The Black Market for Illegal Hormones in Vietnam’s Trans Community

On this week's episode of VICELAND's Black Market Dispatches, host Jasmine Knox takes a look at the struggles that Vietnam's transgender community face when attempting to illegally obtain medication to help them transition. We spoke to Knox about her experience making the episode and the lessons she learned while meeting the people she spoke to; an edited and condensed version of our conversation is below.

VICE: What was your awareness of the LGBTQ community in Vietnam before filming this episode?
Jasmine Knox: Pretty limited. Which is I was interested in making this episode. I didn't want to offend anyone unwittingly so I did some research—my stepmom also has a friend who's a doctor in Vietnam and did research into AIDS amongst the gay and transgender community. I knew that [being trans in Vietnam] was quite difficult, and I knew that people were pushed into sex work to pay for operations.

What else drove you to make this episode?
I studied gender at university, which plays a pretty big part in my interest in gender stereotypes—also, a lot of my friends in Melbourne come from the queer community. I'm Vietnamese, too, which I thought would make it easier for me to relate to people, and for them to feel more comfortable warming up to me.

Tell me more about your interactions with some of the subjects in the episode.
I was interacting with people that were coming from a really vulnerable position—they didn't have assistance, support networks, doctors, or even a government that could make this transition easier for them. They also don't have access to psychologists to help them work out their feelings and confirm that they were making the right decision. I asked two of the subjects what made them feel like they wanted to change their gender, and both of them said that it was when they realized they were attracted to the same sex. One of them, Ahn, said that it was because of his religion—that he was a Buddhist, and he was taught that it would be better to be a man if he loved a woman. That taught me about how Vietnam, as a society, views homosexuality—and how maybe they see it as almost worse than being transgender.

What made the biggest impact on your own experiences while filming this episode?
The lengths that people had to go to make these decisions so they could feel comfortable in their bodies. They leave their families because they feel so much shame, and they put themselves at risk by seeing surgeons that perform under-the-table operations and illegally buy hormones without knowing the right dosage and consequences of taking them. Then, they have to find work to pay for these operations because they aren't able to get normal hospitality jobs. Their resilience touched me.

This episode of Black Market: Dispatches focuses as much on the consumer side in the underground market as it does on the sellers'. Was there anything specific you noticed about the consumer's role in this market?
A lot of people I spoke to for it didn't have much medical knowledge. They didn't know about safe dosages and hygienic issues—making sure that the environment that you're in is clean, wearing gloves, sharing needles. There's a lot of health risks that they're exposed to as consumers. We didn't focus as much on the sellers because we didn't want to demonize the one we interviewed, since her intentions were quite honorable. She was providing to the LGBTQ community and everyone loved her—she was like the mother hen of all these young trans people.

What was the greatest takeaway from this episode for you?
The importance of having certain systems in place that allow marginalized people to make these huge decisions in a safe way that doesn't have lasting damage. Some of the people I spoke to were injecting silicone into their own faces and disfiguring their features themselves. It's really important to have those systems in place for trans people.

You can catch Black Market: Dispatches on VICELAND. Find out how to watch here.