Vinaya, heteronormativity and queer people

[Sunyo]

@1hullofaguy

The vinaya […]

Hi! Thanks for being interested in this topic.

Eg, a bhikkhu is prohibited from being alone with a woman.

This is not true according to the Vinaya, only according to commentaries and local interpretations. (It is good to be well informed before questioning the rules, no offence. )

@1hullofaguy

To my knowledge, all of these rules,

Not those on intercourse (for bhikkhus at least) and on getting an orgasm caused by someone else. There same-sex is just as much an offence as intersex.

@vimalanyani

In my experience, the largest benefit by far is that they protect monastics from inappropriate behavior of laypeople towards them.

The bhikkhu pacittiya on lying down with women (Pc6) has an interesting background story. Anuruddha goes into a room where he was invited by a lady, so that he could get some peace from a crowd. Then she tried to seduce him. Even though he was not interested (supposedly being enlightened), afterwards the Buddha still laid down the rule. Now, the background stories are not always authentic, but the fact that this story was transmitted in the Pali Canon shows at least that the Theravada tradition thought that inappropriate behavior of laypeople was indeed a major reason for this rule.

Now, while one might think it is rules such as this that guards celibacy, I personally have never been in a situation where I thought, “Oh there’s that rule against aiming at privacy with women, I’d better not do that.” Nor have I ever needed to confess such rules. Because the protection comes from your own intention first and foremost. If you want to be celibate, you just naturally avoid such situations where problems may happen, not because of the rule. (In my experience anyway.)

And if a monk or nun is in a state of mind where they are attracted to somebody, and actually wanting to get romantic, then the rules—especially those that have minor consequences like athe pacittiyas—will probably not stand in their way!

In short, when you say “this creates difficulty for queer monastics” I think that might be putting to much emphasis on the rules and too little on the monastics’ own restraint.

Moreover, for heterosexual persons there also has to be self-restraint. It is not that the rules do it for you! As Ven. Akaliko said:

@Akaliko

However, despite the rules many unallowed straight interactions have taken place from the earliest days up till today, so obviously they are certainly not fool proof.

For example, a bhikkhu can go on a romantic walk on a beach with somebody, and it will not be a vinaya offence, regardless of gender, for the rules about being together with a woman apply only to sitting and lying down. That may seem somewhat remarkable, but that’s the way it is. I repeat this in my Vinaya classes a lot: the rules are not meant to be a complete guideline for our behavior. They just cover specific cases.

The problem lies more, I would say, in the second issue you raise, the heteronormativity. Because you are right that most such rules are particularly about bhikkhus and women, and bhikkhunis and men, so they don’t help the queer people among us. Why that is so, is not explained in the canon, unfortunately. There is no guidance around the subject from the Vinaya itself.

But:

@vimalanyani

The rules are imperfect. They can only cover the most common situations, not every conceivable scenario.

The Vinaya is not a complete guide of conduct (as the example of the romantic walk on the beach shows), and the rules were laid down, never preemtively, but always as a response to certain problems that occured, I suppose that occured repeatedly. Perhaps the gay/bisexual/queer bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, being a minority, did not cause problems (often enough) for there to be specific rules.