of course sexual orientation can change over time! but even though it can change on its own, it can’t be changed. that’s why using the word “preference” is not ideal. it leaves some wiggle room for misinterpretation, even if unintentionally. if the misconception that sexual orientation is a choice wasn’t so prevalent, maybe we wouldn’t even notice when people use the word “preference”. but since it is, this word will naturally stick out for people.
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This is called bi-erasure, I believe.
I can’t believe that it’s 2021 and people are still arguing that sexual orientation is a choice.
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It may actually not be that difficult to see that people’s voices were erased. It’s really obvious that the suttas are recorded from the perspective of straight men.
For example, the very definition of sexual misconduct, which is not a minor matter but one of the fundamental precepts, only includes their perspective:
“He engages in sexual misconduct; he has sexual relations with women who are protected by their mother, father, mother and father, brother, sister, or relatives; who are protected by their Dhamma; who have a husband; whose violation entails a penalty; or even with one already engaged.
What does that mean for women? Or for gay men? Does it mean that we can’t commit sexual misconduct?
It’s really not straightforward how to “translate” this for non-male, non-straight people. Sometimes it is suggested that anything that “causes harm” is sexual misconduct. But we note that for example polygamy wasn’t considered misconduct by the Buddha, even though he spoke about the harm this causes for the women concerned.
So women and queer people are left wondering how to practice something as fundamental as the third precept.
Clearly, back in the Buddha’s day, there must have been an understanding what the third precept meant for women and other groups. But this wasn’t preserved in our texts. It’s therefore obvious that women’s and queer people’s voices weren’t considered worth transmitting.
There are many more instances… For example, whenever the Buddha talks about sexual attraction, he almost always presents it as the attraction of a man to a woman. In very rare cases, the attraction of a woman to a man. There is no sutta that talks about non-straight sexual orientations.
We know that this was discussed among the sangha, since we find references in the vinaya. Why is it not represented in the suttas?
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Personally as a homosexual I’ve never really felt excluded by what I’ve read in the suttas. I tend to just substitute the advice on women and sex for men and lustful thoughts towards them. I’m sure some homosexuals do feel excluded, and I’m sure for them it can be upsetting, but that isn’t true for all of us. Homosexuality wasn’t really recognised for what it is back then, and the norm was for men to be in charge. So, with all that in mind I’m not surprised that most of the suttas are aimed at straight men. Of course today things are different, but in terms of sexuality heterosexuality will always be the predominant prism through which society views sex and relationships, because that’s the dominant way in which sexuality is expressed. So, personally for me it doesn’t bother me when heterosexuality is assumed in any context.
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Our newish student-union building has agnostic bathrooms, which is not so surprising, but what is mildly subversive is that they don’t have the usual men/women symbols…
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Yes very good point, that is indeed a fundamental piece of doctrine and a good example of the erasure of women and queer people from the teachings. I remember puzzling over this myself a long time ago and wondering how I was meant to apply it.
Similarly with the Vinaya rules there is an absence of clarity for same-sex attracted people and a real lack of practical guidance. I remember one of my vinaya teachers telling the several gay/bi guys in the room to practice by simply swapping the gender in our rules. Though I appreciated the attempt at at least recognising there were queers present, it really isn’t the right way to go, because firstly it simply isn’t practical in an all male monastery to pretend all the men are women and not be alone, or travel together etc. And secondly it doesn’t work because we aren’t allowed to interact with women as if they were not covered by the rules, which would simply leave me in a weird wasteland of loneliness or in a hilarious twist, surrounded by other gays! And the poor invisible bi folks would be utterly stranded!
It’s so strange that though the Buddha was aware of same sex attraction he never made such rules to clarify. And it would be unthinkable for a group to suddenly invent their own Vinaya rules as my teacher suggested above. Given the massive corpus of obsessive detail some of the rules go into, it really is surprising that there is zero mention and therefore zero textual guidance for non-straight monastics.
Thank you for also pointing out the erasure of women from the 3rd precept. This is a good example of a text really not speaking to a huge segment of the community. It really does seem like a curiously odd omission.
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Just a side note re women and the 3rd precept: there is actually a whole sub-genre in languages like Sinhalese and Khmer on the behaviour of Buddhist women, which is often on the school curriculum in those countries & in many cases quite well known to women in Theravada countries themselves.
