Abstract
Individuals who identify as Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (2SLGBTQ+) frequently encounter discrimination, stigma, harassment, and violence. Despite the prevailing influences of cis-heteronormative narratives, 2SLGBTQ+ individuals often encounter support, love, kindness, acceptance, and compassion in their everyday lives. The aim of the research was to explore how compassion can be a catalyst for societal change. Through three theoretical lenses: post-structuralism, queer theory, and Buddhism, we explored the beliefs, values, and experiences surrounding compassion for 2SLGBTQ+ individuals navigating a cis-heteronormative societal landscape. Eligibility criteria for participants included being 19 years or older, residing in Canada, self-identifying as 2SLGBTQ+, and possessing an interest in discussing compassion. Twenty individuals consented to participate in semi-structured interviews that were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Participants were asked about their understanding of compassion, its significance in their lives, and their practices related to it. They were prompted to recall moments when they received compassion and instances when they expressed compassion toward others. Transcripts were analyzed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. Three major themes arose: (1) (un)learning compassion through chosen families and queer mentorship; (2) pursuing queer lines of flight through generative compassion; and (3) creating queer futures through acts of (self-) compassion. Cultural and social constructs often position compassion and pain as intertwined and fundamental facets to the human experience. We situate both compulsory and generative forms of compassion within an organizing metaphor of “boundless radiance,” the dynamic movements of compassion toward an ever-widening field of becoming that cultivates the way of the open heart.
Plain Language Summary
There is a widespread belief that compassion and pain are basic human experiences that are deeply intertwined. By embracing and understanding compassion, we have an opportunity to change societal norms and create a world where everyone feels accepted and understood. In this study, we engaged in conversations with 20 Canadians who identify as part of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. These discussions revealed the role of friends and mentors within the LGBTQ+ community in teaching about compassion. Furthermore, it was evident that individuals often use compassion as a tool to explore and grow. Additionally, building a positive future is closely linked with acts of kindness, both to oneself and others. This study underscores the idea of compassion as a boundless radiance – a force that continually expands, influencing and opening our hearts for the betterment of our world.
Introduction
Compassion is often characterized as an emotion, particularly within the fields of health, psychology, and neuroscience (Goetz et al., 2010). It is described as a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering (Goetz et al., 2010). Soto-Rubio and Sinclair (2018), however, distinguish compassion from empathy and sympathy in terms of a “transpersonal dimension to the interconnectedness between providers (of compassion) and recipients of compassion” as well as an “inherently pragmatic” dimension “involving not simply attuning to the emotional state or suffering of another, but to do something to actively alleviate another person’s suffering, often with some personal expense for the respondent” (p. 1430).
Many Western renderings of compassion influenced by the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics portray compassion as a strictly cognitive process, in which an individual experiences pity in response to witnessing another’s suffering (Augustine & Wayne, 2019). By contrast, Buddhist conceptualizations emphasize the relational nature of compassion and the necessity of action (Augustine & Wayne, 2019); that is, compassion in Buddhism assumes no such boundaries between self and other (Dalai Lama, 2012; Gray, 2007) and situates compassion as a practice of both recognizing and undoing our shared sources of suffering (Augustine & Wayne, 2019; Makransky, 2021).
There are reasons to suggest these differences may be eroding and/or not as stark cross-culturally. There is a strong resemblance between Buddhism and the Judeo-Hellenistic traditions of Western thought that preceded Aristotle—both held that efforts to alleviate suffering are inherent within the concept of compassion (Augustine & Wayne, 2019). In the last couple of centuries, Western nations have shifted away from a compassion historically rooted in religious charity and toward secularized institutions of democracy, market society, and the welfare state (Sznaider, 1998). The reach of Buddhism and its discourses of universal or boundless compassion has entered into Western imaginaries to challenge presumptions that distinguish those “deserving” from those “undeserving” of compassion (Dalai Lama & Chodron, 2019; Rinpoche & Mullen, 2005). Buddhist practices such as mindfulness meditation have penetrated Western capitalistic systems more generally, often (mis)appropriated to sidestep Buddhism’s challenges to the core tenants held by capitalist goals of profit, individualism, and competitiveness (Wooldridge, 2013), as cited in Scherer and Waistell (2018). It is also becoming more common to see Western psychologists and therapists drawing upon and engaging in dialogue with Buddhist leaders (Dalai Lama & Ekman, 2008; Goleman, 2003; Neff, 2011). In Buddhist psychotherapy, Buddhist practices have been mixed with Western therapeutic ideas and practices, including cognitive-behavior therapy and dialectical behavior therapy (Brandon, 2016; Campos, 2002; Epstein, 2013; Kelly, 2023). At its core, Buddhist psychology is aimed at freeing all beings from suffering (Makransky, 2021).
Compassion and suffering are often positioned as intertwined and fundamental facets to the human experience (Dutton et al., 2007). In fact, LaMothe (2019) reminds us that compassion comes from the Latin meaning “to bear, to suffer.” Compassion has also been described as a mental capacity that people can learn and strengthen as part of therapeutic processes for emotional healing and as a way to move through suffering (Makransky, 2021). Within Buddhist teachings, suffering can take many forms. Dukkha, which, is commonly equated to suffering, also includes dissatisfaction, discomfort, stress, and the inherent impermanence of life (Bodhi, 1984). This multifaceted concept is broadly categorized into three types: Dukkha-dukkha (Suffering of Suffering), which speaks to evident physical and emotional pain, be it from illness, aging, or any distressing event; Viparinama-dukkha (Suffering of Change), which captures the discomfort stemming from the ever-changing nature of joyous occasions or the eventual end of happy moments; and Sankhara-dukkha (Suffering of Conditioned States), a profound understanding of suffering, highlighting the inherent dissatisfaction present in the cyclical flow of life and death due to its fleeting, conditioned nature (Gunaratna, 1968). Moreover, the origins of such suffering are found in the Second Noble Truth, attributing it to tanha, signifying our unending desires, attachments, and cravings (Gunaratna, 1968).
Yet, suffering can also be viewed as a social construction. Relations of power within society create social hierarchies or “techniques of subjugation” (Hanna, 2013; Rose, 1998) that can marginalize, isolate, and disconnect people from each other based on class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other categories. Socially constructed relations of power can have dramatic influences on a person’s emotions, mental health and well-being, and their suffering; in all of its forms (Gilbert, 2014). Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender diverse (2SLGBTQ+) people have been historically marginalized and pathologized in biomedical societies. Even the language used to denote homophobia and internalized homophobia within psychology literature shifts the focus toward the “dark workings of the mind” (Aguinaldo, 2008, p. 93) which prompts health interventions to be aimed at the individual instead of changing societal power relations that privilege and normalize heterosexuality and binary cis-gender identities (Aguinaldo, 2008).
