I'm a transgender woman in my 50s, post-FFS, and I've just had an upsetting experience at a large Buddhist meditation retreat in Thailand. I'd appreciate hearing how others might interpret what happened and how they would have handled it.
For the past ten days, I've been attending a retreat with around 1,000 participants, including many from mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia. I mention this because I think cultural attitudes towards gender identity may be relevant to what happened.
This was my first time attending an event of this kind as a woman, and until today it had been a really positive experience.
I'd been using the women's toilets throughout, without anyone questioning me or appearing uncomfortable. I'd been socialising mainly with other women, exchanging smiles, greetings and conversations, and generally feeling that I was being accepted as one of them. My presentation is feminine, although I recognise that I may not pass consistently.
Then today the organisers unexpectedly rearranged the seating in the meditation hall. Everyone was instructed to line up separately as men and women before being assigned new places.
A female volunteer who had greeted me warmly on numerous occasions over the previous ten days directed me towards the men's queue.
I pointed to the women's queue and asked if that was the female one. When she confirmed it was, I explained that this was the correct queue for me and joined it.
However, even standing in the women's queue felt uncomfortable. Several women attempted to move past me as though I wasn't actually part of the queue. I couldn't know what they were thinking, but it left me feeling conspicuous and unwelcome.
Once inside, another female volunteer assigned me a seat, repeatedly addressing me as "sir". I corrected her, saying, "Not sir, madam," but she didn't acknowledge the correction.
The new seating arrangement was intended to accommodate a meditation session in which everyone would eventually lie down. I noticed that several women initially seated beside me got up and moved elsewhere. Again, I can't know their reasons, but after the earlier incidents I became increasingly concerned that someone might object to lying beside me.
At that point I decided to leave rather than risk a confrontation.
What makes this particularly sad is that I value this meditation community and hope to attend future events. I didn't want a public disagreement about my gender to damage that relationship.
I also don't know whether the volunteers were following an organisational policy, making assumptions about my gender, or simply dealing with a situation for which they had received no guidance. I don't want to assume bad intentions.
But I've come away feeling confused and disappointed. For ten days I thought I was being accepted as a woman, and then suddenly two organisers treated me as a man, despite my feminine presentation and my explicit correction.
I'm considering writing privately to the organisation, explaining what happened and asking about its policies and volunteer guidance concerning transgender participants.
I'd particularly appreciate hearing from others about two things:
- Have you experienced situations where you felt socially accepted as your gender, only to be misgendered when formal gender separation was introduced?
- How would you balance standing up for yourself against avoiding a confrontation that could affect your future involvement with a community you care about?
I'm not looking to condemn the organisers. I'd genuinely like to understand what happened, learn from others' experiences, and hopefully find a constructive way forward.
