Recent public debates about sexuality in India and Vietnam have brought the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people sharply into focus. Drawing on legal documents, secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the urban centres of Delhi and Hanoi, this article shows how the efforts of civil society organisations dedicated to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights have had different consequences in these two Asian contexts. The paper considers how these organisations navigated government regulations about their formation and activities, as well as the funding priorities of national and international agencies. The HIV epidemic has had devastating consequences for gay men and other men who have sex with men, and has been highly stigmatising. As a sad irony, the epidemic has provided at the same time a strategic entry point for organisations to struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition. This paper examines how the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender recognition has been doubly framed through health-based and rights-based approaches and how the struggle for recognition has positioned lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in India and Vietnam differently.

In this article, I examine the content of online pages of Men’s Rights Activists (hereafter MRAs) in India. The objective of my analysis is to illuminate what discursive elements are used by Indian MRA groups to motivate their existence and their mission. My primary sources are texts posted on websites and Facebooks pages. The argument I put forward in this paper is that Indian MRAs justify their mission by manipulating and re-articulating the meaning of ‘gender’ so that it becomes a useful category only when attached to men. While MRA groups are present and active in several countries worldwide, I argue that the Indian case is particularly illuminating when it comes to shedding light on the growth of anti-feminist communities at a time when “masculinist political revival” (Maellström 2016) is on the rise globally.

Book Reviews: Ragnhild Lund, Philipe Doneys & Bernadette P. Resurrección: "Gendered Entaglements: Revisisting Gender in Rapidly Changing Asia." (reviewed by Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen) Cecilia Bergstedt: "Cultivating Gender: Meanings of Place and Work in Rural Vietnam." (reviewed by Maria Tonini) Jonathan Leer & Karen Klitgaard Povlsen:"Food and Media: Practices, Distinctions and Heterotopias."(reviewed by Katherine O´Doherty Jensen) Ph.D. notices: Line Henriksen: "In the Company of Ghosts - Hauntology, Ethics, Digital Monsters" Verena Lenneis: "The work, life and recreational physical activity of female cleaners"