The Canadian government continues to attempt to address homophobia and transphobia within society through anti-discriminatory legislation (Hunt & Pelz, 2016; Smith, 2020), Yet, despite these efforts, 2SLGBTQ+ people continue to experience oppression, marginalization, unsafe spaces, isolation, trauma, and invisibility in everyday life (Harink et al., 2019). Many facets of Canadian society still (re)produce negative and hostile perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward 2SLGBTQ+ people (Crenshaw, 2017; Grace et al., 2019); these factors compound and produce an intersectional form of oppression known as cis-heteronormativity (Ahmed, 2014; Roberson & Orthia, 2021) and may contribute to various forms of suffering. Although Buddhist teachings on suffering (Dukkha) speak to the universal human experience, we may explore sufferings that are unique to 2SLGBTQ+ people through these teachings. For example, discrimination, violence, and familial rejection that many 2SLGBTQ+ individuals experience (Herek, 2009) can be thought of as Dukkha-dukkha while the transient nature of societal acceptance and personal challenges, such as coming out or transitioning (Meyer, 2003), can be thought of as Viparinama-dukkha due to the uncertainties and challenges they present. Lastly, the cycles of hope and despair that many activists experience (Brown & Pickerill, 2009) may be an embodiment of Sankhara-dukkha for 2SLGBTQ+ activists and individuals.
Despite the persistence of cis-heteronormativity within society, 2SLGBTQ+ people and their communities can also experience peer support, love, kindness, acceptance, and compassion in a multitude of forms (de Vries et al., 2020; Douglass et al., 2017; Nouvilas-Pallejà et al., 2018). Compassion has been recognized by many 2SLGBTQ+ people as a component integral to their happiness and well-being (Riggle et al., 2008). Compassion creates feelings of empathy for others and cultivates bonds of social connectedness (Riggle et al., 2008; Seppala et al., 2013). Self-compassion may help 2SLGBTQ+ people experience a greater sense of well-being through, for instance, the sense of acceptance afforded therein (Beard et al., 2017; Keng & Liew, 2017). Compassion may also be a way to change the root causes of suffering for many 2SLGBTQ+ people. For example, compassion can change social views and stigma about diverse sexual and gender expressions (Beard et al., 2017). Compassionate actions performed toward and within 2SLGBTQ+ communities may be “pebbles in the shoe” and create subversive effects within Canadian society (LaMothe, 2019). Through compassion, one is able to move beyond pain and suffering into action (Walsh et al., 2014). Compassion becomes a process that involves noticing the experiences of others, how those experiences have created pain, and then acting in ways to help ease that pain (Dutton et al., 2007; Kanov et al., 2004). Compassion is integral to the fabric of society, the quality of human relationships and experiences, and a force that builds and sustains human connections (Dutton et al., 2007). Compassion can help build values of dignity, mutual respect, and the common good, allowing all individuals to flourish regardless of sexual orientation or gender (Dutton et al., 2007; Kreber, 2010; Nussbaum, 2001).
Collectively, these historical and contemporary dynamics make it difficult to claim a steadfast notion of compassion as discretely Buddhist or Western. What we can determine is how compassion is socially constructed and exercised within particular contexts. For many 2SLGBTQ+ people and communities, compassion has been constructed and exercised through the historical and systemic harms of cis-heteronormativity, as well as through the resulting stigma and tendency to pathologize and discriminate against 2SLGBTQ+ identities. We believe a critical exploration of compassion may provide deeper insights in 2SLGBTQ+ experiences of suffering and ways 2SLGBTQ+ people may move through suffering. This was the aim of our project; to gain an enriched understanding of the meanings of compassion for 2SLGBTQ+ people in the hopes that such understandings can inform personal strategies and incite positive social change toward social acceptance and inclusion.
Research Context and Positionality
The following research is part of a larger project in which meanings of compassion for 2SLGBTQ+ people were explored. We have previously reported compassion in the context of health discourses (Joy et al., 2022) and in the context of Ahmed’s (2006) concept of orientations (Thomas et al., 2022). Findings from the larger project have also been illustrated in a comic book about queer compassion (Joy et al., 2024). Here we explore the various meanings of compassion for 2SLGBTQ+ individuals within the context of three theoretical perspectives, specifically post-structuralism, queer theory, and Buddhism; we ask what compassion means for queer individuals living within a cis-heteronormative society.
We briefly provide context to our identities and experiences. Two authors identify as cis men who are members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community and three others identify as cis-gender (one man, two women) and straight. All authors are committed to advancing 2SLGBTQ+ knowledge. All authors use post-structuralism extensively in their research. In relation to Buddhism; none of the authors practice a tradition of Buddhism and we did not grow up in socio-cultural settings where Buddhism was prevalent. Thus, our understandings and applications of Buddhism are limited by our intercultural and primarily philosophical encounters with its teachings. However, we also recognize that Buddhism has spread globally in recent years and has especially helped inform conceptualizations of compassion around the world. Thus, we believe the tenets of Buddhism hold a strong potential to extend our current understandings of compassion within 2SLGBTQ+ communities, despite the cultural distance of Buddhism from both the researchers’ and participants’ own worldviews.
Theoretical Perspective
Our theoretical perspective brings three traditions—post-structuralism, queer theory, and Buddhism—into dialogue about the construction of compassion within 2SLGBTQ+ communities. We briefly outline the three traditions employed here before identifying areas where there may be overlap in their constructions of compassion.
Poststructuralism explores how narratives and the way we understand the world are socially constructed through language and discourses (Agger, 1991; Cheek, 1999). Discourses are the interconnected systems of social meanings and practices “that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). Language and discourses are not stable or representative of one truth but are historically contextualized with multiple and fluctuating meanings (Foucault, 1972). This orientation helps to accommodate the historical and contemporary fluidity in how compassion is understood and exercised; as societies and cultures change, so do discourses; a constant merging, overlapping, and re-creation of our social meanings and practices as we collectively think and talk in different ways (Foucault, 1972).
Queer theory seeks to disrupt binary notions of identity, gender, and sexuality (Butler, 2004, 2011). Queer theory calls fundamental assumptions about identity categories into question (DiGrazia & Boucher, 2005), reframing identity as fluid and transitional. In doing so, it dismantles the assumption of a knowable and stable subject and disrupts binary categories such as man or woman, gay or straight, while analyzing the power relations and social institutions that create such concepts (Halperin, 2003; Spargo, 1999). Queer theory interrogates the assumed “separate but equal” framing of self and other in some definitions of compassion (Sznaider, 1998). Queer theory allows for the possibility of disrupting and, ultimately, changing existing social and cultural arrangements of gender and sexuality (Hesse-Biber, 2007; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Resistance and subversion are, in fact, central to queer theory (Butler, 1990).
Buddhism may be understood as a religious and/or a philosophical school of thought that originated in India and explores the nature of human suffering—what is often described as dukkha or a basic unsatisfactoriness with life (Bodhi, 1984). As with post-structuralism and queer theory, Buddhism is an umbrella term for a rich variety of traditions and practices, with a focus around the teachings of the ascetic Gautama Buddha (Makransky, 2021). As previously mentioned, a general tenet of Buddhism is that suffering comes from tanha, that is, attachment or craving or greed, and the way out of dukkha is through marga, the Noble Eightfold Path (Augustine & Wayne, 2019; Bodhi, 1984; Huxter, 2015) that tries to address the very roots of these agonies (Dalai Lama, 1995).
