I have never studied Buddhism but I know a little. We had a place in my old town where people stayed, prayed and meditated.

But I didn't notice anything unequal between men and women.

I just hope women can still relate to men and men to women. It would be awful if men and women were deemed different spiritually.

Quote from julie

I have never studied Buddhism but I know a little. We had a place in my old town where people stayed, prayed and meditated.

But I didn't notice anything unequal between men and women.

I just hope women can still relate to men and men to women. It would be awful if men and women were deemed different spiritually.

_____________________________________

"The primary feminist criticism of Buddhism is that dharma teachers are most often men. Feminists have responded with different solutions to this problem. One obvious solution is to make structural changes to ensure that women are trained and promoted as teachers. However, some feminists have argued that giving dharma teachers any real authority is itself a patriarchal practice that cannot be redeemed by encouraging women to become teachers."

http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/issue...nter/equal.php

Great article offered. Thank-you.

If we do not now lose, through waves of backlash and complacency, what we have only recently gained, we may live to see the day when not only will women teach dharma, but they will be just as likely as men to be honored lineage holders. When that happens, Buddhism will finally be actualizing its teachings and its vision, rather than perpetuating the current contradiction between gender-free and gender-neutral teachings and the institutions that favor men over women.

I agree with this.

Quote from julie

I agree with this.

But it is meaningless verbiage.

Who wants an 'honoured lineage holder' (sic) in believing the moon is made of green cheese. Dharma ?? WTF?

Quote from Percy

But it is meaningless verbiage.

Who wants an 'honoured lineage holder' (sic) in believing the moon is made of green cheese. Dharma ?? WTF?

Yep, I can see it looking meaningless. I should not have taken it away from the context.

I can see what the article was saying. The end bit is what I showed and I somehow figured others would relate. How silly of me.

I understand some Universities are in discussion whether men want the same end results as women in this revolution we started years ago. We have many isms at the moment and my statement behind quoting the words I did says, "We did change in our evolution and we can work together to build a better world"

Finally, less than one hundred years ago, in 1920, the U.S. Constitution was amended to grant women the right to vote.

Concern about gender equity and equality lessened after this victory and became completely dormant during the 1950s, when women had been dismissed from their vital factory jobs following the war and sent home to have babies. The 1950s perhaps represent a nadir in awareness that women might want to have lives not bounded by the gender roles assigned to them by a patriarchal culture. As someone socialized in the 1950s, I often suggest that those of us who remember how horrible things were back then need to explain to others why the second wave of feminism arose in the first place.


By the late 1960s, both women and men were again fully aware of just how much the conventional gender arrangements crippled women, and they were advocating more equitable gender arrangements. This is the environment in which Buddhist teachings first became available on a large scale to North Americans of non-Asian descent.


Though often they will not acknowledge their debts to the second wave of feminism, I would argue that most of the current leading female teachers of Buddhism owe at least part of their success to that movement. Whether or not they are personally poised to acknowledge that influence, most highly regarded contemporary North American women teachers benefited greatly from the feminist insistence that if men deserved human rights, so too did women.


Had Asian Buddhist teachers first brought Buddhism to the West in a large-scale way during the 1950s, when the cult of domesticity was at its height and conventional gender roles were rigidly enforced, women would have been staging bake sales rather than meditating and studying side by side with men, preparing to become teachers. Thus without the milieu produced by feminism, it is unlikely that many of the most noted North American female teachers would have been prepared to teach, and even more unlikely that they would have been accepted as teachers. Therefore, I suggest that at least some of the inspiration and motivation for changes in the contemporary acceptance and elevation of some Western women teachers of the dharma is the result of the second wave of feminism, which has changed everything about our lives for the better, forever.


We would do well to delight in the auspicious coincidence that brought Buddhist teachers and feminist consciousness together at the same time. And when we trace our ancestry as practitioners, it would be accurate to thank not only our overt lineage ancestors—those whose connections we chant every day—and not only the more obscure female Buddhist ancestors, whom we painstakingly research and discover, but also the generations of women and men who taught us the practical, everyday, institutional meaning of that simplest, most radical, and most accurate of feminist slogan: “Women are human beings.”


If we do not now lose, through waves of backlash and complacency, what we have only recently gained, we may live to see the day when not only will women teach dharma, but they will be just as likely as men to be honored lineage holders. When that happens, Buddhism will finally be actualizing its teachings and its vision, rather than perpetuating the current contradiction between gender-free and gender-neutral teachings and the institutions that favor men over women.

