Abstract

By drawing on ethnographic data collected in two different settings in northern Vietnam, this article considers the ways in which heterosexual masculinity is configured by younger men. The intersection between heterosexuality and masculinity, the article argues, epitomizes a site of contestations between moral ideals, expectations about gendered support, and sexual pleasures disguised as protests. In introducing into a Southeast Asian context, the Latin American term machismo, understood as an expression of male-centered privileges and the ways in which they foster men’s chauvinism against women (or other men), the article explores how local assumptions about the natural quintessential drive of male sexuality as well as a wife’s obligations to comply with his sexual needs together provide men with morally legitimized explanations for the buying of various kinds of female sexual services.

Full Text
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