This panel features papers that interrogate the place of gender and sexuality at the margins of political violence. In particular, its speakers address the (dis)location of genders and sexualities within traditional cultural, geographic, and religious narratives. The scholars participating in this panel ask questions like: How are different expressions of gender and sexuality rendered peripheral to advocacy for, and resistance to, "religious violence"? How do patriarchal religious traditions influence actors or movements who commit / support / oppose violence? How are gender and sexuality leveraged as subjects of religious concern, and what role do these presumed entanglements play in the advocacy for, and resistance to, violence? Why?
Displaced persons, refugees and migrants frequently endure sexualized violence on their journeys. Nationalist ideologies exploit women's vulnerability to fortify national identity, fuelling debates charged with racism and sexism amid a global rightward shift. Concerns arise over the treatment of LGBTIQ+ individuals fleeing persecution and the recognition of sexualized violence for asylum. Many discussions on flight and migration reveal a lack of understanding of gender-based violence complexities.
This analysis examines epistemological presuppositions, concepts and theories, Russia's war in Ukraine, flight and migration from Ukraine, sexualized violence in the Hamas-Israel conflict, and offers an outlook on agency and human flourishing in postmigrant societies. Questions of belonging, exclusion, and integration polarize societies. Postmigrant ideologies prompt a re-evaluation of norms, privileges, and migrants' rights. "Post" in post-migrant is not just temporal; it signifies a critical review of migration narratives.
In the context of migration, flight, and exile, various forms of epistemic, physical, and psychological violence emerge and are often expressed through images. Particularly, reproduced and circulated representations of (sexualized) violence in the media confront viewers with epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic challenges. This paper aims to examine selected theories at the intersection of Image Studies, Gender Studies, and Religious Studies to critically analyze the notion of the (in)representability of (sexualized) violence in images. Key questions addressed include the epistemic limits of what can be visually (re-)presented, the ethics of seeing, visual standardizations of (sexualized) violence, as well as the structural violence inherent in the ‘Western’, Christian, Eurocentric system of (re-)presentation and orders of images. The primary focus lies on theoretical approaches that facilitate the transcendence of the re-inscription of violence in the image, moving beyond the affective passivity of viewers perceiving media coverage on the themes of migration, flight, and exile.
In 2021, a new resident at Gampo Abbey Buddhist monastery discovered a spy camera in the men’s washroom. The monastery’s head monk recorded 382 videos, 69 of which included “footage of males in various states of dressing and undressing to shower or bathe” according to an agreed upon statement of facts archived in the case fles of Nova Scotia’s Provincial Court. This act of voyeurism resulted in two lawsuits: a criminal case in which the head monk received a sixty-day prison sentence, and an ongoing civil case against the Shambhala Canada Society and Gampo Abbey’s operators. In this paper, I provide context for the ongoing civil case, based on case fles and courtroom audio from the now concluded, criminal case. I demonstrate that the handling of the civil
lawsuit is set to become another example of the attempted silencing and punishing of survivors of sexual violence in Shambhala Buddhism.
This paper seeks to understand the practice of celibacy and femininity of transgendered (m-to-f) nuns in Northern Thailand. It will also examine their monastic role as a mother, nurturing not only sasana, but also disciples, devotees, as well as lay community. Buddhist renunciation provides limited space for non-male gendered persons. Those who are male transgendered to female (m-to-f), if they are interested to renounce the world, they must conform to the conventional binaries of either male or female monastic rules. Often these rules are not compatible with their trans-embodied identities. Such transgendered Buddhist renouncers are perceived negatively and face different forms of social refusal, including violence. Consequently, those trans-renouncers must find and establish an alternative context of practice and monastic rules (Vinaya) which are suitable to their gendered identity. Therefore, this paper, as an ethnographic study, highlights the lived dilemma of the individual renunciant and the monastic rules pertaining among a particular group of transgendered nuns in Northern Thailand. It argues that motherhood, although is seen as incompatible with renunciation, is a key element in an alternative third-way monasticism and in the construction of a meaningful alternative monastic renunciant lifestyle.