Sexual Desires and ‘Social Evils’: Young women in rural Vietnam HELLE RYDSTRØM Center for East and Southeast Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden and Institute of Thematic Research, Linko ¨ping University, Sweden Abstract Vietnam’s increased integration into the global market economy entails rapid and dynamic changes that foster new ways of acting, interacting and rendering the world meaningful. This article addresses the ways in which an ongoing process of transformation in contemporary Vietnam is epitomised by the ambivalence and ambiguity with which female sexuality is imbued. Female sexuality is ideally restricted to marriage and motherhood, meaning that females’ premarital or extramarital sexual relations tend to be associated with the category of ‘social evils’ (te nan xa hoi). The category of ‘social evils’ is vague in definition and was introduced into Vietnamese society by virtue of what was seen as the country’s increased involvement in a morally polluted world. By drawing on two periods of fieldwork (1994–1995 and 2000–2001) in a northern rural Vietnamese commune, this article highlights the ways in which female sexuality in a local field site is intertwined with anxieties about the forces of a global and ‘poisonous culture’ (van hoa doc hai) that may lead young women to transgress moral limits: for example, by having premarital sex. For many rural female adolescents sexuality thus means a need of self- imposed and/or governmentally imposed control in order to guarantee appropriate morality. For others, however, sexuality means the involvement in premarital sexual relations and, hence, a crossing of moral boundaries. Introduction This article elucidates the ways in which young Vietnamese rural women render sexuality meaningful as a desire that is imbued with self-imposed as well as governmentally imposed control. Young women are growing up in a peaceful country that has undergone rapid societal changes due to about 20 years of implementation of the doi moi (renovation) policy (Duiker 1995). 1 The doi moi policy, which was introduced by the Communist Party in 1986 and strives to maintain socialism in an economically prosperous way, entailed that Vietnam opened its doors to the global world; its commodities, products and images of sexuality. Urban magazines, Western imported goods and female beauty contests indicate clearly that manifestations of sexuality increasingly have become part Correspondence: Helle Rydstrøm, Institute of Thematic Research, Linko ¨ping University, 581 83 Linko ¨ ping, Sweden. E-mail: helry@tema.liu.se Gender, Place and Culture Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 283–301, June 2006 ISSN 0966-369X print/ISSN 1360-0524 online/06/030283-19 q 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09663690600701053