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Queer and Trans Studies in Religion Across Cultures and Contexts

Submitted to Program Units
1: Queer Studies in Religion Unit

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Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

Queer and trans studies in religion has historically focused heavily on, and come from, Europe and North America. Relatedly, the field has also often centered white Protestant Christianity. This panel implicitly challenges, and moves beyond, that limited scope. The papers that comprise this panel address and attend to the intersections of queer and trans lives and theories, and religious studies and expressions among diverse contexts and cultures: from a critical analysis of homohindunationalism, to an ethnographic exploration of trans Catholic experiences, to an exploration of transgender and gender non-conforming devotees of a Japanese Buddhist religious movement.

Papers

  • Emma Thompson, Princeton University

    Rethinking Homohindunationalism

    Abstract

    In his February 2024 address to the Lok Sabha, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed, “the world discusses what India has done for transgenders... we have given transgenders an identity.” While many trans activists have contested the veracity of Modi’s statement, his remarks reveal the role of what Nishant Upadhyay calls “homohindunationalism” in Hindu nationalist discourses. In this paper, I propose a refined understanding of homohindunationalism as an ideology that posits Hinduism as inherently tolerant against a simultaneously queerphobic (and especially transphobic) yet perverse Islam, not through claims that Hinduism is liberal or cosmopolitan in the Western sense, but rather by appealing to an imagined ancient tolerant Hindu tradition. In particular, I argue that paying greater attention to discourses of indigeneity can help us better understand why some queer subjects are transformed into examples of Hinduism’s “tolerance” while other queer subjects are marked as threats to the nation.

  • Kori Pacyniak, University of California, Riverside

    Neither Confusing Nor Scandalous: The Joy and Resistance of Trans Catholic Realities

    Abstract

    "I couldn’t stop being Catholic anymore than I could stop being trans.” “Being Catholic is more than a religion.” These responses demonstrate the ways Catholic identity often becomes more than just a set of practices of beliefs, taking on a cultural identity that is not easily shed. The deep-seated lingering of Catholic formation manifests in a particular way within trans individuals. Whether they remain active and practicing members of the Church or not, the hauntings of Catholicism often remain, affecting their spiritual practice and their gender journeys/coming out processes. Despite anti-trans Bishops waging war against trans rights and official documents extending a limited pastoral olive branch providing a trans Catholic’s gender does not provoke “confusion and scandal,” this paper draws on ethnographic research with trans Catholics that illuminates both the struggles of reconciling the aspects of these identities and the ways in which they are forever intrinsically linked.

  • Levi McLaughlin, North Carolina State University

    The Karma of Gender: How Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Members of Soka Gakkai in Japan Challenge Temporalities and Institutional Fixity

    Abstract

    Since its rapid expansion in the decades after the Second World War, the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai has maintained a dominant presence in Japan’s religious landscape. Adherents have dedicated themselves to the Gakkai’s institutional expansion through cultivation within its starkly gendered administrative divisions. This paper asks what happens to Gakkai adherents whose gender is different from the one they were assigned at birth by introducing transgender and gender non-conforming devotees whose contrasting takes on Soka Gakkai’s Buddhist teachings challenge conventional temporalities and institutional parameters. This study suggests ways sectarian and political conflicts must be reframed by prioritizing the hermeneutic of subjects whose very existence challenges fixity, and how their perspectives on karmic causality invite reappraisals of gendered operative categories.

Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen
Play Audio from Laptop Computer

Sabbath Observance

Sunday morning

Full Papers Available

No
Program Unit Options

Session Length

90 Minutes
Schedule Info

Tuesday, 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM (June Online Meeting)

Tags

#hinduism
#transgender
#queer
#homonationalism
#islam
#nationalism
# queer and trans studies in religion #lgbtq #theology #catholic studies #trans theology #ritual #queer #transgender

Session Identifier

AO25-204