The Theravada Abhidhamma by Y. Karunadasa

Author:Y. Karunadasa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

Faculties of Sex

There are two faculties of sex: the faculty of femininity and the faculty of masculinity. The first as defined in the Dhammasaṅgaṇi is the physical appearance, marks, traits, and deportment peculiar to a female, or the state of femininity (ittthatta, itthibhāva). Likewise, the second is the physical appearance and so on peculiar to a male, or the state of masculinity (purisatta, purisabhāva).757

Elaborating on these differences, the commentary observes:

The shape of a woman’s hands, feet, neck, breast, and so on is not like that of a man’s. The lower body of the female is broad, the upper body is less broad. The hands and feet are small, the mouth is small. The female breast is prominent. The face is without beard or moustache. The dressing of the hair, the weaving of clothes, are also unlike those of a man’s. The masculine features are just the opposite. For the shape of the hands, feet, neck, breast, and so on of a man is unlike the shape of those of a woman. For a man’s upper body is broad, the lower body is less broad, the hands and feet are large, the face is large, the breast flesh is less full; beard and moustache grow.758

Then there are differences as to habits and deportment: “Thus in youth women play with tiny shallow baskets, pestles and mortars, variegated dolls, and weave string with clay fibre. There is a want of assertion in women’s walking, standing, lying down, sitting, eating, and swallowing. Indeed, when a man of that description is seen, folk say: ‘He walks, stands, and so on, like a woman.’ In the case of men there is a marked difference. In youth they play with chariots and ploughs, and so on, make sand banks and dig ponds. There is assertion in their walking, and so on. When a woman is seen taking long strides, and so on, folk say: ‘She walks like a man.’”759

Although the Dhammasaṅgaṇi defines the two faculties to mean the physical features and so on that are peculiar to women and men, the commentary takes a somewhat different position. It says that physical features and so on are not the two faculties. They are what result from them as their causes. Just as a tree grows because of a seed, replete with twigs and branches, even so because of the faculty of femininity there come into being such physical features and so on as are peculiar to a female. With necessary changes this observation applies to the faculty of masculinity as well.760 Thus the “that” (yaṃ) of the Dhammasaṅgaṇi is in its commentary understood as “that through which” (yena).761

According to the commentary the faculty of femininity/masculinity is spread all over the physical body (sakala-sarīra-byāpaka) as the faculty of touch is.762 As to their relative position, it is not correct to say that the faculty of femininity/masculinity is either “located in the space where the organ of touch is located” or “located in the space where that is not located.”763 Both are diffused all over the physical body, yet one is not an aspect of the other.

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