Violence Against Vietnamese Women during the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War began in the 1950s and ended in the 1970s. The conflict was fought between the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. This conflict was intensified due to the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the 60s to 70s, hundreds of thousands of American people became radicalized and protested against the war, including prominent figures such as Muhammad Ali and MLK.

With the result of a 3 million death toll, half of which were dead Vietnamese civilians, the United State’s war in Vietnam is no exception to holding another episode of imperialist expansion, with its benefits accruing to private corporations and reaping profits for the capitalist class. In addition, the lives of the working classes become even further tainted with impecunious conditions.

Imperialism by the United States orchestrated destabilization and brutal violence upon Vietnamese civilians, as well as millions of people in the Global South overall. Rape and sexual abuse inflicted upon Vietnamese women during the era of the Vietnam War was horrid, with imperialist, racist, and male supremacist underpinnings acting as the fortifier for the exploitation, fetishization, and sexual assaults that have worked together to shape oppression for Asian women to this very day.

Violence against civilian women by American servicemen throughout the war has been largely overlooked by historians. Here are direct testimonies from American servicemen.

“You don’t even think of them as human beings, they’re ‘gooks.’ And they’re objects; they’re not human, they’re objects.”

It was “systematic and collective”; an “unofficial military policy”.

“…they raped the girl, and then, the last man to make love to her, shot her in the head”

From “AN EVERYDAY AFFAIR” Violence Against Women during the Vietnam War by Elizabeth (Liza) Anderson

Sexual violence against women runs rampant during wartime, acting as an aspect in the American Revolution, Civil War, and historically almost every war. Violence against Vietnamese women by American men was common, and seen as an “every-day affair.”

Sexual violence was a military tactic. In the Vietnam War, victory was measured in body count as many military engagements between American forces and northern Vietnam happened on small scales with hidden enemies, a concept known as guerilla warfare. With no solid territorial goals, American success relied on eliminating as many Vietnamese fighters as possible. U.S. soldiers report using rape as interrogation to get information from women.

“Male bonding” and the idea that soldiers needed sex to function provided justification for this violence. Through gang raping, men felt an elevation in status to participate and solidify their masculinity. American soldiers’ sense of sexual entitlement was linked to American exceptionalism, as if Vietnamese women owed them something.

“Hypermasculine understandings of men’s roles and male bonding are common throughout accounts of abuse. Masculine ideas of aggression and insensitivity to women were common, and some reported that disrespect for Vietnamese women was ingrained in the culture of their units from the beginning.” Elizabeth (Liza) Anderson

Without a doubt, racism also played an instrumental motivator. Racial hatred towards Asian people by American soldiers with the combination of male superiority made Vietnamese women prone targets. Guerilla warfare caused American soldiers to uniquely fear Vietnamese women. This was also rooted in the history of demonizing Asian women as “immoral” and inhuman, directly abiding to American colonization, racist propaganda, and the “Yellow Peril” era, which deemed East Asian peoples as an existential danger to the Western world.

The Page Act of 1875 banned the importation of Asian women, who were feared to be engaging in prostitution in the country. It was designed to ban women who had “lewd and immoral purposes”

Propaganda painted Asian women as submissive, obedient, and an obvious subordinate to American men. In pornography, Asian women are disproportionately presented as victims of rape.

Fetishization of Asian women through these submissive and hypersexual portrayals gave non-Asian men the greater notion of masculinity, rooted in the Western culture’s crave of conquest and “fighting for freedom.” White men were thought to play the role of the “savior” with the help of influence from male supremacy, toxic masculinity, and the constant villainization of the Eastern world. Racism and sexism towards Asian women and American imperialism certainly intersect.