Prostitution in Vietnam

Sex workers organizations report that law enforcement is abusive and corrupt.[1]

MOLISA reported that in 2011, 750 prostitutes and 300

The poem is set during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor of Ming China, at a time when Đại Việt was politically independent from China but asserted its membership in a shared, Confucian cultural world alongside China.^[7] Unsurprisingly, the poem depicts a form of sex work that resembles Chinese courtesan culture. The protagonist, Kiều, is not just a provider of sexual services but also an entertainer, a performer, and a potential lover. This view of female sex work in Đại Việt, though fictional, complicates the assumption that sex work is necessarily or has always been a transactional exchange of sex for money.^[8] The poem reveals a 19th-century understanding of sex work in Vietnam that is rooted in performative and affective, not just sexual, labor.^[8] Its continued resonance suggests that this understanding of sex work persists in the present.^[6]

Apart from the depiction of female sex work in The Tale of Kiều, scholars have found scant mention of the topic in other documents and texts from the Đại Việt period of Vietnamese history. This lacuna suggests that even if sex work was present, it was treated ambiguously by Đại Việt rulers.^[9] To illustrate, the 1812 legal code promulgated by Emperor Gia Long of the Nguyễn dynasty, the most well-known of pre-colonial legal documents from Vietnam, does not contain any explicit prohibition of sex work, but it does contain a provision for punishing male court officials who visit ả đào singing houses, which have a reputation as historic sites of female sex work coupled with courtly entertainment.^[9]

Colonial period

Overview

During the colonial period, female prostitution and other forms of sex work were not banned but instead heavily regulated by French authorities. The regulations focused heavily on encounters between the colonizing and the colonized (i.e., European men and Vietnamese women) leaving other kinds of sexual encounters and other forms of sex work, including ones involving native men or European women, unregulated.^[10] Even then, there was plenty of clandestine or "black market" sex work that took place outside of the regulation system in the colonial period.^[9] This situation is akin to that of the pre-colonial period, when sex work was regulated, albeit more loosely, and clandestine sex work also took place outside of the Đại Việt regulation system.^[9]

The regulation of female sex work did not exist in a vacuum. Instead, it was part of the colonial government's general system of regulating carnal encounters between the European and the Vietnamese populations. As anthropologist-historian

Both colonial records and contemporary native

On the other hand, the academic scholarship on the colonial period generally presents a view of female sex work as more than just an object of colonial regulation in the name of dealing with moral or medical impropriety, but also as an indication of the sex workers’ agency and a metaphor for the gendered and racial hierarchies that are at the heart of the colonial enterprise. Many sex workers chose this line of work because they wished to escape rural poverty, and the sex industry provided a viable professional opportunity for them to uplift themselves economically.^[16] This sense of agency also compelled sex workers to ply their trade in the black market, outside of onerous regulatory requirements and the state's taxation regime.^[9] At the same time, sex workers did not always make the choice of entering the profession freely; they might have turned to sex work out of sheer economic desperation or fallen victim to indenture or trafficking schemes.^[9][16] The fact that sex work was even a viable pursuit at all—that Vietnamese female sex workers would be patronized by European men—also had to do with the gendered and racial order in place at the time, which frequently cast Vietnamese women, in literary, visual, and epistolary depictions, as sexual objects for the European male gaze and desire.^[10][17][18]

Regulations

In general, historians have observed that regulations pertaining to sex work in colonial Indochina frequently echoed and influenced similar regulations in France, as described and analyzed by French historian Alain Corbin.^[10]

Tonkin

Shortly after the establishment of Tonkin as a French protectorate, in 1888, the Hanoi Municipal Council put in place formal regulations on prostitution in the city. (Similar regulations had also been introduced in Haiphong in 1886.) The 1888 regulations include a provision for the official licensing of brothel houses; these licensed brothels (French: maison de tolérance) were the only places where sex work was permitted.^[15] At the same time, sex workers had to register their names, ages, places of origin, and place of employment with the municipal police, who maintained an official register of sex workers.^[15] Registered prostitutes were known in French as filles publiques, 'public girls' or filles soumises, 'submissive girls' (i.e., they have submitted to the regulatory regime), or in Vietnamese as có giấy, 'has papers'.^[14][15] The regulations also establish a municipal dispensary to screen sex workers for venereal diseases and house them for treatment if necessary—the same institution that would come to occupy the attention of Vũ Trọng Phụng in 1937.^[15] In addition, the regulations expressly forbid the act of procuring, and dictate that only a woman could be the proprietor of a brothel.^[14]

The Hanoi regulations were not set in stone: A modified set of rules, promulgated in 1891, permit independent sex workers (French: filles isolées) to be licensed to work at a location of their own choosing rather than only at a licensed brothel.