Our intention is not to delve deeply into the nuances of these three rich traditions of post-structuralism, queer theory, and Buddhism, nor do we wish to gloss over their differences and varied social, spiritual, and cultural foundations; rather, we aim to initiate a potentially constructive dialogue between core concepts within the above traditions and their relevance to understanding compassion within 2SLGBTQ+ communities. In that regard, we concentrate on three concepts that serve as entry points into this dialogue: (1) reified or captured being; (2) connection through compassion; and (3) becoming.
Reified/Captured Being
Within Buddhism, much of human suffering arises from attempts to hold onto things that are temporary or fluid, what Indian and Tibetan Buddhist scholar John Makransky describes as an “attempt to create from the impermanent flow of its experience the impression of a substantial, unchanging, and separate sense of self surrounded by a stable world” (Makransky, 2021, p. 3). Such attempts reflect an “unconscious habit of reification” (Makransky, 2021, p. 4). Social, economic, and political structures can often drive the move toward reification, thus creating a habitus of socially conditioned ways of knowing, being, and doing (Bourdieu, 1977). How people are able to be, act, and interact with others and within spaces can be vividly enforced by institutions through their policies, laws, codes of conduct, standards of practice, and other habit-forming practices (Lefebvre & Nicholson-Smith, 1991; Windsor, 2015). However, power is also exercised in more diffuse ways—disciplinary discourses and practices that communities internalize and employ to govern themselves (Carmody, 2004; Foucault, 1991). Within post-structuralism, Deleuze and Guattari describe such restrictive movements as molar lines that attempt to capture and contain social life (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). According to Windsor, molar lines produce “rigid segmentarities” including “binary or hierarchical categories of social classes, sexes, political parties, and nation states” (Windsor, 2015, p. 161).
These broad-sweeping enforcements can show up unapologetically and explicitly, or they can be implicit yet still damaging. Cultural theorist Ahmed (2014) refers to the impact of cis-heteronormativity on 2SLGBTQ+ communities as “repetitive strain injuries” which over time “through repeating some gestures and not others, or through being oriented in some directions and not others, bodies become contorted; they get twisted into shapes that enable some actions only insofar as they restrict capacity for other kinds of action” (p. 145). Similar to train tracks, these molar lines hold us on course, in this case, to embody the notion of a “good citizen” (Windsor, 2015). For 2SLGBTQ+ communities, molar lines show up as power structures that seek to maintain comfort for those oriented toward cis-heteronormativity, awarding benefits and support to those who best emulate normative behaviors; conversely, those oriented toward queerness are expected to maintain their discomfort, so as not to disturb the habitus (Ahmed, 2014).
Molar lines move to reproduce the segmentarities of cis-heteronormativity, and one of many ways in which this is accomplished is through the politics of emotion. Experiences of love and grief among 2SLGBTQ+ communities are often erased, concealed, or unacknowledged through laws, policies, and public narratives that privilege nuclear familial relations over chosen families (Ahmed, 2014); such practices filter compassion through segmentarities in order to reproduce normative sexual and gender categories. Literary critic Lee Edelman describes this movement as a kind of “compulsory compassion” that carries a “reproductive logic” of a strictly cis-heteronormative future; that is to say, compassion is conditional, reserved only for those who follow normative sexual and gender practices (Edelman, 2004). This exercise attempts to exclude 2SLGBTQ+ communities from accessing compassion and the social action it stirs; as such, this form of compassion lacks the universal mission of the Buddhist project of nirvana to free all people from dukkha, embodied in the Mahayana Buddhist figure of the bodhisattva who seeks the liberation of all beings before themselves (Augustine & Wayne, 2019; Makransky, 2021). Instead, compulsory compassion reproduces reified social categories and the suffering that arises from them.
Connection Through Compassion
The kind of compassion that does not fall into compulsory expression requires critical engagement with the conditions of suffering (Vitellone, 2011); it requires recognition, according to philosopher White (2012), “not only [of] the particular sorrows that others experience, but also the underlying reality of suffering” (p. 121). Compassion holds a subversive and queer potential when one “consider[s] the context in which [suffering] is lived,” in particular, the “macro structures that contribute to human suffering” (LaMothe, 2019, p. 286). From a Buddhist perspective, the underlying reality to suffering is reification and the (ultimately futile) effort to maintain reified categories in the face of the transience of life (Makransky, 2021); for compassion (karuna) to truly challenge dukkha, it must be informed by a wisdom (pañña) that “pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot” (Bodhi, 1984, p. 1). The aim of critically informed compassion, the kind Buddhism promotes in the figure of bodhisattva, is to “increase [its] breadth and intensity,” to extend compassion “without limits to all living beings” (Bodhi, 1984, p. 37). Compassion within queer contexts, thus, carry a critique of the cis-heteronormativity that both maintains suffering within 2SLGBTQ+ communities and generates only a compulsory kind of compassion void of any radical recognition (Ahmed, 2014).
Another component to a critical form of compassion is the movement to make change in the conditions of suffering. Jewish gay activist Adam Eli describes the necessity of a transpersonal “global queer conscience” to advance compassion and social action within 2SLGBTQ+ communities; he defined the maxim of this new conscience as such: “queer people anywhere are responsible for queer people everywhere” (Eli, 2020, p. 7). These transpersonal and pragmatic dimensions are strongly connected, such that critical forms of compassion are more likely to instigate meaningful social action and change in the conditions that perpetuate suffering (Vitellone, 2011).
It is important to not oversimplify the difference between compulsory and critical forms of compassion. There is an inherent power differential in relationships where compassion is exchanged; “social privilege” is enacted whereby those who express compassion perceive both a disadvantage or wrongdoing in the recipients of compassion and a power within themselves to alleviate the suffering of others (Burggraeve & Vandenhoeck, 2015; Vitellone, 2011). That very privilege can condition the ways suffering is understood and contextualized, as well as the actions taken to address it. The reproductive threat of cis-heteronormative responses to queer suffering is always there, even within 2SLGBTQ+ communities that have internalized such scripts (Ahmed, 2014). In this way, compassion is often couched within an affective politics that can pass between molar lines, which move to reinforce social categories and hierarchies, and molecular lines, which are less rigid and potentially more transformational ways of interacting with segmentarities (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Potts, 2004; Windsor, 2015). Molecular lines are conceptualized “kinetically” and “dynamically” in terms of the “capacity for affecting and being affected” (Windsor, 2015, p. 161). Affect in this context has a different meaning than in much of the field of psychology. Affect is not about a personal feeling but a body’s ability to affect and to be affected by other bodies. Affects are complex and messy interactions that continuously lead bodies to becoming something else (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). In a checkers analogy, Deleuze and Guattari aptly describe molecular lines as being constantly evolving according to their positionality to the other pieces, their potential constantly being changed by those around them in an ever-becoming manner (Windsor, 2015). The parallel here is that acts of compassion, like checkers pieces, are not defined in a static way, but constantly evolve through their relationality to a given situation and interactions with others. Compassion moving along molecular lines has the potential to recognize and subvert social categories, opening the way for social change to address the normative conditions of queer suffering. But the danger of reproducing reification, what is often referred to as “reterritorializing” the social terrain (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), remains imminent.
