Navigating identity, ethnicity and politics: a case study of gender variance in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Abstract

Based on ethnographic data collected among the Bahnar ethnic group in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, I discuss the lived experiences of masculine performing people (assigned female at birth) whose gender characteristics blur the boundaries between lesbian and transgender. In reviewing non-normative gender practices in supernatural rituals in Southeast Asia and in Vietnam I explore the links between these practices and present-day terminology and discourses relating to the complexities of gender and sexual diversity in the secular realm. I also discuss the disclosure experiences of these people, their vulnerability to social discrimination and draw attention to the nuances of contingent masculinities against the backdrop of the complex inter-ethnic relations in the Central Highlands.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.