The 1921 law, though ostensibly uniformly applied throughout Tonkin, was, strictly speaking, in force only in the French concessions—the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong, provincial capitals, and military bases—because the rest of the protectorate was indirectly ruled by the French through the Vietnamese emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty (Emperor Khải Định at the time).^[9] (It has also been suggested that the special attention paid to military bases reveals that protecting the health of soldiers in the colonies was a key objective for regulating sex work and preventing the spread of venereal diseases in Tonkin.)^[10][14] This patchwork legal situation created many spaces of non-regulation that sex workers would flock to if they did not wish to submit themselves to a regulatory system that they deemed onerous and oppressive, thus creating a thriving black market for clandestine sex work in Tonkin in the interwar years.^[9] The presence of this black market was something that colonial officials frequently worried about, owing to fears about the possibility, in their minds, of an uncontrolled spread of venereal diseases among the buyers and sellers of clandestine, unregulated sex.^[9]

Cochinchina

Much less research has been done on the history of sex work during the colonial period in

Foreign sex workers

Besides native Vietnamese women, the sex industry in colonial Vietnam also saw the participation of sex workers of other nationalities, including Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Japanese sex workers were present from early in the colonial period: records show that the first mention of a Japanese sex worker in Cochinchina dates to 1883, while in Haiphong, it dates to 1885.[19] They were engaged in similar activities as their native peers, but they would typically offer their services in separate brothels and places of entertainment, or as independent workers.^[19] Unlike their Vietnamese peers, many Japanese sex workers would start off being under the yoke of indenture to cover the cost of their journey from Japan to Indochina.^[19] Officials saw the Japanese sex workers, in an Orientalizing manner, as allegories or representations of the Japanese nation or certain essentialized Japanese values.^[19] The colonial authorities did not seek to prohibit Japanese women from sex work, but merely subjected them to the same registration and medical regulations that applied to Vietnamese sex workers.^[19]

Japan exported prostitutes called Karayuki-san during the Meiji and Taisho periods to China, Canada, the United States, Australia, French Indochina, British Malaya, British Borneo, British India and British East Africa where they served western soldiers and Chinese coolies.^[20] The French viewed Japanese prostitutes as cleaner than Vietnamese prostitutes, as almost like European women. Japanese prostitutes in French Indochina refused to serve Vietnmese (Annamese) men since they held Vietnamese in contempt as a servant race.^[21] French men frequented both Vietnamese prostitutes and Japanese prostitutes in French Indochina.^[22]

Japanese women called Karayuki-san migrated to cities like Hanoi, Haiphong and Saigon in colonial French Indochina in the late 19th century to work as prostitutes and provide sexual services to French soldiers who were occupying Vietnam since the French viewed Japanese women as clean they were highly popular. The Japanese prostitutes refused service to Vietnamese men.^[23][24] Images of the Japanese prostitutes in Vietnam were put on French postcards by French photographers.^{[25][26][27][28][29][30][31]} The Japanese government tried to hide the existences of these Japanese prostitutes who went abroad and do not mention them in books on history.^[32][33][34] Japanese prostitutes were also in other European colonies in Southeast Asia like Singapore as well as Australia and the US.^{[35][36][37][38][39][40][41]}

There was also a sizeable number of Chinese sex workers who were present in Vietnam at the time. Their clientele was likely more narrowly focused on the significant populations of Chinese men located throughout the Indochinese colonies then.^[16] Significantly, an attempt in 1903 by the Saigon authorities to subject places that house Chinese entertainers to the same regulations as all other brothels in the city did not go well, as the Chinese Chamber of commerce in Saigon intervened to argue that the new regulations were dehumanizing as well as to force the authorities to refrain from imposing new regulations.^[16]

