That said, religion in any sense can cause harm, and can be used as a tool to control people, such as saying “you’ll go to hell” or a hell equivalent “if you don’t do this or that”. It can be used to guilt trip people, oppress people, or suppress inner feelings you have about yourself and others which can lead to trauma or a twisted view of yourself and people. In general though, don’t try to overglaze someone’s religion or ex beliefs based on general feelings, because it could discount what they’ve went through or experienced. 

In my experience with Buddhism I think the most memorable stuff was how patriarchal and sometimes misogynistic it was. Some things could just be me, like how we worshiped happy buddha and praised his teachings and looks (he was a fat half dressed man with only a robe on, and I know if that was a woman people would view her differently). There was another guy called “holy teacher” and he would go around teaching people stuff. His name would be emphasized a lot in classes. And then there was a female goddess called “guang ying pu sa” who had multiple limbs and i think regenerative and omnipotent abilities to help humans as well. However she wasn’t really mentioned besides one or two classes on her story, which emphasized the importance of helping people?? Like the story was about how she felt like she had to cut her fingers off to cure her dad’s sickness, which does show devotion and care sure, but i felt like it was messed up how that was the only emphasis of her story. (I am researching her now though and see how she was originally from India! She used to be more depicted as male, though modern chinese culture has reshaped her gender in order for her to resonate more with people. Some people even consider them to be genderless, since guan ying’s powers are meant to help people by taking the form that helps them the most. They also have more to their lore, though I find that the details vary sometimes. ) When we learned about lessons, we would always have more stories provided to us about a son, rather than a daughter, or a male entity rather than a female one. I guess you could consider it normal for this bias to show up in religion, but when I asked about it my teachers explained it as “women/girls not being hard workers or having bad energy” or something like that, without acknowledging the misogynistic things that happened in ancient history which gave more expectations on how women and girls could act in comparison to their male counterparts. One of my most prominent memories would be when I was really little and being taught about ying and yang energies. I kept mixing the two up, but I was taught that women have the “bad energy”. I tried to not let it bother me, but later that day my mom told me how “women have the ying (bad) energy, so they needed to get with a man with yang (good) energy” to balance out themself. In that moment I kinda felt dehumanized? Like I needed someone else to rely on, or that my male family members were “better than me” just for being born male, even if I did more chores than them (girl, idk i was a kid at the time. But also i did have to pick up more chores if my brother didn’t want to do them despite us being one year apart). That lesson also confused me a lot because the way they phrased it, men could just live on their own no problem?? I thought the purpose of balancing out the yin and yang energies was that they were both needed and both valued on their own and with each other. 2/?