"I did not kill Kyaw Zin Win….": Queer Suicide and Buddhist Social Thought

This article examines the intersection between LGBTIQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, intersex, queer and questioning) subjectivities and mental health and suicidal tendencies; furthermore, it discusses the supposedly positive influence of religiosity on mental health; Buddhist perspective on suicide; and avenues to emancipatory practices (liberation “dharmology”). Departing from the example of the suicide of Kyaw Zin Win, a 26-year-old gay Burmese librarian taunted by religious homophobia, the question arises as to how Buddhist traditions have conceptually, socially, and systemically contributed to LGBTIQ+ suffering and suicidality. First, trauma, suicidal ideations, and ‘self-completed death’/‘murders’ are framed within wider social justice parameters before queer mental distress and religiosity are laid out and the assumption that religiosity has an inoculative effect against suicidality is questioned and complicated. Buddhist thought and subjectivities are introduced in relation to trans- and queerness as well as with self-completed deaths. The complexity and ambiguity of the Buddhist perspectives on sexual and gender diversity as well as on suicide are demonstrated to be co-productive factors of cultural expectations and normative scripts. Through critical hermeneutics (textual, historical-contextual, anthropological, and conceptual hermeneutics), possibilities for engaged Buddhist inclusive social justice practices are revealed; Buddhist perspectives on LGBTIQ+ discrimination and suicidality can thus be critically questioned and reconsidered, utilizing five steps of Buddhist liberation dharmology.