Becoming
A third shared element in the post-structuralist, queer, and Buddhist conceptions of action is their groundedness in becoming. In post-structuralist tradition, this is understood as the continual deferral and finiteness of (reified) being; there are first “becomings, such as actions, perceptions, variations,” and it is “from this flux of becomings [that] we perceive or organize beings”Wooldridge (2013) as cited in Scherer and Waistell (2018, pp. 156–157). From the perspective of queer theory, becoming refers to an orientation toward oneself where there is “hope and possibility for other ways of inhabiting bodies” beyond those segmented by cis-heteronormative discourses (Ahmed, 2014, p. 162). Buddhist tradition maintains the emptiness (sunya) of being and the interdependence (dharmadhatu) of all things, which make all reifications transient, unstable, and ultimately artifacts of becoming (Makransky, 2021). Buddhist meditative practices aim to expose these rigid productions of identity: “Notions of solidity are thus counterbalanced with ideas of change and mutability. The attempt is always to move away from the fixity of the normal mind and its attitude toward the world” (Rinpoche & Mullen, 2005). Buddhist practices of compassion depend on recognizing anatta, the “non-self” or absence of a static essence to the self (Augustine & Wayne, 2019), which often sets it apart from Western practices of compassion but, in fact, holds strong affinity to the fluidity of identities within post-structuralist and queer theories of self (Park, 2006; Scherer, 2016). Where these different traditions intersect is in their critique of normative reifications (of Self as well as Other) as groundless entrapments, against which resistance can be cultivated through a compassionate practice of deconstruction (Edelman, 2004; Park, 2006).
Post-structuralist theory indicates a third line of movement that compassion may travel along, a transgressive line that “deterritorializes” the social and breaks free from segmentarities. These lines of flight or desire lines not only allow a departure from binary structures but also lend themselves to a creativity that can “surpass inherited categories” and a constant state of becoming that is not constrained by reified structures (Windsor, 2015, p. 165). Often this requires a particular “relation and connection” to others who seek a similar departure (Windsor, 2015, p. 157), a shared recognition of the sources of suffering and the pathways out of them. Such creative acts of compassion are truly “subversive to political-economic orders” and serve as “counterempire pebble[s]” in the pathways that lead back to reification (LaMothe, 2019, p. 286). It is in the actions performed and the pathways opened (i.e., toward becoming, connection, and/or reification) where we might identify which lines of movement—molar, molecular or desire—are taken.
Methods
Recruitment and Data Collection
The study took place on a national level in Canada. Ethics clearance was obtained from the Research Ethics Boards at Mount Saint Vincent University (#2020-242) and Dalhousie University (#2021-5655) in May 2021 for a 1-year period. Recruitment took place from May to September 2021 through ads placed on Facebook and Twitter and announcements to various 2SLGBTQ+ community organizations and compassion networks (i.e., The Charter of Compassion). The inclusion criteria were: (a) 19 years of age or older (age of majority in most Canadian provinces); (b) resident of Canada; (c) self-identify as 2SLGBTQ+; and (d) be interested in discussing their beliefs, values, and experiences of compassion in English. As compassion is a concept that is deeply interwoven within our society our recruitment methods facilitated the collection of data not just by people who may be considered “experts” about compassion but from all self-identifying 2SLGBTQ people who inquired about the research, providing a more robust data set.
Virtual semi-structured interviews were conducted through Microsoft Teams (version 1.4.00.19572, Washington, 2017). Questions were focused on the meanings of compassion for participants, as well as their beliefs, values, and practices of compassion. Participants were asked to describe instances in which they experienced compassion from others and times in which they were compassionate to other people. Participants were also asked to self-identify their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and age. An interview guide is provided in Table 1.
Semi-structured Interview Guide.
Interviews were done by (authors Joy and Thomas) and lasted approximately 60 to 90 min. All interviews were recorded. Notes were taken during the interviews to supplement the data. Participants received an honorarium ($50 CAN) for completing the interview. Author Thomas transcribed all recordings and anonymized the transcripts for analysis. Participants were sent their final transcripts and asked to provide approval.
Data Analysis
Interviews were analyzed using Foucauldian discourse analysis that involves a systematic inductive examination of the data (Arribas-Ayllon & Walkerdine, 2017). Researchers independently reviewed the transcripts multiple times. Each researcher coded for the beliefs, values, and practices of the participants in relation to compassion. After this individual process, a collaborative process of review was initiated. The researchers collectively discussed their analysis and grouped similar ideas into discursive considerations. When disagreements about discursive considerations took place, the data was once again reviewed and collectively discussed until all team members agreed. All analysis was done in Microsoft Word and Excel.
The research team concluded from the Foucauldian discourse analysis a dominant construction of queer forms of compassion across participant interviews: that compassion was understood in relation to suffering within cis-heteronormative social encounters as well as to queer explorations of self-becoming. Our results focus on these salient codes and their resonance within post-structuralist, queer, and Buddhist theories of compassion.
Results
We recruited a total of 20 participants (Table 2). An overview of the sample by percentage is provide in Table 3. Participants spoke vividly about the richness, context, and impacts of compassion. From their stories and interpretations of compassion, we have constructed three major themes: (un)learning compassion through chosen families and queer mentorship, pursuing queer lines of flight through generative compassion, and creating queer futures through acts of (self-)compassion. Although participants did not directly discuss compassion in relation to Buddhism, poststructuralism, nor queer theory we provide our analysis the themes within these three traditions in our Discussion.
Participant Self-Identified Demographics: Pseudonyms used.
Participant did not report this data.
Demographics Breakdown.
Theme 1: (Un)Learning Compassion Through Chosen Families and Queer Mentorship
This theme explores how participants described learning compassion or unlearning cis-heteronormativity that prevent compassion through relationship with families (biological or chosen), communities, role models, and mentors. Participants talked about how giving and receiving compassion often required them to unlearn deeply engrained cis-heteronormative discourses and practices that they had internalized. Participants indicated in several instances that diverging from cis-heteronormative pathways allowed an orientation toward queer values regarding their chosen family units: I think that’s a real trend you see across queer communities … nesting together, that making of family where, you know, maybe it doesn’t exist. Yeah, and compassion is a deep part of that … compassion, connection with others, is like a need to protect other people too, … that’s been a motivation for me. (Julie: Queer Cis Woman)
These chosen families alleviated the exclusion that some participants felt within their cis-heteronormative family structures. Chosen families were a way of reimagining family structures with an orientation toward queer futures. Here, new possibilities arose for 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, lines of flight toward new family structures that housed pleasure, connection, and safety where none might have existed within the family structures they were born into.
