so the guy who founded the buddhist cult we were a part of for almost 30 years (and who, being almost 90 at the time, had recently stood down from running the main show, but was still deeply revered by the senior people now running the show) heard that we were planning to run the first ever gender diverse retreat at their flagship uk retreat centre, and asked to speak to us about it
and while we have many reservations about him and the badness that arose around him, in the space of an hour he went from knowing nothing about nonbinary experience (or asexuality for that matter) to just getting it, and taking the conclusion further than we had, saying "well if there are nonbinary people practising then obviously we need an ungendered path to ordination and beyond, in the same way that we already have for men and women" which was kind of astounding
and then when we reported all this back to the order at large, those powerful people who venerated him so much just calmly (or sometimes not even calmly) chose to ignore his insights, because they interfered with their gender essentialism and transphobia
we're still shocked by this, 8 years after we gtfo
like it was such a normal conversation we had with him, and they just couldn't be normal about any of it at all - and that happened a decade ago, and they still haven't changed a thing, fuck them
sorry, we just got reminded of this because a trans friend is going there on retreat today - he knows what he's getting into, but still
