P. Horton et al.

While in the Indian context, increased organisational focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender rights came in the wake of the Naz petition against Section 377, in
Vietnam, increased organisational focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights
was facilitated (at least in part) by funding from the American Ford Foundation. In 2008,
the Foundation provided funding for Vietnams first lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
rights project, For a Positive Image of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)
people in Vietnam, which was conducted by the Institute for Studies of Society,
Economics and Environment (iSEE). This project represented a major shift, as we saw in
regard to India, in the focus of organisational work within the area, from a sexual health-
based approach to a rights-based approach (ICS 2011).
While iSEE was early to work with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in
Vietnam, numerous other organisations are today also focusing on the rights of lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender people. There is increasing collaboration between these
organisations and even increasing dialogue between organisations and the state,
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particularly around the issue of same-sex marriage (Pham 2013; VietNamNet 2013;
Horton 2014; Oosterhoff, Hoang, and Quach 2014; Viet Pride 2014). For instance, on
May 10, 2013, iSEE and the National Assembly Standing Committees Legislative
Research Institute jointly organised a workshop called LGBT: Legislative Provisions
and Community Viewpoints. This was the first time delegates from the Assembly had
directly engaged with delegates from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
organisations (Pham 2013). Six months later, Decree 110/2013/ND-CP was issued
(November 12, 2013).
While same-sex marriage was still not permitted, this decree decriminalised same-sex
wedding ceremonies and was seen to be an important first step towards the legalisation of
same-sex marriage and the affordance of some degree of participatory parity, at least to
lesbians and gay men (VietNamNet 2013; Oosterhoff, Hoang, and Quach 2014). In June
2014, the Marriage and Family Law was eventually revised, and came into effect on
January 1, 2015 (tuoitrenews.vn 29/12/2014). The ban on same-sex marriage was removed
from the Law, even though the Law still does not explicitly allow it. Lax legislation was
thus seen as the most relevant solution in the Vietnamese case and a way through which a
controversial issue could be sidestepped (Minh 2014; tuoitrenews.vn 20/6/2014; USAID
and UNDP 2014).
Government restrictions on the formation and activities of organisations has meant that
numerous groups and clubs have been established to deal with sexual and reproductive
health rather than openly dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights issues,
and thus approach same-sex issues more indirectly (Oosterhoff, Hoang, and Quach 2014).
Indeed, their stated activities may not be in line with their actual activities, as they may
feel it necessary to position themselves in ways that increase their chances of receiving
funding. Chin, an employee at an organisation dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender rights, thus explained:
Some members of the [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community . . . receive
funding from organisations like UNAIDS or FHI, so they must . . . deal with HIV issues, but
they also want to work with gay men and their communities, so they have a misleading
message in their work.
The leader of one Hanoi-based club, Tuan, emphasised the difficulties of registering an
association or club for gay men in Vietnam when he stated that it is difficult to set up an
association or club just for gay men and really difficult to get the permission to set up an
official gay network. He elaborated:
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 9

Since we have the guidebook we have to follow the line set by the central organisation in the
province . . . . For example, we should use one part of the budget to buy condoms and gel and
information and for printing information flyers to give to gay people so that they can be
informed.
The guidebook, Understanding and Reducing Stigma Related to Men Who Have Sex With
Men and HIV, was published by the Institute for Social Development Studies in 2010, with
funding from UNAIDS and the US Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and
provides the basis for the HIV work of the numerous groups and clubs (Khuat and Nguyen
2010). While Tuan felt restricted in the activities his club could engage in, he preferred this
situation to that he had experienced in other clubs, which were under a more powerful
organisation [and therefore] had to follow their directions [and] directive[s] more
categorically. Chams club also received funding from the central organisation and was
thus expected to focus on HIV prevention, but he nevertheless distanced the work of his
club from the issue of HIV:
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I dont want to link the prevention of HIV to our organisation because it [creates] a very
dangerous and very bad image for the club. Everytime you talk about the gay community, you
have to be careful. Even gay people sometimes are afraid [and think] that because they are gay
they have HIV. Thats why we dont focus on the HIV problem.
Much as Surya highlighted the importance of the kothi to the movement against Section
377, Cham emphasised the importance of the work on HIV for the rights of gay men.
As Cham put it, without this disease no one would have talked about gay men. Reflecting
the conceptual blurring of kothi with the gay community in India, a number of organisation
employees in Vietnam also talked about the problematic blurring of the terms men-who-
have-sex-with-men and gay, and between gay men and male sex workers. As has been
highlighted in other studies, the links between HIV and social evils like sex work have
reinforced stigmatising views on various groups and have thus contributed to the
misrecognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in both Vietnam and India
(Khuat, Nguyen, and Ogden 2004; Vijeyarasa 2010).

