[quote=“Brenna”][quote=Coemgenu]
The term you want to search for is paṇḍaka, which is loosely analogous to the modern usage of the word “queer” as referring to a community
[/quote]
Eh, I don’t really like paṇḍaka as a word for queer, because that’s not really what it means[/quote]
Eunuch is one of multiple meanings this terms has had over time. I do not know if “eunuch” alone is a satisfactory exclusive definition. The before-mentioned Sinhala commentary to the vinaya allegedly (and I cannot read the commentary so I would not know) outlines those definitions I quoted earlier from the DhammaWheel thread.
A trip to wikipedia for the term “pandaka” also gives a much more expanded account of different peoples “pandaka” could refer to. Certainly the word has, at times, meant different things, meaning it has functioned something as a “catch all” for various sex and gender minorities. An “EBT”-exclusive definition would be interesting. Perhaps it absolutely only means “eunuch” in the oldest layers of Buddhist literature, I wouldn’t know. On terms of the general history of the word, though, irrespective of EBT-usage, I would say that most sex and gender minorities, at one time, would have been called a pandaka, with some notable exceptions. For instance, pandaka is never used for what we would now call a cisgender lesbian as far as I know. It also does not seem to apply to what we would now call gay men who are exclusively “tops”/“the active partner” to use more Euro-friendly terminology. But I think it’s the closest we have to a sex/gender “other” in Indian Buddhist literature.
[quote=Brenna][quote=“Coemgenu, post:10, topic:4621”]
Pandaka is a complicated term, sometimes refering to homosexuals, sometimes to transvestites, transexuals, prostitutes, or sexual nonconformists in general. It is not always uniformly a negative term either.
[/quote]
Do you have a source for this?[/quote]Info forthcoming, I need to wait till I’m a home at a computer.
EDIT: here are a few sources, although, an EBT-exclusive interpretation is only forthcoming I think, as of yet. I do not know if I am allowed to post direct links to these articles, being unfamiliar with copyright rules of SuttaCentral. That being said they can still be quoted, and all of them can be found online for free in PDF form via googling them.
Peter A Jackson: Male Homosexuality and Transgenderism
in the Thai Buddhist Tradition, this text is highly nuanced and presents a lot of arguments that its author does not necessarily completely agree with, I would highly recommend reading it [quote]In the context of Buddhism’s general anti-sex attitude, the Vinayapitaka often describes homosexuality in terms that place it on a par with heterosexuality. But this ethical equivalence is negative, with heterosexuality and homosexuality being described as equally repugnant sources of suffering and as constituting equivalent violations of clerical celibacy. The Vinaya identifies not two but four gender types, proscribing monks from having sexual relations with any of these four. The four gender types are male, female, ubhatobyanjanaka and pandaka. The latter two Pali terms are used to refer to different things in different sections of the canon and I attempt to define them precisely in the next section. But broadly it can be said that ubhatobyanjanaka (6) refers to hermaphrodites, while pandaka (7) refers to male transvestites and homosexuals. [/quote]
We also have Alan Bomhard’s The Two Meanings of the Pali Term “Paṇḍaka”, which is also an interesting text, but which argues that paṇḍaka means something completely different from either “eunuch” or “othered sexuality/gender”, which definitely doesn’t support my own biases on the subject, but does show that the term means more than just “eunuch” historically.