Buddhism beyond Gender by Rita M. Gross

Author:Rita M. Gross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2018-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

In the Buddhist story, humanity is fundamentally “bi-sexed.” The two sexes arise together and are more similar than different, as we shall see below. It makes no sense to see one as prior to or more important than the other, as is so often done when interpreting the Western story.

To use the term “mankind” for this fundamentally “two-sexed” humanity is clearly inappropriate. Given the stark differences between the Buddhist story of the origin of sexuality and the Western story, Buddhists should always use language that accurately reflects the two-sexed nature of humanity, so that Buddhists, especially Western Buddhists, do not think the Buddhist view of human two-sexed beings shares anything in common with the biblical narrative and the way it makes women derivative, secondary beings, an add-on or afterthought. Generic masculine usage simply cannot carry the burden of communicating that humanity is actually two sexed. Generic masculine language seriously distorts fundamental Buddhist understandings of how women and men are related to each other. For my entire life as a Buddhist scholar-practitioner, I have argued against the common tendency to use generic masculine language in English-language Buddhist liturgies, because it so fundamentally distorts Buddhist insight into the two-sexed nature of humanity. It is incomprehensible to me that Buddhists would resist this linguistic reform, and I have never heard a cogent defense of using generic masculine language in English-language Buddhist liturgies.

That it is initially disrupting to switch from generic masculine to gender-inclusive English-language usage is irrelevant. In the middle to late 1970s, I undertook a deliberate effort to retrain myself in how I used the English language. For example, I made it a point to routinely say “letter carrier,” not “mailman.” These days, many letter carriers are in fact women, so the new usage is more accurate. It only took a few months for this change to take hold, and the benefits far outweigh any small difficulty. But those who retain gender advantage from using conventional forms still resist. Sometime in the middle 1980s, I was asked to edit a well-used textbook on world religions to get rid of its generic masculine language. The publishers had received multiple complaints about the generic masculine usage and had asked the authors of the various chapters, most of whom were well-known male scholars, to revise their chapters. The authors claimed that they simply did not know how to write using gender-inclusive language, a rather feeble claim coming from people who are competent enough to become well-known scholars. I was already a known scholar in my own right and was working on my own scholarly projects. I declined the invitation, but have always seen it as indicative of how blind people are to male privilege. An up-and-coming younger female scholar should interrupt her work to clean up after well-known male scholars! Why would anyone even think it would be appropriate to make such a request?

In the Buddhist narrative, after human beings become two-sexed, sexuality affects men and women in the same ways, according to some important texts.

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