Conclusion
The ways in which organisations dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
issues in India and Vietnam have navigated the socio-political landscape have profoundly
impacted the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition. Practical
concerns over the formation, sustainability and funding of organisations, as we have
shown, are critically implicated in considerations over exclusionary identifications.
Regulatory restrictions and funding constraints have meant that in both countries, the fight
for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition has had to be doubly framed through
health-based and rights-based approaches. In both contexts, the HIV epidemic posed a
challenge to governmental control of the formation and activities of organisations, and
allowed for a proliferation of organisations, some of which were even established to secure
the large amount of funding suddenly available while others have been dealing with other
issues related to gender and sexuality under the guise of HIV preventative work.
The HIV epidemic also led to challenges being made to institutionalised values about
non-heteronormative forms of sexuality, as these were perceived to create obstacles to
sexual and reproductive health, and allowed organisations to begin organising around the
fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition. Despite regulatory and
financial restrictions, Indian and Vietnamese civil society organisations have managed to
challenge the institutionalised values that underpin the misrecognition of lesbian, gay,
 10 P. Horton et al.

bisexual and transgender people in those sociopolitical contexts, though with very
different results. With their devotion and demand for lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender recognition, these civil society organisations have also provided a sense of
stability, particularly for gender and sexual minorities, in the face of the volatility of the
politics of sexuality and gender (Fraser 2003).
However, the need to decide where the funding should be allocated led to the creation
of simplistic categories, such as kothi and men-who-have-sex-with-men, which were
deemed more worthy of attention, support and funding, and organisations adopted these
into their organisational remits accordingly. In both countries there has been a subsequent
blurring between categories of identification, which has led to questions about
accountability, inclusivity and whose reognition is being fought for. In order to give
voice to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and to stimulate a process
of full recognition, those in whose interests the organisations operate inevitably must
position themselves in line with strategic categories, and thus labels, by joining relevant
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clubs, associations and networks, and not everyone is necessarily feeling represented.
Through their engagement with governments, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
organisations in both India and Vietnam have been able to contest, and even redefine,
policies, at least in regard to lesbians and gay men. The civil society fight for recognition
and the governmental response have, however, taken remarkably divergent paths in India
and Vietnam. While same-sex sexual acts are prohibited by law in India, same-sex sexual
acts and marital ceremonies are circumvented rather than banned by Vietnamese
legislation. In spite of these divergent paths, there is also significant commonality, in that
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in both India and Vietnam have yet to be
recognised fully as citizens with equal rights.

Acknowledgements
We appreciate the helpful suggestions provided by the editors and anonymous journal referees.
Colleagues at the Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, provided useful comments on the
paper, as did participants at the Differentiated Citizenship Workshop organised by the Centre for
Women and Gender Studies at Bergen University, Norway, and held in February 2015 at the
University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. We acknowledge the support of our collaborating
partners in the Department of Geography at Delhi University, especially Anindita Datta; in the
Department of Sociology, especially Ravinder Kaur and Rajni Palriwala, and in the English
Department, especially Aneeta Rajendran. We also thank our partners at the National Institute of
Educational Sciences in Hanoi, especially Bui Thanh Xuan, Nguyen Loc, and Tran Thi Kim Thuan;
at the Institute of Gender and Family Studies in Hanoi, especially Nguyen Huu Minh; and in the
Department of Anthropology at Hanoi University, epecially Nguyen Thi Thu Huong. In addition, we
are very grateful to those who participated in our research and agreed to share their experiences and
time with us.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This study was made possible thanks to generous funding from the Swedish Research Council (VR)
for a project entitled Recognition and Homosexuality: The Socio-Cultural Status of Same-Sex
Relations in India and Vietnam (SWE-2010-041).
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 11