For many participants, this type of departure from cis-heteronormativity was best supported by the presence of role models who exhibited compassion for themselves and others. These role models helped them in their own unlearning, as well as to become mentors as they encountered other queer folks seeking compassion: I felt a lot like I was trying to be the person that I needed when I was their age and doing just like the listening to where they’re at and offering kind of unconditional support … I think it was also a reminder of the importance of having queer mentors and adults in their life because those are the people who have been in their shoes to some extent before … understand at least pieces of it that straight folks won’t and can’t be aware or more likely to be aware of community resources and ways to connect. (Terri: Queer Fem-leaning Non-binary)
Queer mentorship appeared in participants’ stories as a line of flight away from cis-heteronormative dynamics, and this line branched out as mentees over time became mentors to successive generations.
The importance of queer mentorship was repeated and highlighted among participants. One participant talked about how the kind of mentorship that “show[s] kids’ diverse representations” of queer life was pivotal in expanding her understanding of the world, and such expansion “really builds empathy, builds compassion, builds understanding” (Rose: Lesbian Cis Woman). Receiving mentorship and support, having a steward to their (un)learning and liberation from prescriptive pathways, opened participants up to subverting “stigma [that] comes from lack of awareness and lack of understanding” (Tina: Bisexual Cis Woman). A trusting relationship of mentoring lent itself to “call-ins,” or constructive teaching moments which fostered a “space to learn and to make mistakes … [which] builds compassion, because it creates space for learning” (Terri: Queer Fem-leaning Non-binary). This type of compassion nurtured self-esteem and a connection within the 2SLGBTQ+ community, which participants said was often missing, due to dominant discourses that worked to “other” their gender and/or sexual identities, encouraging feelings of invisibility and societal anomie.
What was at stake for many participants was the creation of safe, compassionate queer spaces, in comparison to the reported violence, invisibility, and unacceptability within cis-heteronormative spaces; in order to carve out such forms of relationality, participants felt they had to keep the unlearning process going, continue challenging rigidity in their own discourses and practices, continue showing up compassionately for a wider and wider social body: There’s an opportunity, even if we’ve experienced our own … discrimination or oppression, that it’s our responsibility to unlearn and relearn what it is to be an ally within our own communities because there is such diversity and such intersectionality too, right? … [I] keep challenging my own biases so that I can be a better person and more compassionate (Tanya: Queer Cis Woman).
This community-building was achieved through small but significant gestures, where compassion was not compulsory, was in fact sometimes risky, to extend within a given situation. One participant (Nat: Queer Trans Woman) explained that compassion within such circumstances—where it was offered when not expected or required—created strong interpersonal and communal bonds between queer folks: “Some of my strongest friendships emerged out of just, like, someone didn’t have to be nice to me and they were nice to me. I find I deeply appreciate that and … befriending someone who was very isolated and very alone, and I really, deeply appreciated that just as an act of compassion, bringing someone into a community.
This same participant summarized her point as such, “compassion is the best when you don’t have to do it,” signaling an important distinction between compassion that is expected (re: compulsory) and compassion that subverts expectation. The importance of lines of flight from cis-heteronormativity supported by chosen families and mentors was a clear thread across much of the interview data.
Theme 2: Pursuing Queer Lines of Flight through Generative Compassion
This theme explores how participants believed that compassion shown to them facilitated opportunities for them to explore and reflect on their sexuality and gender, opening up new potentialities for being, both in themselves and at a social level. As such, a critical power of compassion, as told by participants, is the space it can hold to engage in queer exploration and becoming. Several participants described compassion in the context of questioning their gender identity and/or sexual orientation; in these examples, compassion served as a patient practice of support to explore and navigate an open terrain, as a way to pursue many different lines without judgment or coercion. One participant (Kyle: Bisexual Cis Man) said he was dismissive of his bisexuality for a long time: “I didn’t really pay any mind, [I] was heteroflexible, you know, I thought it was funny, was playing it off as a goof or whatever.” He talked about how receiving compassion from a friend helped him to begin to appreciate and understand his sexual orientation as a legitimate experience: Eventually that was something I started to explore and he was very on board, kind of helped me land on ‘bi’ versus maybe something else, like “pan” or what have you. I just liked “bi” better and then, you know, within a few days or whatever, there’s a “bi” flag at our house (Kyle: Bisexual Cis Man).
Through a supportive friend, he came to recognize bisexuality not as a “goof” but as a genuine expression of sexual desire.
Another participant spoke of providing compassion to a close friend who was questioning their gender identity: “He is thinking he might be trans, like he says he feels like he identifies more with women and all this stuff like that. He hasn’t made that decision, which is why I use “he,” but I think that’s a big one for me right now” (Tina: Bisexual Cis Woman). This participant described her practice of compassion toward her friend as “just helping him navigate that and navigate how he’s been feeling.” Like the previous example, compassion in this context meant holding space for experimentation, not imposing or encouraging a particular form of gender/sexual expression but being witness to wherever that experimentation might lead. This practice does not have a strong imperative toward action (as is often infused in conceptualizations of compassion); rather, it seemed grounded in a refusal to act on behalf of another, perhaps because hastening another’s gender/sexual exploration can slip into territorialization, calling them to stake themselves into a particular identity or category. By contrast, the above practices of compassion fostered desire lines—open curiosity, pleasure, and connection without a requirement to reterritorialize.
Another important observation related to queer lines of flight is in terms of the expansive power of compassion. The quotes above about mentorship allude to this dynamic within queer experiences of compassion, but the concept might have been best articulated by a non-binary participant who experienced harassment for years over their gender expression: “I was abused at home but also at school. I was bullied terribly because I’m non-binary and when I was little, it was so obvious and the kids would call me ‘it’ and I was totally ostracized” (Jude: Queer Non-binary). Later in life, this participant went through what they described as a “breakdown, breakthrough,” which was “the first time that I just stopped running, stopped fighting. I’m just focused on taking care of myself and this self-compassion grew out of it that changed the way, I swear to God, I felt like the nature of time and space changed.” They went on to explain that practicing self-compassion generated more compassion for others as well: By having compassion for myself, [I] had more compassion for the world and everybody in it and I felt like the world had more compassion too. It was really weird or maybe that’s normal, I don’t know, and I remember thinking compassion isn’t like a feeling, compassion is a state of being. You know, it’s just, it’s a paradigm shift. It’s a state of existence (Jude: Queer Non-binary).
This participant described compassion in an expansive way that transformed their experience of their world; the more they practiced compassion, the more they had available and the more widely spread they shared it. They described it as an excess or overflow emanating from the compassion they received from others (especially queer mentors) and from themselves.
Another participant spoke about how entering into a chosen family that prioritized compassion helped to kickstart her own practice: My own family was much different, they don’t help anyone else … We were raised in a way that’s a very selfish outlook … It’s a narrow worldview. So, I liked being kind of a peripheral part of this [other] family and getting a different perspective on how to be in the world. I really do value that and it really comes through their initial compassion (Carol: Lesbian Cis Woman).
She went further to say that “compassion is generative, and it makes a difference in how you experience the world and who’s going to care when you leave.” This transformational potential of compassion speaks to the lines to flight that several participants sought and found. Queer families and communities often provided compassion in their diverse, individual gender and sexual expression; in turn, participants found compassion both within and toward themselves to pay forward to others who felt unwelcome within certain cis-heteronormative structures.