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Australian stations (at least NSW) are increasingly installing omni-use toilets. Possibly not for the reasons you did, more likely to make security easier: but very straight forward: lockable rooms rather than stalls that open directly on a pubic and very visible area. Sometimes there’s small hand basin inside each, sometimes they are share in the public area, so – shock horror – I got to wash my hands standing beside a strange man last week.
More seriously: The letters LGBTQIA+ = L+G+B+T+Q+I+A++ just kept growing. Some of the letters stand for ways of being that didn’t become a “thing” until the mid 20th Century. As with the positions of women and slaves, it’s not sociologically possible to makes simple comparisons between modern cultures and the culture of the Buddha’s time. It’s good to observe a nuanced discussion take place in this thread. @Akaliko thank you for starting the thread.
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Thank you Bhante @Akaliko for opening up this line of discussion. I felt increasingly uncomfortable looking at the Contemporary women’s concerns about apparent sexism in the EBTs thread because it seemed as if the voices that mattered the most were being squashed by the dry, detached, and quasi-rational voices of men. The lack of empathy was palpable and sad.
It’s all darkly coincidental: a monk-friend of mine recently asked me if I felt seen & understood by the ancient texts. My heartfelt answer was no.
As a queer man and as a Black man, I’ve had to approach the texts creatively and carefully, and not ask more from them than they can give. It requires a lot of lonely mental and emotional labor, often in environments that range from indifferent to hostile.
To not have to do this work, to see oneself quite plainly and easily in the texts, is a privileged position. I wish more people would recognize this. Not because they should feel guilty, but because they’ll start to understand the difficulties of those of us whom the texts don’t directly speak to (or worse, speak to antagonistically).
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Thank you for sharing both this insight from your personal perspective and this good advice.
A good summary of this topic!
For some reason I’m reminded of the way white people imagine Jesus as a white person and how this erases brown middle eastern folks from religious history and art, culture etc and continues to allow for cognitive dissonance that others these people as a lesser order.
Similarly, men might not see the ways they have totally usurped our religion. It’s an astonishing thing that the main Buddhist voices and experts are all men, however, on the ground, in my experience, it is women who are the lifeblood of Buddhism but their immense contribution tends to not be valued.
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Maybe the Buddha didn’t want to place responsibility on women in a society where men had all the power?
He could have wanted to avoid legitimizing victim blaming. Like, he could have been like “women, stop temping men, cover up and stay at home, only go outside with a male relative”, but instead he was like, “(straight) guys, don’t be creepy” 
Maybe same sex attraction wasn’t seen as something controversial so it didn’t warrant special rules?
Like, the EBTs have an arahant nun saying gender isn’t even real. Maybe the Buddha was being a bit more lenient towards people who were disadvantaged in society? The bodhisattva, before he gave up sensuality, could have been bi. Why not?
I mean, it makes sense that monasticism would have been a refuge for queer people in a patriarchal society. The Buddha doesn’t once go “queer people bad, only buff straight men can be spiritual”.
Instead, we have discourses like AN 7.51, which could easily be read as a queer text. IMO, there are many EBTs that are queer as hell and I find that extremely cool
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There have always been Lesbians, Gays, Bi folks, Trans folk (of one sort or another, such as 2 spirit, 3rd gender, molly boys etc), Queer folks (although I do appreciate the reclaiming of this term as an empowered identity in the mid C20th. Q also the stands for Questioning, which has always been there too ),and there has always been Intersex people and Asexual people. What didnt exist in the same way was the language we used to describe these groups. In many countries today the only words to describe us are pejorative insults, so I am certainly all in favour of more letters if it means people feel empowered and that they belong. Whilst the cultural expression of these identities also changes over time the core features that describe these groups do not change and have always existed.
One of the strategies used to disempower queer people and dispossess our histories is to say that they are a pinko/socialist/modern liberal invention, a product of political correctness gone mad, identity politics taking over. Or that there are too many letters and we just cant cope, that they will steal the whole alphabet like they stole the rainbow… But what we are seeing is people using language to describe themselves and reveal themselves. They have always existed but were often forced to remain unseen. Humans are much more interesting than we were taught in history books.
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Hmmm. It’s been my experience that this text is frequently used to deny queer and trans identities and used to reinforce hetronormative, binary ideas about gender and sexuality.
It’s also worth mentioning that women and trans folks are frequently told to transcend their gender and queer folks to transcend sexual orientation. But though we see it in this sutta, this is rarely suggested to men or straight people in practice!
