No one enters Burmese traffic with any assumptions about fundamental rights. Pedestrians, certainly, enjoy no “right of way.” No one, by the same token, is ever excluded from the game as long as they remain in motion. […] If you get ahead, you were right to try. If you don’t, you were right to yield. What’s to argue?

When it comes to hierarchies, Southeast Asia can be frustratingly (even scandalously) foreign for those of us raised in egalitarian, Western democracies. This is a book which explains clearly and sympathetically, but not uncritically, the logic behind Burma’s hierarchical arrangements with a close focus on the unique role of monks and gender.

It’s not entirely clear when Japanese women began to fear attacks by the spirits of their vengeful aborted fetuses, but it is clear that beginning in the late 1970s, women began requesting and paying for a new religious rite called mizuko kuyō (water child memorial) that Buddhist and Shinto priests had never heard of before.

​This podcast explores the phenomenon of mizuko spirit attacks in 1980s Japan, where middle and high school girls reported hauntings by the spirits of aborted fetuses. It delves into the media’s role in amplifying these stories and examines the cultural and spiritual practices, such as mizuko kuyō rituals, that emerged to address the grief and guilt associated with abortions in Japan.​

the embedding can be leveraged to quantify changes in stereotypes and attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States. We integrate word embeddings trained on 100 years of text data with the U.S. Census to show that changes in the embedding track closely with demographic and occupation shifts over time.

to work perfectly.
To simulate pleasure perfectly. To not cry at dinner

Many modern Japanese women are bored with their lives and they use ‘organ language’ to express this frustration…

Medication and the small life-style modifications suggested by professionals for some women no doubt often help to ease the sense of oppression that patients experience. At the same time, medicalization can act as an ‘opiate,’ and can deflect attention away from the social origins of distress.

Focusing on public hearings held in 2006 in which temple wives (jizoku) aired their grievances, the article examines the unique challenges that Japanese Zen must confront since the Meiji Reforms eliminated celibacy from the priesthood.

Feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths, apparently because they lead to lower perceived risk and consequently less preparedness.

Women overestimated the facial femininity that men prefer in a partner and men overestimated the facial masculinity that women prefer in a partner.

These results indicate misperception of opposite-sex facial preferences and that mistaken perceptions may contribute to dissatisfaction with [one’s] own appearance.

We found that high-power individuals and men generally display higher agency, lower communion, more positive self-evaluations, and similar cognitive processes. Overall, 71% of the sex/gender differences were consistent with the effects of experimental power differences, whereas only 8% were opposite

Men act differently because of their privilege.

The Mekong region presents a record incidence of cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer). Scientists identify correlations between the development of this aggressive disease and the consumption of raw fish in local dishes. While made aware of these correlations by comprehensive health campaigns, some villagers in Thailand’s notoriously neglected Northeast refuse to cook the fish before consumption

Based on ethnographic data, this paper suggests that practices surrounding the consumption of raw food in the area have become taboo. Rather than disappearing, they now play a key role in bonding rituals where rural masculinities are expressed via spectacles of risk taking that transgress normative ideals of manhood as epitomised by urban men and Buddhist monks.

A man can write a book without drawing attention to the fact that he is a man, but I know that when I begin I must say that I am a woman for this is the background against which all I say will be heard.

Nepalese society is not friendly for the returnee women.

The monk Soreyya replies that his attachment is stronger for the sons of which he is the mother.

A (transgender?) parent and monk overcomes their attachments and gains enlightenment in a famous story that Dhammadinnā Bhikkhunī shows is not devaluing “motherly love” so much as “super-valuing” equanimity towards all.

If you have any questions or thoughts on the article, feel free to reply to its thread on SuttaCentral.

We follow archaeological research and employ skeletal records of women’s and men’s health from 139 archaeological sites in Europe dating back, on average, to about 1200 AD to construct a site-level indicator of historical bias in favor of one gender over the other using dental linear enamel hypoplasias. This historical measure of gender bias significantly predicts contemporary gender attitudes, despite the monumental socioeconomic and political changes that have taken place since.

We also show that this persistence is most likely due to the intergenerational transmission of gender norms, which can be disrupted by significant population replacement. Our results demonstrate the resilience of gender norms and highlight the importance of cultural legacies in sustaining and perpetuating gender (in)equality today.

The results establish that individual use of gender-neutral pronouns reduces the mental salience of males. This shift is associated with people expressing less bias in favor of traditional gender roles and categories, as manifested in more positive attitudes toward women and LGBT individuals in public affairs.

The language we use matters.

Results reveal a compassionate culture towards this marginalised group, for which Buddhist lesbians, gays and bisexuals (LGBs) cultivate self-acceptance through Buddhist teachings, such as the clarification of nature and manifestation, Buddhist equality, and proper interpretation of precepts. These teachings also encourage inclusiveness.

