Men build cemetery for burial of foetuses in Quang Tri - Viet Nam News

Men build cemetery for burial of foetuses in Quang Tri

This article piqued my interest for what it did not say, more so than for what it did. It is centred around Võ Hữu Hạnh, a Vietnamese man, who took it upon himself to bury the aborted foetuses of women. Together with his two (male) friends, he bought a plot of land to construct a cemetery. I thought it was interesting how modernity – here in terms of abortion – integrates itself into long-established Vietnamese perceptions: Võ Hữu Hạnh follows a traditional understanding that defines the beginning of human-ness not with birth, but with conception. It is for this reason that he deems it necessary to bury foetuses just like any other deceased human being.

Interestingly, the article seems completely de-politicised. It tells the story in a factual and descriptive way, informing the reader about finances and logistics, rather than the controversy surrounding the issue. The fact that a man has taken it upon himself to prescribe a label to foetuses of to him completely strange women through his actions, is a striking problematic that is not even mentioned in the article. Women directly feature only once; when the wives of the three men express their support for the project. (Of course, it is not the wives’ voices themselves, it is rather the men telling the interviewer about what their wives have told them.) The article is not only questionable in that it reinforces gender dynamics, or plays into gendered divisions of agency and dominance, it is even more problematic for the pure fact that it does not even identify those dynamics in the first place. This denies the very existence of the problem.

Source: Viet Nam News - https://vietnamnews.vn/society/465869/men-build-cemetery-for-burial-of-f… 17 Sep 2018