Concern about gender equity and equality lessened after this victory and became completely dormant during the 1950s, when women had been dismissed from their vital factory jobs following the war and sent home to have babies. The 1950s perhaps represent a nadir in awareness that women might want to have lives not bounded by the gender roles assigned to them by a patriarchal culture. As someone socialized in the 1950s, I often suggest that those of us who remember how horrible things were back then need to explain to others why the second wave of feminism arose in the first place.

By the late 1960s, both women and men were again fully aware of just how much the conventional gender arrangements crippled women,

What a load of crap. Revisionist. Typical mendacity.

Women were not 'sent home to have babies'. They stayed on in work as the workplaces re-tooled for civilian manufacture. There were few homes to go back to and MILLIONS of men were dead and maimed. The fit men were rebuilding the hundreds of thousands of homes that had been destroyed. Women left husbandless and with few fit men to marry had to stand on their own two feet for a change.

The men HAD HOPED that women would step up into adulthood alongside men.

But they didn't.

They RESENTED.

It was men who had come to the realisation that the conventional gender relations had crippled them, not women. They wanted women to be equal. They wanted women to be adult and stop the con.

Women simply invented another one.

Quote from Percy

What a load of crap. Revisionist. Typical mendacity.

Women were not 'sent home to have babies'. They stayed on in work as the workplaces re-tooled for civilian manufacture. There were few homes to go back to and MILLIONS of men were dead and maimed. The fit men were rebuilding the hundreds of thousands of homes that had been destroyed. Women left husbandless and with few fit men to marry had to stand on their own two feet for a change.

The men HAD HOPED that women would step up into adulthood alongside men.

But they didn't.

They RESENTED.

It was men who had come to the realisation that the conventional gender relations had crippled them, not women. They wanted women to be equal. They wanted women to be adult and stop the con.

Women simply invented another one.

Of course I can't argue for America. I will just have to take your word for it.

But it does make me wonder why America hasn't achieved as other westernised countries when it was men who wanted it. Maybe the women have been fighting against feminism in America more than for it.

Of course I can't argue for America. I will just have to take your word for it.

But it does make me wonder why America hasn't achieved as other westernised countries when it was men who wanted it. Maybe the women have been fighting against feminism in America more than for it.

I am not sure what you are saying Jools. I wasn't speaking for America but for the Western nations. Britain was my experience, walking to school through bombed buildings. Europe was even worse as far as damage was concerned and the reduced workforce.

What have the 'other countries' achieved? All have been blighted by feminism.

Quote from Percy

I am not sure what you are saying Jools. I wasn't speaking for America but for the Western nations. Britain was my experience, walking to school through bombed buildings. Europe was even worse as far as damage was concerned and the reduced workforce.

What have the 'other countries' achieved? All have been blighted by feminism.

I understand what you are saying though I haven't listened to all you podcasts, yet.

I wrote a whole lot to explain my thoughts but decided best not to submit them.

I will accept that women need to continue to become responsible adults.

I think we will get there.

Quote from bababob

_____________________________________

"The primary feminist criticism of Buddhism is that dharma teachers are most often men. Feminists have responded with different solutions to this problem. One obvious solution is to make structural changes to ensure that women are trained and promoted as teachers. However, some feminists have argued that giving dharma teachers any real authority is itself a patriarchal practice that cannot be redeemed by encouraging women to become teachers."

http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/issue...nter/equal.php

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The American singer Ethel Merman popularized a song in the 1940's that went like this (it was a duet with a guy whose name I can't recall):

Anything you can do, I can do better ...
I can do anything better than you ...
(No you can't!)
Yes I can!
(No you can't!)
Yes I can!
(No you can't!)
Yes I can, Yes I can, Yes I caannn!

You think You can achieve enlightenment? Well I can do it better!
This is feminism in a nutshell.

Quote from Billy

Interesting the same types of women pushing this issue is the same ones that brought us feminism and communism. Most of the names are Ashkenazi Jews.

Not surprised.


Eisenbrath, Boorstein and very possible Gross.

________________________________________

The first article I read that clued me in to misandry was about
the male-bashing allegedly prevalent among Jewish women. This
is probably one of the sources of friction between Jews and Arab
Muslims. Watch me get tarred and feathered as an anti-semite!
(I read a book review, folks ... that's all!)

Quote from Percy

The men HAD HOPED that women would step up into adulthood alongside men.

It was men who had come to the realisation that the conventional gender relations had crippled them, not women. They wanted women to be equal. They wanted women to be adult and stop the con.

They hoped for and expected too much.

Buddhism is very gender neutral in its teachings, and has both male and female saints (boddhisattvas). This may have been what attracted some feminists.

The bitter gender feminists shouldn't be able to hold out within Buddhism for long though. Either Buddhism 'cures' them or they'll have to leave for something more femi-based, like Wicca.