Vietnam War period

During the

After the war the Vietnamese government introduced a rehabilitation program for former prostitutes. Despite this and the government's subsequent HIV/AIDS education program, economic development during the 1990s saw women from poor rural communities taking up prostitution with a new class of professional clients.^[44]

Legal situation

The "Ordinance on Prostitution Prevention and Combat"^[47] 2003 states:

• Article 4: The following acts are strictly prohibited:
  • 1. Buying sex;
  • 2. Selling sex;
  • 3. Harboring prostitution;
  • 4. Organizing prostitution activities;
  • 5. Forcing prostitution;
  • 6. Brokering prostitution;
  • 7. Protecting prostitution;
  • 8. Abusing the service business for prostitution activities;
  • 9. Other acts related to prostitution activities as prescribed by law.
• Article 23.- Handling of prostitutes
  • 1. Prostitutes shall, depending on the nature and seriousness of their violations, be administratively sanctioned, applied with the measure of education in communes, wards or townships or sent into medical treatment establishments. Foreign prostitutes shall, depending on the nature and seriousness of their violations, be administratively sanctioned in the forms of caution, fine and/or expulsion.
  • 2. Prostitutes who, though being aware of their HIV infection, deliberately transmit the disease to other persons shall be examined for penal liability.
• Article 24.- Handling of persons committing prostitution-related acts
  • 1. Those who protect prostitution, contribute capital for use for prostitution purposes shall, depending on the nature and seriousness of their violations, be administratively sanctioned or examined for penal liability.
  • 2. Those who act as go-between for prostitution, harbor prostitution, coerce prostitution, organize prostitution, traffic in women and/or children in service of prostitution activities shall be examined for penal liability.

Following complaints that Article 23.1 was in violation of the prostitute's rights, in June 2012 the "Law on Administrative Sanctions" ordered the release of all prostitutes and replaced "re-education" with fine between of the equivalent of $25 and $100.^[3][1] (About 1,300 prostitutes were in "rehabilitation’ centres" in July 2011 being "treated and re-educated’).^[4]

Calls for decriminalization

A survey of 150 prostitutes by the Vietnamese government-run "Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs" found that 44 percent of prostitutes had suffered violence at the hands of clients.^[3] Just under a half did not report the crimes to the authorities. The "Vietnam Network of Sex Workers" have called for decriminalization to make sex work safer.^[3] Kimberly Kay Hoang, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, who conducted a 2011 study of prostitutes in Ho Chi Minh City is quoted as saying: "Legalising prostitution would also reduce violence and sex crimes such as rape and sexual violence. Prostitutes would feel safe calling the police to report instances of violence and abuse by clients, traffickers, and pimps to law enforcement officials." Mr. Le Duc Hien, deputy director of a government department tasked with fighting social evils under the labor ministry, crystallized this by telling the media: "It would be a strategic mistake to tap prostitution as an industry to boost tourism revenues. What would happen if we recognize sex work as a profession but fail to manage it later on?"^[3]

Terminology

Various groups and individuals in Vietnam, including

There is a problem of HIV among sex workers. Fear of detection prevents prostitutes accessing health services and so infections go untreated and spread.

A study of 5,298 prostitutes published in 2015 by "Drug Alcohol Depend" concluded that injected drug use is also a key risk factor for HIV transmission amongst prostitutes.[56]

Vietnamese prostitution in other nations

Vietnamese prostitution is not confined to the country itself. In

Vietnam is listed as a

Many children from impoverished rural areas, and a rising number from middle class and urban settings, are subjected to sex trafficking. Child sex tourists, reportedly from elsewhere in Asia, the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States, exploit children in Vietnam.^[63]

Portrayal in media

Miss Saigon

The protagonist of the 1989 musical Miss Saigon is a Vietnamese prostitute named Kim. Echoing the plot of Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, Kim falls in love with and is left pregnant by a client who is a white American soldier with a wife at home. After he has abandoned her for his American wife, Kim realizes her child's father will never return and shoots herself. The show drew criticism for promoting the stereotype of a dominant/submissive relationship between a Western man and an Asian prostitute.^[64]

Fuck Miss Saigon

The 2017 book on the sex trade in Vietnam, written by a working prostitute from the Mekong Delta. This is the first account of prostitution in Vietnam by a prostitute.^[65]

Âm Tính

The 2008 Vietnamese television series