It seemed within participants’ narratives that this excess or overflow of compassion is where the potential to incite social change resided. Participants discussed compassion and social change very broadly, including more interpersonal encounters (e.g., defending a queer stranger from abuse at a grocery store, hearing work colleagues misgender clients, listening to and holding up loved ones going through gender/sexual exploration) as well as more systemic efforts (e.g., advocating for policy and other reforms within private companies and public institutions). Within the context of 2SLGBTQ+ suffering, compassionate action meant holding and/or creating space for queer lines of flight away from discriminatory structures from the micro-, meso-, and macro-social levels.
Compassion in these various settings seemed to be defined in terms of the relational orientation toward the suffering of others—an openness to (un)learn reifications of gender/sexuality, recognition of and connection with others’ differences, and an effort to support their becoming out of reification. For example, one participant said: “Compassion is very powerful because, you know when you let that compassion really touch your heart deeply, it can result in sweeping action” (Julie: Queer Cis Woman). She sought a legal degree in university in order to open queer futures within law where she felt cis-heteronormativity dominated: I saw some of the huge gaps in the [legal] system and the discrimination that, you know, people from the community who I loved were facing. I wanted to get out there in the world and shake things up a bit and make some changes, to make things better for people I love (Julie: Queer Cis Woman).
Her efforts to help open pathways for queer justice were driven by recognition of the structures that perpetuated suffering in her community and of her capacity to make meaningful change. But, she needed her compassion to be cultivated in order to carry it forward: “I had a mentor there who was an older queer woman…she gave me like a lot of attention and care, you know, in helping me like navigate some pretty difficult cases that we were working on together.” This mentorship helped stoke the fire within her to extend her compassion: I learned the value of lifting each other up and that that holds such strength in the world. I learned like more about my own self worth through seeing what somebody else saw in me and I learned, you know, how much difference that can make to mentor someone else (Julie: Queer Cis Woman).
Here the “generative” movement of compassion is demonstrated, wherein receiving compassion (from oneself and/or another) can build one’s personal stores and open a space to share and spread its excess. Another participant described the inherent relationality of compassion—that it spreads by being in relationships that emanate and expand the boundaries of its expression: “As I got older, I saw like just how valuable [compassion] is and how important it is in relationships, like all interpersonal relationships but also your community at large … As I got healthier and became a bit of a better person, I think a lot of that growth came from other peoples’ compassion if that makes sense, [it] came from the love and care and compassion of my friends” (Grey: Queer Trans Man).
These examples frame compassion as being shaped, learned, and reinforced by supportive social relations. Mentorship and reception of compassion is again shown to be integral to participants’ own compassionate practices; in this way, compassion within queer communities may be understood as expansive, flowing beyond the interpersonal moment or relationship in which it occurred to stretch out into ever-widening social circles.
Theme 3: Creating Queer Futures through Acts of (Self-)Compassion
This theme explores how queer futures, which disrupt social norms that prevent queer well-being, can be created through compassion, both at the level of the self and the level of society. According to participants, there is a lot of emotional work to be done when it comes to advocating for change, justice, and recognition for 2SLGBTQ+ communities. This was described as a labor of love and compassion, for oneself as well as the community. One participant reflected on her motivation for her activism to legitimize the identities of transgender people; for instance, she felt the importance of “standing up for each other” to “dismantle these obstacles for trans folks to get their ID updated to their lived gender.” She went on to say why she engaged in this labor: I worked really long hours and put a lot of my heart into that work, because … that compassion would be, something that I did for that one person that I love, but also more broadly for a community that I love and want to protect (Julie: Queer Cis Woman).
This participant carried the suffering of someone she loved as well as that of a community she felt connected to through acts of compassion that fueled her ambition to incite positive change. A driving force for compassionate action within participants’ narratives was imagining possible futures they could help create (i.e., have the power and privilege to enact) that would be more favorable for 2SLGBTQ+ communities; we might describe these images as “queer futures” that decentralize from cis-heteronormativity and assemble around diverse sexual and gender expressions. This is an important indicator for distinguishing some of the different forms of compassion discussed within the first section: those that were “expected” as they served to perpetuate a normative vision of the future (often segmenting and favoring select gender and/or sexual identities) and those that were “unexpected” and served to disrupt or subvert such visions. Many of the actions taken by participants in the name of compassion held an intent toward queering particular spaces (e.g., in law) from a strictly cis-heteronormative future.
The disruptive production of queer futures through compassion can by magnified when “queer communities … unite in large numbers … working in teamwork, collaborating, having meetups” (Rue: Bisexual Cis Woman). However, the importance of self-compassion cannot be understated in the queer dynamics of compassion; sometimes participants’ needs to be compassionate with themselves, were overshadowed in their queer imaginings: When you grow up marginalized, I guess you kind of have to be ready and well versed to just kind of fight with people for your well-, your right to exist in general … Maybe it’s just because, like in defending other people, I’m not really sure why that compassion isn’t really extended to ourselves to be honest with you (Grey: Queer Trans Man).
This participant suggests that such self-erasure may be part of the legacy of marginalization for people who are 2SLGTBQ+ and that some may be more oriented toward “defending other people” more than themselves. Although mentorship can help cultivate compassion within themselves, Grey (Queer Trans Man) said that is sometimes not enough: “A lot of people in the LGBTQ community have a bit of a problem with expressing compassion to themselves…I think a lot of it comes from like self acceptance, and I think even having that compassionate community or your family or whatever you have found, but I don’t really have good ways to do that.”
The tension between compassionate imaginings of queer futures and yet not including oneself in the scope of compassion was a common thread among participants. The hesitancy to extend compassion to oneself was often described as a trauma response; Zac (Gay Cis Man) said that many queer people “don’t have self-compassion. They have a trauma …‘Something bad happened to me, therefore I cannot be better. I don’t deserve better’… They have a big event in their lives, of course, but they cannot see themselves beyond that.” Jerri (Gay Genderfluid) perhaps addressed the tension and the way out of trauma most clearly; they proposed that the core of queer compassion and the queer futures they imagine is to go beyond the restrictions of self-definition: When it comes to a community, where many of us are so busy self-defining that we’re limiting others through that self-definition. I just don’t see that as OK so instead of me trying to say look, I’m a feminine guy and this is what I do or don’t like in in bed. I really don’t care how someone else defines it. I’m much more interested in me accepting me (Jerri: Gay Genderfluid).
They challenged self-definition, or what we might describe as the reterritorializing of one’s identity, as an inherited process of normative, rigid social structures that do not do service to queer futures. Similarly, other participants talked about how queer communities themselves can internalize the policing and gatekeeping of identity, determining in a rigid way how people define themselves. Jerri spoke about how essential self-compassion is to subverting self-definition and generating compassion more broadly: I’ve actually completely restarted with me from a place of care, in a place of compassion, a compassion-based reality…you’re good with others but you didn’t start with yourself, so let’s start back with yourself. We can’t control what others are doing to us, but we can definitely control what it is that you’re doing to you, so I had to learn a whole new therapeutic language (Jerri: Gay Genderfluid).
