Queering the Already Queer Buddhist Body

by Nina Herzog

As a Buddhist, technically, I’m not supposed to be angry. So how exactly does that go? Anger eats us up inside, it’s a poison. As The Most Awesome Ruth King once told me on retreat, “Anger is not the deepest truth that wants to be told.” That pretty much stopped me in my angry tracks. It also forced me to go deeper. What’s this deeper truth?

As an ode to Pride month, I’d like to offer this reflection: While I identify as gay-as-a-technicolor-synchronized-swimming-competition, over the years I’ve come to understand that the queerest thing about my body is its size, not its gender or sexual expressions. These last few years, I’ve finally gotten in touch with how unjust the world is for fat people. This has taken me a long time. It’s permeated every part of my life, every phase of my development, every year of my 55-year old existence, shaped the way I see everyone I meet, every environment I enter, every community I consider joining. It’s certainly the first thing people see about me. Because I’m NYC-based, my “standard” queerness isn’t as central anymore. As an immigrant, coming out to my parents at 27, in 1993, just six months before my mother died, it was a bit of a horror, but that horror ended, for the most part. The horror that is being fat in this world continues.

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