Men’s higher testosterone is typically seen as an innate “sex” difference. However, our experiment demonstrates that gender-related social factors also matter, even for biological measures. Gender socialization may affect testosterone by encouraging men but not women toward behaviors that increase testosterone. This shows that research on human sex biology needs to account for gender socialization and that nurture, as well as nature, is salient to hormone physiology. Our paper provides a demonstration of a novel gender→testosterone pathway, opening up new avenues for studying gender biology.

Administration of testosterone caused increased punishment of the other player but also increased reward of larger offers.

This increased generosity in the absence of provocation indicates that testosterone can also cause prosocial behaviors that are appropriate for increasing status. These findings are in-consistent with a simple relationship between testosterone and aggression and provide causal evidence for a more complex role for testosterone in driving status-enhancing behaviors in males.

Gender is something that happens between me and other people. It doesn’t actually happen inside my body. […] We all depend on the generosity of strangers to give us our gender every day.

Rather than “total prohibition”, [the Tongan word “taboo”’s] original denotation had to do with sacredness and uniqueness.

Many of [Hoi An’s new restaurants] specialized in fish and seafood, but others served expensive animal flesh attributed with virility, strength, and sexual potency, such as he-goat or wild animals. The virility and potency embedded in the flesh of these animals was further exacerbated by the hot, libido-enhancing spices such as chili, lemongrass, ginger, and rau răm. […] these venues were practically brothels.

In World War II, Britain invented the electronic computer. By the 1970s, its computing industry had collapsed—thanks to a labor shortage produced by sexism.

We describe three patients from different religious backgrounds in Sri Lanka whose possession states were strongly influenced by their religious beliefs. Patient A was a Buddhist who claimed to have special powers given by a local deity named Paththini. Patient B was a Catholic who experienced spirits around her whom she believed were sent by Satan. Patient C was a Muslim and believed she was possessed by spirits. The religious beliefs also influenced the help-seeking behaviour and the rituals or treatments to which they responded.

… the existence of the “sticky floor”, in that wage gaps are higher at lower ends of the distribution and steadily decline over the distribution. Machado-Mata-Melly decompositions reveal that women at the lower end of the distribution face higher discriminatory gaps in wages.

In the canonical account there is no indication that for the bhikkhu to become female is the result of bad karma, or that for the bhikkhuni to change into a male is the result of good karma.

They ask their communities to “wait and see” whether these allegations are true, with the unspoken assumption that they are not. I assert these responses use Buddhist teachings to uphold cis-masculine innocence by using hegemonic logics and commitments to downplay and delegitimize the phenomenon of sexual violence.

The desires of the audience’s heart are as crooked as corkscrews. We continue to love what we ought to hate.

This is the human condition, this sneaking suspicion of our own badness. It lies at the heart of our fascination with people who do awful things. Something in us—in me—chimes to that awfulness, recognizes it in myself, is horrified by that recognition, and then thrills to the drama of loudly denouncing the monster.

What do we do with the art of monsters from the past? Look for ourselves there—in the monstrousness.

The [newborn] baby is bumped softly on the floor in order to acquaint it with the fact that harsh and startling events may occur in the world of the humans where it has now been received.

… the Buddhist tale of the impure, disgusting, and violent female body and the suffering of the fetus within the womb, so seemingly negative toward women, in fact operated discursively and affectively to support premodern female Buddhist monasticism by helping to generate a moral-social imaginary in which female fertility and sexuality cannot be the highest good of womanhood.

It’s an anthropological fact that masculinity is a bit fragile in that it has to be constructed. Every society has worked on constructing roles and rites-of-passage for men that attach them to their communities. [But] this [nurturing, pro-social] behavior—being learned—is rather fragile, and can disappear quite quickly under circumstances that no longer teach it effectively.

A tour de force on the state of men and boys today along with its political—and personal—ramifications.

Unlike others in the [Vessantara Jātaka], [Yasodharā] never breaks precepts, or puts her own wishes, however noble, before the needs and requirements that the beings in the immediate situation demand: she provides the true moral compass of the tale. […] Maddī, like Vessantara, has to give up everything, but, unlike him, she never lets go of her sense of interconnectedness with other beings: whether her husband, her family, her environment, or, perhaps, her vow

This paper discusses the role of the Buddha’s wife, Yasodharā/Rāhulamūtā, in Pāli Jātakas. Noting her continued popularity in South and Southeast Asian Buddhism, it considers her path to liberation seen as a composite whole, through many lifetimes, and considers some of the literary implications of this multiple depiction.

As long as they get their money, they don’t care how many of us they kill off.

Sexual harassment is more prevalent for women supervisors than for women employees.