We are told gender doesn’t matter but then women are barred from ordination and are unable to be alone with monks. So it does matter, then does it? We queers are told sexual orientation is not important but then we see the ways heteronormativity is entrenched in our rules and culture.
People like to say that the term ‘guys’ is gender neutral, like ’ hey guys’ and that it includes everyone. But when you ask a straight man how many ‘guys’ he’s slept with, it turns out it’s not neutral at all. I think it is similar with the issues I’ve raised about gender and sexual orientation.
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And the more that society makes doing this unthreatening and safe, the more people will take advantage of the opportunity: both to share what they might otherwise have kept hidden, and also to look deeply into their own beings and discover what they might have not noticed or been in denial over for complete lifespans.
When we look back historically, unless we are doing deep forensic research (and let’s face it most of us are not) what is on display is the societal norm of the time.
Exactly.
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As a lesbian, I feel a bit conflicted about all this. Let me share my thoughts:
- Female-only spaces are important for preserving women’s safety and privacy.
- Lots of lesbians, myself included, really value female-only environments and mourn their loss. So the LGBT community is by no means unified on this point.
- That said, co-ed spaces are also important. FWIW I’ve been to dhamma/dharma centers with gender segregation, also also ones without. Both arrangements have their advantages — I find the gender segregated ones feel more “formal” and “ceremonial,” while the integrated ones are more casual and more suited for socialization. I think it’s good that both types of arrangements exist. I don’t agree that we should only settle on one model and abandon the other.
- I’d echo comments made by others about just how modern these terms about gender and sexual orientation are. Some of them (in regards to gender in particular) aren’t even fully fleshed out or agreed upon even in modern liberal societies. Like, does “gender” exist apart from biological sex? Well, some people say yes; others say no. Even feminists are divided. Related example: there are lesbians who support the idea of “non-binary” and some that even identify as such, while there are other lesbians who consider the whole concept of “non-binary” silly or even regressive. I’m not here to takes sides on that debate. I’m just pointing out, once again , the multiplicity of voices that exist even within the LGBT community.
- In regards to @Erika_ODonnell’s comment — I’ve always read AN 7.51 as a gay-affirming text. One thing I appreciate about the Suttas (like that one, but also the aggannasutta) is that they don’t present heterosexuality as the natural, pure state of humanity but rather itself a neurosis. Indeed, there is no truly “pure” sexuality, from an EBT perspective. At the same time, there is more flexibility about interpreting sexual morality than there is in the Abrahamic worldview. So I guess I’m not really all that bothered by the suttas on the homosexuality issue. To be clear, I’m just speaking for myself, not all LGBT ppl (this should go without saying regarding all of my points, of course).
- That said, I do find the male focus of the EBTs a bit annoying at times. I wish more female voices were preserved. I also am bothered by the sexism in some of the suttas, though thankfully there aren’t a whole lot like that.
- As I’ve said before on another thread, I do find the Thai monks’ paranoia about interacting with women rather off-putting.
Sorry for being being a bit rambly. Also, I realize this is a touchy topic, and I don’t mean to cause offense, just to express my concerns.
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There are two sentences in AN 7.51 that I’ve always taken as applying to any combination of identity and/or orientation:
“Itthatte, bhikkhave, abhiratā sattā purisesu saṁyogaṁ gatā.
Beings who are delighted with their femininity enter upon union with men.”
“Purisatte, bhikkhave, abhiratā sattā itthīsu saṁyogaṁ gatā.
Beings who are delighted with their masculinity enter upon union with women.”
Seems to me this applies to whatever any person is taking most delight in at the time.
And as stated above, I also realize this is a very important and sensitive topic and hope my offer is useful.
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Personally I cant see this reading at all! 
I think this sutta is very firmly hetronormative and binary. It speaks of men liking women and women liking men. Or the only other alternative; transcending sexual desire altogether.
Here’s Bhante Sujato’s brief description of the sutta:
By focusing on their own gendered attributes, a man or woman becomes attached to them and develops lust for the opposite sex.
I think this is a spot on synopsis for the info in the sutta.