Notes
1. In India and Vietnam, the focus has mainly been on the recognition of gay men and lesbians,
while less attention has been paid to bisexuals and transgender people. With this in mind, we
refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people rather than homogenising them by using
the term LGBT.
2. On previous fieldwork and research, see Horton (e.g. 2012, 2014) and Rydstrm (e.g. 2003,
2006, 2010, 2012).
3. Estimates suggest that there may now be as many as 2000 organisations, including the mass
organisations and various umbrella organisations (Salemink 2006; Wells-Dang 2011).
4. See Sidel and Vasavakul (2006) for an exploration of the contestations over the Law on
Associations.
5. Both kothi and panthi were terms initially defining elements of homosexual practice. Panthis,
the putatively insertive partners in the context of sexual intercourse, tend to be masculine in
appearence and behaviour. Kothis, the putatively passive sexual partners, usually dress and
behave in more feminine ways.
6. Pseudonyms are used for informants throughout to ensure anonymity.
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Resume
En Inde et au Vietnam, les recents debats publics sur la sexualite ont sensiblement mis en evidence
les droits des personnes LGBT. En exploitant des documents juridiques, des sources secondaires et
un travail de terrain mene dans les centres urbains de Delhi et de Hano, cet article montre comment
les efforts des organisations issues de la societe civile engagees dans la lutte pour le respect des droits
LGBT ont eu des consequences diverses pour la reconnaissance des personnes LGBT dans ces deux
contextes asiatiques. Aussi larticle aborde-t-il la fac on dont ces organisations ge`rent les
reglementations gouvernementales concernant leur formation et leurs activites, ainsi que les priorites
des agences nationales et internationales en matie`re de financement. Lepidemie de VIH a eu des
consequences devastatrices pour les hommes gays et les autres hommes qui ont des rapports avec des
hommes, et a ete tre`s stigmatisante. Par un triste paradoxe, elle a simultanement offert un point
dentree strategique pour les organisations luttant pour la reconnaissance des droits LGBT. Cet
article examine comment cette lutte a ete doublement formulee a` travers des approches fondees sur la
sante et sur les droits, et comment la lutte pour leur reconnaissance a positionne les personnes LGBT
en Inde et au Vietnam de manie`re differente.

Resumen
Los recientes debates publicos sobre sexualidad que han tenido lugar en India y Vietnam han puesto
en primer plano los derechos de las personas lgbt. Apoyandose en documentos legales, fuentes
secundarias y estudios etnograficos realizados sobre el terreno en los centros urbanos de Delhi y
Hanoi, el presente artculo examina como el trabajo orientado a luchar por los derechos lgbt
realizado por organizaciones de la sociedad civil ha tenido distintas consecuencias en relacion al
reconocimiento de las personas lgbt en ambos pases asiaticos. En este sentido, el artculo analiza la
manera en que estas organizaciones enfrentan las normas gubernamentales respecto a su formacion y
a sus actividades, as como las prioridades de financiamiento establecidas por las agencias a nivel
nacional e internacional. El reconocimiento de que la epidemia de vih tuvo consecuencias
devastadoras para los hombres gais y para otros hombres que tienen sexo con hombres, ademas de
haber sido sumamente estigmatizadora, conduce a identificar una triste irona: las organizaciones de
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 15

la sociedad civil concluyen que la epidemia ha sido una manera estrategica de abordar la lucha por el
reconocimiento de las personas lgbt. Al respecto, el artculo revela que la lucha por tal
reconocimiento puede plantearse desde dos perspectivas, la de la salud y la de los derechos, lo cual
ha llevado a posicionar a las personas lgbt de manera distinta en India y en Vietnam.
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