When The Cleric Goes Wooosh, Febuary 2022

A relic from the Holy Catacombs of Pancratius

i love when people ask me “what are you anxious about” like…….about??? you think this is based on reason? rationality? never heard of that

Shozenji, A Japanese LGBTQ Safe Temple Run By A Transgender Nun

Matcha reports on Soshuku Shibatani, the transgender head nun of the Shozenji Temple in Moriguchi City, Osaka. It  is Japan’s first temple built as a refuge for the LGBTQ community.

Soshuku Shibatani, a 65-year-old openly transgender Buddhist nun, was assigned male at birth: 

She began to identify as a female in elementary school but never dared to express her gender identity at the time. As a university student, she met people similar to her and briefly lived at ease among like-minded peers. However, upon entering the workforce, she had to hide her true self once more…

According to Ms. Shibatani, “Buddha saw beyond the differences of gender.”

There is no need to hide your true self. Ms. Shibatani gradually became interested in Buddhist teachings and enrolled in community courses at the Graduate School of Koyasan University. She later resigned from her company, joined the priesthood, and went on to study Esoteric Buddhism.

Ms. Shibatani stated, “Shozenji is not exclusively for the LGBTQ community, but rather a temple for everyone.”

“The Kannon Bodhisattva has no gender identity,” Soshuku Shibatani says. A statue of Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy, is enshrined in the temple. Others see Kannon or Guan Yin  as a female incarnation of the Buddha.

The LGBT+ is not a club. You can’t purchase or be allowed access. There is no stamp you have to get to be able to get in the door. Its not even one single community.

The LGBT+ is an ALLYSHIP. Its a coalition of a lot of smaller communities who found a common enemy and recognized their forces were more beneficial when put together, and that no matter differences in experience, they were all unified against the same enemy.

Every letter added to the acronym stands for another group fighting back, arm in arm. Not someone joining the cool kid club.

And you as individuals do not have the right to veto allyship just because you can’t personally understand the reasons why a group is fighting your shared adversary. You as smaller groups don’t have the power to deny allyship to any given group when the larger groups are holding their hands and standing side by side.

Grow up and stop behaving like toddlers who had to share toys with a kid they don’t like. Get over yourselves. Get over your bigotry. See the bigger picture.

Care about the groups you’re affecting. Care about the actual necessity of the LGBT+, the main goal, and the realities faced by the smaller communities more than you do about keeping your ideological concept of the community “"pure.”“

Stop looking at the LGBT+ like some treehouse that you own and get to decide who gets entrance to. The LGBT+ are so many communities, all working together, and you don’t get to decide for all of them who they want to align with, who they want to help and share experiences with, who they want to identify with, who they overlap with, who they share resources with. You speak for yourselves and that’s it.

gucci, cruise 2019.

Pixel art of my dnd party I made in may 2021.

" Eat Your Heart Out " December 2021

You’re yourself forever - idea by and commission for @kingiovi  🖤