Thai Buddhist nuns (mae chis) and bhikkhunīs are excluded from the country’s saṅgha, directly affecting their religious standing and social possibilities

An introduction to the status of women in Thai Buddhism and why it matters.

I too have had my hands full of what keeps me
contained…

… engineering education successfully turns potential critics into agents of cultural reproduction

All those times I was bored…

… quietly ignoring much in the Buddhist heritage that suggested that birth as a woman indicated that one was less prepared to attain enlightenment than men, Ch’an teachers urged upon their students the point of view that enlightenment was available to everyone at all times; any other view was seen as a hindrance to practice

I found the world so new

We learn to value women and their contributions.

An introduction to the history of Buddhism through women’s eyes and words.

Sherpa men die in disproportionate numbers, leaving behind widows who struggle to survive. Forced to become breadwinners, some women are defying tradition by breaking into the male-dominated world of Himalayan climbing.

A spiritual community is nothing if it cannot take care of its most vulnerable.

A spirited defense of the anitiya rules of the Bhikkhu Pātimokkha which require monks to take allegations of sexual impropriety seriously: a responsibility many Buddhist monks and leaders today have failed to live up to.

“A monastery is a place where equality is preached but not practiced; a gar is a place where equality is practiced but not preached.”

It is no wonder that today a common appellation found haloing Jigme Phuntsok on icons and shrines says his teachings are like “the blissful sun rising in the Snowland as the miserable period of darkness fades (dus ’khrug gi mun nag dbyings su yal/ bod gangs can la bde ba’i nyi ma shar).”

An inspiring overview of the first college in Tibet to offer the highest academic degrees to women, including a summary of the school’s curriculum, exams, and social impact.

We always say “Nobody knew,” and that means that everyone who knew was a nobody.

That nuns did participate in the transmission and explication of the sacred texts is, however, proven by both literary and epigraphic records.

A well-written overview of what the historical record says about early Buddhist women.

Women are often the main upholders and supporters of a religion or faith or movement. This was certainly so with Buddhism when it was at its beginnings

A brief sketch of gender roles in ancient India at the time of the Buddha.

… the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at.

Half a history of, and accessible meditation on the philosophy of, science and half memoir of the author’s grappling with depression, this pleasantly easy read captures something of “emptiness.” It shows how Buddhism still has much to add in the West’s ongoing struggle to reconcile its extremes of naive, Christian eternalism and cynical, “scientific” nihilism.

It is inescapable that, whatever the reading, according to the early texts the Buddha did not have “normal” genitals. And the only reading actually supported by a canonical text is that the Buddha was intersex, and his genitals looked like a woman’s.

… based on what can be culled from the Madhyama-āgama discourse in comparison with the other versions, it seems possible to arrive at a coherent narrative of [the founding] of the order of nuns.

We found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do […] and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.

In Theravāda monasteries, nuns, even those who have been ordained for decades, typically sit on a mat on the floor, while monks, even those who have just been ordained, sit on a raised platform above them. The seating arrangement of nuns below or behind the monks is symbolic of [their] subordinate position

Forget you. This is about waiting

A poem which shakes ‘work’ from its masculine frame and recenters it, not on you, on your brother.

‘I smiled at the guards standing at my cell,’ he writes. ‘Being thrown in the Hole was worth the pleasure of seeing them still alive.’

A review of Jarvis Masters’ spiritual memoir Finding Freedom analyzing the work as a critque of toxicity in an American prison and the presentation of an alternate “Bodhisattva” masculinity possible even among killers.

There’s a huge amount of it that’s positive! I’m not so surprised that there are negative attitudes towards women depicted in early Buddhist literature, because this is an ancient civilization with traditional values. So, the negativity doesn’t surprise me. But all the positivity does.

A fascinating conversation about the lives of a few of the earliest Bhikkhunis and what their biographies can tell us about life in ancient India.

These two cases may already suffice for the time being to alert us to the possibility that gender discrimination in the Pāli canon may well be the result of later developments. Regarding the overall attitude towards nuns in early Buddhism, I think it stands beyond doubt that an order of nuns was in existence, and from that I would conclude that the Buddha approved of its existence.

Mansplaining is not a universal flaw of the gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck.

A classic essay (updated slightly in 2012) on casual misogyny which prompted the addition of “mansplaining” to the lexicon.

Like power, gender is everywhere, running through our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the earth, and the relations between nations, classes, and cultures. And like power, it is not a problem in itself but instead a question of how we do it.

… someone is a sequence of choices, and the question is: Will my next choice be conscious, and will my ability to make it be unfettered?

Discriminatory views and practices are the antithesis of Right View, and they undermine the Middle Path by perpetuating identification with concepts of independent, constant, inherently existing selves and others

A brief outline of the discrimination faced by women across the Buddhist world, and a thoroughly cited argument for rejecting sexist views, even those that can be found in the Buddhist Canon.