Indecent Affections: The Intersections of Race, Sexuality, and Childhood in Colonial Vietnam

• In Event: Pleasure, Pain and “Perversions” in Modern Vietnam

Abstract

In 1943, French priests at an orphanage for Eurasian boys in Hanoi, uncovered a “great crisis of immorality”: the wards had been caught masturbating and engaging in homosexual activities. The priests launched an investigation and called in a doctor to investigate. He resolved to separate pre-pubescent boys from pubescent ones; ordered a regime of rigorous exercise; and prescribed a classic Buddhist cure for an over passionate sex drive: strict vegetarian diet with no spice. In this paper, I explore the historical context in which this scandal of “perversion” at the René Robin Orphanage occurred and made a “cure” possible. The scandal had as much to do with sex as it did with ambiguous identities. In 1940s colonial Vietnam, the children at the René Robin orphanage were considered to be teetering on the edges of three dangerous—and inherently ambiguous—identities. The first of these was racial: the boys were born of a Vietnamese mother and a French father, who had abandoned the family. The second ambiguous identity was age-related. As 10-14 year olds, these children were at the cusp of adolescence, a pivotal and potentially troublesome time in life. The third ambiguous identity concerned what French authorities believed to be corruption of a sexual nature. The boys at the René Robin orphanage were experimenting with masturbation and homosexuality, which, though legal, was nonetheless considered deviant in French culture.

Author

• Christina Firpo, California Polytechnic State University