Storyteller: Nagakusala Age: 60 Identity: Pansexual and non-binary (trans*)
The religious order I’m in meets in chapters, and for a long time the Buddhist Centre had two chapters: one for women, and one for men+, which had me and a trans woman in it. And that was increasingly unsatisfactory for the trans woman. And it was always interesting for me, it was like, how does this fit? It makes sense in some ways, and in other ways it doesn’t quite fit. And then the two of us got this email from two women who said they wanted to leave the women’s chapter and did we want to start a women+ chapter? And it happened really quickly and it’s worked really well. There’s something about it which is... there’s no explanation needed for any of it, because we’re starting from the basis of, as one of the women put it, this isn’t a mixed group. It’s women+. We don’t want any men in this group. So it’s like, I was invited into that space, it was their idea. So in a sense, that’s the safe space.