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).