Abstract or Keywords
This overview of gender and sexuality in contemporary American Buddhism starts from the premise that gender identities and sexual subjectivities are inextricable from other strong vectors of identity, especially race and ethnicity, but also ordained celibacy and survivorhood. Stepping around the narrative that white converts and their liberal feminisms have created a gender egalitarian Buddhism in America, it offers a different story by exploring the Buddhisms of Asian American and Asian immigrant lay women, Asian American ordained women, celibate women, Black women, trans and queer Buddhists, and sexual abuse survivors—often overlapping categories—at the seams of sex and gender. It argues that their innovative interpretations of Buddhist teachings and lifeways are shaped by their complex identities and experiences of violence and disruption. It concludes that the Buddhism of the multiply sexed and gendered individuals and communities profiled cannot be said to exist at the margins; rather, the rich multidimensionality of contemporary American Buddhism is now in large part their creation.