This reframing to ground queer compassion within, first, self-compassion and self-acceptance is part of the mentor-mentee dynamic that participants expressed as a turning point in their experiences of compassion. Mentors cultivated self-compassion and, from there, the generativity of compassion spread; as Jerri (Gay Genderfluid) says, the turning point came when they were able to internalize and exercise the self-compassion they had been mentored into: “I make time for my self-compassion, and because I’ve become so tuned into that sort of building that muscle or building that strength that it’s because that’s normalized it clearly transfers into a social life.” They said that their self-compassion spread into being “much more kind to others in terms of how I look at time, how I spend time, how I allow for others’ opinions that may or may not differ from mine and that it’s all welcomed and all acceptable.” Generative forms of compassion led to interrogation of hard and fast categories of gender/sexuality, a form of “strengthening” exercise for the compassion “muscle,” toward imagining and understanding an ever-wider diversity of experiences.
Importantly, participants’ talk of spreading compassion did not end with queer communities. Participants said that their practices and goals for compassion expanded beyond gender and sexuality to consider other communities as well. Tanya (Queer Cis Woman), for example, talked about how compassion needs to be intersectional, recognizing the impact colonization has had especially on Two-Spirit people: We don’t really think about as much is how colonization disrupted spiritual traditions and the way of life of Two Spirit people. So really homophobic and transphobic beliefs are the legacies of colonialism…The conversation [around compassion] probably needs to be addressing racism, discrimination, colonialism, and the ongoing impacts of colonialism…before we can even begin as a society to move towards compassion (Tanya, Queer Cis Woman).
While for many participants, the growth of their compassion began in the context of navigating and interrogating cis-heteronormativity, they recognized that the generative movement of compassion must continue beyond that initial context to find expression with other interwoven segmentarities within social life, such as European colonization and its championing of cis-heteronormativity within Indigenous communities. Other participants discussed their growth of compassion in relation to racism, noting that seeing racism in their own families was a way to move through it to find a more compassionate way of being. As Sam (Lesbian, Non-binary/Agender) described, “I had mentioned my dad as being compassionate, without mentioning that he was also racist and homophobic. Sometimes it’s quite complicated!” A person can be compassionate but can also be reified in racist and cis-heteronormative molar lines. Sam (Lesbian, Non-binary/Agender), and a few other participants, recognized the messiness of socially constructed compassion and believed we need to address the ways cis-heteronormativity, racism, and settler colonialism influence the way compassion is understood and practiced. By doing so we can create queer compassionate futures.
Participants’ comments reveal important cycles of mentorship, self-compassion, and generative compassion at work within queer communities. Enacting compassion toward oneself seemed to offer a surprising amount of mentorship and positive modeling for other community members by exemplifying self-compassion as well as to spreading compassion outward to ever-expanding notions of self and community. These role models made lines of flight possible for themselves and others, without whom such departures from deeply engrained discourses and practices of cis-heteronormativity may not have seemed imaginable.
Discussion
Although major social advances have been made, 2SLGBTQ+ suffering continues to be fueled by factors such as marginalization, invisibility, isolation, and trauma, perpetuated by rigid cis-heteronormative discourses and practices. Compassion expressed through molar lines is often denied or withheld from 2SLGBTQ+ persons, as it is bound to the maintenance of cis-heteronormative structures; however, this research shows how queer forms of compassion are subversively constructed, cultivated, and expanded within 2SLGBTQ+ communities to craft lines of flight out of cis-heteronormativity and toward queer futures. Muñoz (2009) suggests that “queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality … We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us, as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future (p. 1).” Participants recognized that suffering for many is intimately tied to cis- heteronormativity but also saw the potentiality that compassion can create queerer futures.
A key distinction observed, however, was between compulsory and generative forms of compassion. Building on Edelman’s notion of “compulsory compassion,” participants, in Theme 1, talked about compassion as normative or expected, that is, conditioned and reserved for specific (cis-heteronormative) people, values, and situations (Edelman, 2004). Compulsory compassion worked toward reified being and followed molar lines, as described in poststructuralism. The logic behind these molar lines of compassion was to “reproduce” cis-heteronormativity (along with intersecting segmentarities of racism and colonialism), to keep compassion away from those who suffer under such structures. Very rarely did these lines open into molecular pathways that might change in any way the centrality of the cis-heteronormative, racist, and settle colonialist gaze in response to queer suffering. Similarly, in Buddhist thought, to cling to ideas of permeance, to be reified, is to invite suffering (Makransky, 2021). For us to cling to rigid concepts of sexuality and gender is to be disconnected from the spectrum of human experiences and, therefore, to be disconnected from all people, to be marred in divisions that separate us (Makransky, 2021). Participants recognized compulsory compassion as limited and limiting, expressed not through a critical recognition of queer suffering and a desire to alleviate it but through (internalized) expectation alone.
The forms of compassion that disrupted these rigidities (as queer theory attempts), and brought light and hope to 2SLGBTQ+ communities entailed journeys of (un)learning (as noted in Theme 1). These (un)learnings were often initiated by the gentle guidance of queer mentors to teach 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, first, to show compassion for themselves and, then, to share it generously outward. This flow of compassion was described in Theme 2 as “generative,” instigating (self-) discovery, recognition, and efforts toward positive social change for queer folks. The molecular lines of such generative compassion showed up when participants talked about not showing the same compassion for themselves as they did for others; they recognized the normative structures that perpetuated queer suffering and worked to deterritorialize their interactions with 2SLGBTQ+ communities, but their relations to themselves continued to be reterritorialized and they denied that very recognition. Self-compassion represented the strongest subversion to cis-heteronormativity, but was also the hardest to access as most participants described having internalized hostility toward their own sexual and gender expressions.
Self-compassion is a concept that is deeply ingrained in Buddhist philosophies, Buddhist psychology, and in Westernized notions of compassion. Makransky (2021) reminds us that the cultivation of love with Buddhism must first be toward oneself before we can feel love and compassion toward other. Hence the generative potentiality of compassion is mirrored in both Buddhist thought and Deleuze and Guattari’s lines of flight. Western scholars like Neff (2011) teach the practices of self-compassion and promote the transformative power of such practices while several meta-analyses have examined the relationship between self-compassion, depression, anxiety, and psychotherapy (Egan et al., 2022; Marsh et al., 2018).
When extended to self and others, generative compassion was disruptive to learned expectations and was expansive in its scope regarding who deserves compassion. That is, extending compassion to other marginalized individuals and/or communities created opportunities for new narratives to emerge, ones in which participants could unapologetically imagine queer futures (as noted in Theme 3). Connection and empathy were borne out of this generative compassion. In opening new possibilities and becomings, generative compassion was described as an overflow, an excess; as participants engaged in these forms of compassion, they did not find burnout, restriction, or rigidity, but rather a widening generosity in who they offered compassion toward. Thus, generative forms of compassion held more promise toward a broader field of queer recognition, subversion, and action—breaking out of self-maintaining molar lines and into the open imaginings of desire lines.
