When Womanhood Matters

Sex Essentialization and Pedagogical Dissonance in Buddhist Discourse

Bibliographic Data

ID12908322
AuthorsBhikkhunī Dhammadinnā (Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume12
Issue3
Pages274-313
Publication date2019-10-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions of South Asia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1751-2689 • E-ISSN: 1751-2697
PublisherEquinox Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1558/rosa.39890
OpenAlexW2980344723
LanguageEN
References cited7

This article further articulates Sponberg’s (1992) seminal identification of four distinct attitudes toward women and the feminine in Buddhism, by including a sub-typology of ‘essentialist misogyny’. Textual and institutional voices in the Buddhist traditions are traced that testify to a process of essentialization of the female sex or gender that is first constructed as an entity, ‘womanhood’, and then devalued. This trend is already documented in the early Buddhist texts, where it stands in contrast to the soteriologically normative nonessentialized view of femininity. The discourse develops with misogynist positions taken in medieval Theravada works. It is further continued, albeit under an opposite agenda, that of the ‘Sacred Feminine’, in contemporary Western Buddhism. Such contemporary instances of an essentialized feminine exemplify how doctrinal and religio-historical tensions are renegotiated leading to the emergence of new incarnations of the Theravada, and Buddhist in general, scriptural canon, which in turn overwrite previously emerged ‘practical canons’

Aesthetics · Art · Buddhism · Epistemology · Essentialism · Femininity · Literature · Normative · Sociology · Theology · Typology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Philosophy

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