[Buddha-l] Re: An experiment (Gender on Buddha-l)

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 15:40 -0700, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> There is a tendency for linear, narrow, touchy, and competitive 
> thinking to dominate buddha-l.

My observation is that there is very little evidence of thinking of any
kind on buddha-l. It seems to me a playground for tired minds and for
people who could benefit from the advice (politely stated, of course) to
get a life.

I don't know about most males on this list, but my main reason for
writing to buddha-l is to avoid helping my wife with housework. Whenever
she shows signs of cooking, washing some dishes or scrubbing some
floors, I tell her I have to go do some work. Of course I hate doing my
own work as much as I hate doing housework, so I write messages to
buddha-l and hope she will think I'm hard at work writing a book or
something.

>  This kind of thinking is, in our culture (all cultures?) predominantly done by males. 

Yes, males have always been excellent at avoiding doing any real work.
That's because we need to save ourselves for important things like going
bowling and fishing. 

> It's like the old line, "Sure it's funny--until someone gets hurt." 

Years ago I heard a fascinating interview with a Mohawk warrior, who
told the interviewer that an important part of Mohawk culture is to
tease people mercilessly. The idea is that people who cannot take being
teased cannot be trusted in tough situations. When I heard that
interview, I realized that just about my entire childhood and early
adulthood had operated on the same principle. My guess is that's because
America is also a warrior society and used to be a frontier society that
developed teasing as a means of making sure that people did not crack
under discomforts and pleasures. Interesting enough, Dreyfus wrote about
teasing and hazing as an important part of Tibetan Buddhist practice.
Again, the idea seems to be that if someone really wants to be a
bodhisattva, they have to learn to have equanimity when the going gets
tough and personal and dirty. There is a lot of this in Zen training,
too.

When a person's conditioning is an atmosphere of teasing, as mine was,
then teasing becomes the normal way to do everything. It becomes the
normal way of showing respect and even affection. The more respect I
have for someone, and the more I think of them as an equal, the more
likely I am to show my respect in the form of mock abuse. (Whenever I am
nice to someone, you can bet that either I don't respect them very much,
or recognize that they are junior to me, or am trying to soften them up
so they'll give me some money.)

> If they don't piss people off enough, they don't engender (so to speak) responses.

I can't speak for others, but I never feel pissed off at anyone on
buddha-l. (Look, if Donalad Rumsfeld joins buddha-l, this could change.)
I can't even remember the last time I was pissed off at anyone over
something they wrote in an e-mail. Similarly, I can't think of any time
when an e-mail has hurt my feelings in any way. So the saying 
"it's funny until someone gets hurt" does not speak to my condition.
It's almost impossible for me to imagine anyone actually feeling angry
or hurt over something written on buddha-l.

> In this regard, Buddha-l is a failure, not simply for the quality of the 
> discourse, but because that discourse flouts right speech. 

To my way of thinking buddha-l would be a failure if everybody just
exhibited right speech. God almighty, how bland and insipid that would
be. I'd sign off immediately if people started pussyfooting around and
licking each other's ears like a brood of lost kittens. 

> What to do about all this? I don't know for sure.

There's no need to do anything. If people don't like buddha-l, there are
plenty of other discussion forums around. Those of us who like the
roughness and rudeness of folks like Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, Candrakirti
Linji and Huangbo will stay here and heap verbal abuse on one another
and thank Jesus we're not a bunch of emotionally challenged wimps. 

> We *should* do better in promoting the voices of women on this Buddhist 
> list

Why? Why not just let things be as they are, and if people like it, they
will stay, and if the don't like it, they will delete or leave.

> Hey, imagine that: promoting the dharma at home with a keyboard--can't beat 
> that for lazy bodhisattva practice.

A keyboard is way too far from real human beings. You can't promote
dharma when you're as far from reality as you are when you're playing
with your goddamn computer. No, the place to promote dharma is when
you're playing with your kids, walking your dog, working with your
colleagues and showing kindness to some poor bastard who has worked up
the nerve to ask you for some money on the street. Buddha-l is for
playing around, and pretending to be wise, and avoiding work, and stuff
like that.

> Bowing,

Bowling? Great idea! Meet you down at the alley!

-- 
Richard Hayes
***
"When a stupid man does something is is ashamed of,
he always says it is his duty." -- George Bernard Shaw