Remember that Bhante Sujato deliberately translates in a more inclusive manner. But where you see the one English word “beings” as used above, there are actually two separate Pali words which are gendered: Itthatte (female) and Purisatte (male). This does change the reading somewhat. Lets take a look at Ven Thanissaro’s translation:
“A woman attends inwardly to her feminine faculties, her feminine gestures, her feminine manners, feminine poise, feminine desires, feminine voice, feminine charms. She is excited by that, delighted by that. Being excited & delighted by that, she attends outwardly to masculine faculties, masculine gestures, masculine manners, masculine poise, masculine desires, masculine voices, masculine charms. She is excited by that, delighted by that. Being excited & delighted by that, she wants to be bonded to what is outside her, wants whatever pleasure & happiness that arise based on that bond. Delighting, caught up in her femininity, a woman goes into bondage with reference to men. This is how a woman does not transcend her femininity.
The second half of the sutta talks about a man or a woman not getting caught up in their own gender identity and not getting caught up in attraction to the opposite gender, i.e. transcending the view of gender in oneself and others of the opposite gender and escaping the bonds of sexual attraction altogether. Even this transcendence is rendered in hetronormative terms. Though the sutta talks of freedom from sexual identification and desire as freedom from bondage, let’s be clear this is not saying that this freedom from bondage =being gay.
Nope. There is nothing here that is queer to me!
I have had conversations with people who tried to tell me that this sutta is pro-queer because it talks about masculine and feminine qualities and they think that gay/lesbian sex is one person being “the man” and the other being “the woman” but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what queer sex is. It’s 2 men or 2 women or whatever gender they identify as. It’s not a poor, feeble attempt at re-creating straight sex. 
In this sense, where people try to make queer relationships more hetronormative, “who’s the man and who’s the woman” it is another form of queer erasure.
Some of the people who commented earlier on this sutta may wish to discuss it further - in which case can I suggest starting a new thread, thanks.
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Right, but those people would do the same with the Village People’s YMCA, even though it’s a song that’s literally about how great it is to be a young, gay man.
The EBTs seems to suggest that it’s straight people who need to do that first and foremost.
I agree, I’m only arguing that some (many?) of the EBTs could be read as queer texts 
Edit: To clarify, I don’t think it’s a plausible reading of the EBTs to use them further entrench heteronormativity. I think they are actually really subversive to heteronormativity, but this is just my own subjective opinion of course.
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Thanks for your thoughts and willingness to engage.
Yes, we can queer read anything! But really this thread is about erasure of women’s and queer voices from the sutta and vinaya texts. Whilst I talked briefly above about reparative readings (which is a queer reading strategy) it’s important to be cognisant of the fact that the necessity of doing queer readings only speaks to this erasure and the absence of these voices even more keenly.
I appreciate your enthusiasm for a queer reading for AN7.51 but to suggest it is inherently queer (as some have) is quite incorrect. And if a totally hetronormative and binary text is the closest thing have to rally around, it really shows how very bereft we are of queer voices in the suttas and further illustrates my OP about the completeness of this erasure.
Thanks again!
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Even this apparent distinction is questionable.
Biology is a really broad area of study, with many sub-disciplines. Even human physiology has many sub-disciplines. So we also find many definitions of what is considered either female or male. Each definition depends on the sub-discipline that it comes from.
For example, here are some different ways of assigning sex depending on sub discipline - genetics, external genitals, internal genitals, hormones, egg production, sperm production. So for example, in professional sport we might determine sex by hormones, but at birth we might determine sex by observation of external genitals. Each of these definitions is further complicated because they are all on a sliding scale, not any one of them is properly binary.
Usually, for legal purposes (filling out a birth certificate), where we are deciding on the social construct of ‘what sex a person is’, and consequently what subsequent life opportunities they will have, we resort to very blunt tools for the vast majority of our determinations, i.e observation of external genitals of infants.
We only get a little better for the small minority where observation of external genitals are ambiguous (to a particular group of observers). In these minority cases the infant is subjected to tests over a number of definitions and each test is scored for how female or male the infant presents at that time. So the infant might be say 70% genetically male (30% genetically female), but their internal organs might be 60% female (40% male).
So each of these scores are added up and then they are divided by the number of tests taken, giving us a score out of 100. If it is over 50% the infant gets categorised as one sex, under 50% they get categorised as the other.
Obviously these tests are only taken if the external genitals of an infant are ambiguous, so we never really know our own percentage of femaleness or maleness from an overall biological point of view. There are estimated to be very few people who would score 100% for either maleness or femaleness over all tests that we currently use in the UK.
In short, biology is just really messy, and we don’t know that much about it yet, but the status of biological sex as a binary seems to be waning.
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