The “Oriental’s” Masculinity: Between Disability and Sexualization

This paper examines how Anagarika Dharmapala navigated the racialized and gendered constructions of masculinity in the late 19th- and early 20th-century U.S., with a particular focus on the overlooked intersection of disability, religion, and race. Western discourse often framed the “Oriental” man as both emasculated and hypersexualized, but this process was also deeply embedded in notions of bodily debility. The racialized construction of Asian masculinity relied on tropes of physical weakness, degeneration, and effeminacy—marking the non-Christian religious body as disabled in opposition to an idealized, able-bodied Western masculinity. This paper brings disability studies into conversation with religious studies and gender history to argue that the religious othering of Buddhism in the U.S. was inseparable from ableist narratives of bodily deficiency. By examining Dharmapala’s self-representation and his engagement with these tropes, the paper offers new insights into the enduring entanglements of race, gender, religion, and disability.