- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.ml
Vigils took place across the nation for an Oklahoma teenager who died the day after a fight in a high school bathroom in which the nonbinary student said they were a target of bullying.
Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old who identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns, got into an altercation with three girls in an Owasso High School bathroom who were picking on Benedict and some friends. The girls attacked Benedict for pouring water on them, the teen told police in a video released Friday.
Benedict’s mother called emergency responders to the family home the day after the fight, saying Benedict’s breathing was shallow, their eyes were rolling back and their hands were curled, according to audio released by Owasso police.
I think they might be coloring with a bit of a broad brush, but religion - broadly speaking - is conservative. Some religions may promote values that we agree with and traditionally associate with progressivism (pacifism, egalitarianism, altruism). It’s because they’re based primarily on old or even ancient writings.
I was raised a traditionalist Catholic. I went to catholic school until high school until I went to high school where I became an atheist (which I didn’t even know was an option) and was invited by the school to investigate other educational opportunities.
I also studied Theravada Buddhism for many years. Theravada Buddhism isn’t conservative in the MAGA sense of the word, of course. Especially in the tradition I studied, it concentrates on personal investigation rather than treating the texts and teachings as literally true. A common way of presenting teachings is to say something along the lines of “If it helps, let it help. If not, ignore it.” Still, monks are not permitted (generally speaking) to interact much with women, monks and nuns live separately, and I honestly have no idea how a trans person would fare in that environment.
There’s always a problem when you found the basis of your philosophy in a historical text rather than a constantly evolving understanding. One of Chomsky’s chief complaints about Marxism is that it’s founded on and bound by Marx. He points out correctly that people don’t call evolutionary biology “Darwinism”. I mean, creationists do, and biologists might if they’re referring to a very specific concept, but for 99% of the time we just call it “biology.”
So, building your worldview around a fixed text is by definition conservative. Being flexible about its interpretation can make it less conservative. By and large, though, they’re trying to conserve something.
I can’t speak for all Theravada Buddhist nations, but I found Thailand to be pretty accepting of trans people. Not sure how much of that can be attributed to the religion rather than other factors though.
I feel like the real issue is fundamentalism vs a moderate or reform minded way of thinking. I know plenty of Catholics that are quite liberal and are very loud about their disagreements with church dogma, which I’ve found encouraging.
At the end of the day, I consider religion a tool that can be used positively or negatively as a part of a person’s identity. Doesn’t even need to be religion per se, I’ve seen people use a part of their identify positively where another uses the same identity negatively. For example, I might use my love for video games to bond with friends or raise money for charity while others take that same passion and make death threats to devs they are upset with or swat a streamer. A bit of a tortured analogy but I hope it’s at least somewhat coherent.
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
I was thinking of Thailand in particular since that was where my studies were grounded and my understanding is that the general conceptualization of gender is not identical to western approaches. I do tend to try to steer away from terms like “trans” when talking about other cultures because I’m not sure how well the western idea of a trans person translates into cultures with different ideas of genders. I know enough to know that I don’t know enough, but I do know that what we in the US consider LGBT has absolutely no relation to Ancient Greece or modern Thailand.
But I do know that there’s gender-based separation in most of the Thai monasteries that I’m familiar with, and that monks are conscious of sexually based attractions as distractions to be avoided. I strongly suspect that a person we consider trans would be accepted as a nun - at least, in a non-western, traditional order. But that’s based on my overall readings - it’s really weird to realize that I’ve never even thought to ask that question.