We interpret these different expressions and effects of compassion as matters of degree or of movement; molar, molecular, and desire lines are not mutually exclusive categories, they sometimes intersect or thread back to each other. In order to articulate these complex relationships in understanding compassion, we draw upon the metaphor of the lotus flower so prominent in Buddhism as a sacred image of compassion, often cradled by or cradling religious figures (Aamir, 2017; Rinpoche & Mullen, 2005). This image helps to express the central movement that brings all the above examples of compassion together: the circular movement of radiance out in all directions, toward what is described in Buddhism as apramanas or the boundlessness of compassion.
The whorling petals of the lotus flower close and submerge underwater each night and rebloom in the light of each morning, mirroring the many movements of compassion along molar, molecular, and desire lines. Compassion expressed by participants as more compulsory moved along a path of reproduction or conservation, like the submerging lotus flower with its petals folding back into itself for protection. More generative forms of compassion moved outward to an open future of new (queer) possibilities for becoming, reaching the fuller (but also more vulnerable) expression of the flower in bloom. These movements occurred within and responded to a normative environment—the muddy sediments of cis-heteronormative social structures and dynamics. While across queer, post-structuralist, and Buddhist traditions there is a preferred orientation toward boundlessness or lines of flight, there is also recognition this is a tenuous and contradictory movement as people are grounded to social relations that are already territorialized, pathways that are already carved, fields of suffering and compassion that are already conditioned. In the words of Buddhist monk, peace activist, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, “no mud, no lotus” (Hanh, 2014). Compassion in all its forms and impacts described in our research project can be linked back to the blossoming practices of the lotus flower; queer expressions of compassion are bounded to their environment but invited to be more and more radiant with favorable relations (e.g., mentorship, chosen families, and compassion toward oneself).
This analysis of compassion within 2SLGBTQ+ communities showed a potential area of dialogue between the traditions of queer, post-structuralist, and Buddhist theory in terms of the sociology and politics of emotion. The dukkha caused by a queer existence that is perpetually erased, attacked, and dismissed finds a reprieve from “repetitive strain injuries” (Ahmed, 2014) and healing from trauma in the acts—whatever their scale—of compassion (Bowlen, 2020). Suffering and compassion were often intertwined in participants’ narratives, where compassion was often extended through the acknowledgment of and desire to alleviate another’s pain. Indeed, to move from experiencing empathy to enacting compassion, one must understand the other person and the suffering to which one is responding. Buddhism refers to this dynamic as a sharing of the burden of pain, trauma, or unsatisfactoriness with life (Bodhi, 1984). Through this, we can move in a transformative manner toward deterritorializing sexual and gender expressions (along with intersecting segmentarities), opening lines of flight into new becomings (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Windsor, 2015). What drives participants’ understandings of compassion is a continual practice of unlearning boundaries, going beyond considerations of gender and sexuality to include more intersectional considerations of such reified constructs as race and class. It is the quality of connection both within and beyond queer communities that stands to benefit from this sharing of discomfort.
It is important to note a potential tension between post-structuralist and queer understandings of desire and Buddhist understandings of desire; for the latter, desire (including sexual desire) is often used synonymously with attachment, craving, and greed within the concept of tanha, thus the longstanding tradition of celibacy (brahmacariya) within Buddhist traditions (Scherer, 2016). Meanwhile, in queer and post-structuralist theory, desire is understood as a foundational drive toward connection (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987); for Ahmed (2014), queer desire and pleasure are the disruptive elements needed to shake cis-heteronormativity from their territorialized place and open new spaces for queer becoming. For our purpose, we understand desire in its broader meaning within post-structuralist and queer theory—not as a pathway toward reification and thus serving as an agent of dukkha, but rather as a basic and relentless drive for connection with others. This account of desire as relationality may find closer alignment with the Buddhist teaching of interdependent co-arising (pratityasamutpada)—that all things exist and arise inseparably from each other (Park, 2006). Conceivably, desire for/as connection may be embedded in the Noble Eightfold Path and may underpin the excess or boundlessness (apramanas) of compassion emphasized within Buddhism (Dutton et al., 2007).
The potential connections between how different traditions may understand compassion might foster further engagement and mutual refinement. Work is well underway to identify intersections between Eastern and Western theoretical frames, exploring linkages between post-structuralism and Buddhism (Bandara, 2014; Park, 2006), and working to generate a “queer dharmology” (Corless, 2004; Gleig, 2012; Scherer, 2021), with the intention not to reduce or gloss over their socio-historical and cultural differences but rather to enhance and inform their future development through dialogue. Future studies may also explore more deeply the connection between Buddhism, queerness, ethnicity, and the legacy of colonialism. Compassion, as we have shown, holds appeal as a site in which such fruitful (and subversive) dialogue may take place, enriching the concept and its application within 2SLGBTQ+ communities.
As previously mentioned, our aim is to more deeply understand how compassion is a way toward social change, specifically through the recognition of our common humanity and changing cis-heteronormative views that negatively impact our lives and our wellbeing. We believe this research reveals that understanding the meanings and experiences of compassion from queer perspectives is critical for both personal well-being and broader social transformation. Compassion serves as a powerful tool for dismantling the barriers of cis-heteronormativity that often prevent acceptance of many 2SLGBTQ+ people and contribute to various forms of suffering. By unlearning cis-heteronormativity and learning more generative practices of compassion with role models and mentors, individuals can foster more inclusive communities and environments. When compassion is nurtured, it creates a space for people to explore and reflect on their own identities in terms of gender and sexuality. We have previously described how space can orient people to compassion (Thomas et al., 2022). This, in turn, opens up new potentialities for being, both at the individual and societal levels. Our work is aligned with other researchers who resist deficit-based framings of 2SLGBTQ+ lives and acknowledges the feelings of well-being that 2SLGBTQ+ people can experience even in challenging situations (Jones, 2023). These challenges may be moments of suffering, such as the discomfort stemming from the ever-changing nature of joyous occasions, or the eventual end of happy moments. However, compassion can be a means to navigate suffering and act as a catalyst for creating queer futures that disrupt existing social norms of suffering. Through acts of compassion, we can work toward a society that celebrates diversity and fosters well-being for all.
Conclusion
This study on the construction of compassion within 2SLGBTQ+ communities showed how compassion is deployed to achieve a variety of ends, from reproducing molar (cis-heteronormative) lines of unrecognition and inaction to igniting lines of flight toward queer desires and futures. The more generous and generative forms of compassion exemplified within participants’ narratives seemed to align best with queer liberation. However, these various movements find grounding in the metaphor of the lotus flower, whose radiance moves ever toward apramanas with relations that support queer (un)learnings and becomings.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank all the participants who graciously shared their stories with us.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [grant number 435-2021-0045].
Ethics Statement
This research received ethics clearance from Mount Saint Vincent University (#2020-242) and Dalhousie University (#2021-5655). All participants signed an informed consent.
Data Availability Statement
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.