83 – Affective lives and (non-)reproductive strategies: innovation, adaptation and crisis in global asceticisms

How do religious practitioners navigate tensions between sexuality, procreation and anti-natalism? This panel examines tensions and possibilities in lived religious experience arising from antinatalist religious discourse in India and South Asian-inspired movements. By foregrounding (non-)reproductive ideals we highlight adaptation and innovation with diverse implications for affective lives. Amy Langenberg troubles the assumption that, because early Buddhist teachings target sexual desire as a root cause of suffering, and because the avoidance of "village sex" is a central feature of Buddhist monastic discipline, Buddhist asceticism is asexual. A closer examination of vinaya read alongside ethnographic and historical data reveals a rejection of householder procreation coexisting with various sexual affects. Building on research on medieval haṭha yoga, Ruth Westoby problematises the easy dichotomy between antinatalist ascetics and pronatalist laypeople. Highlighting instead the diversity of both injunction and practice, this paper demonstrates breadth and adaptation in celibate yet affective and sexual yet (non-)reproductive practices. Amrita Nandy elaborates how, in highly pronatalist India, lay Buddhists can struggle between opposing ideals–parenthood, a cultural imperative and childfreeness, a cherished condition for nibbana. This paper explores their interpretations of Buddhist teachings to navigate their samsaric and spiritual lives. In contemporary guru-led movements, procreative sex among religious adepts (samnyasis and brahmacaris) is commonly understood to be either forbidden or a spiritual impediment. Amanda Lucia examines sexual strategies deployed to avert the crisis of procreation: homosexuality, pedophilia, abortion, and sterilization. The ubiquity of these sexual strategies reveals not only the mutuality of sex and asceticism, but also its bureaucratization. Additional papers that complement this discussion and further problematise practices of childfreeness are most welcome.

Convenor

Ruth Westoby -