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

[Andrew Skilton]

Thanks to Joanna for a relevant critique of an aspect of Buddha-Hell discourse.  Thanks also to Franz for a considered and also relevant development of that critique.  I think, Joanna, your original point may well be true, though you happened not to follow your case through (I can understand if you cannot raise the enthusiasm for such a task) * in response to Richard's irrelevant statistic, you should have responded with a detailed analysis of the number of threads/points of yours that have not been followed up. 

I have witnessed far too many (academic/Buddhist) situations in which middle-aged white men claim to be colour/gender blind, even as, by mutual unexpressed agreement, they automatically exclude all non-white or female contributions/candidates, for me to give credit to claims from middle-aged white men that these things 'are simply not an issue'.  Interestingly, I have only contributed to this list once or twice in recent years and those contributions were prompted by you, Joanna (and in their turn were not taken up further on the list * tho' Richard did address one).  

Thinking about why my contributions are so few some of Franz's observations seem germane.  The narrow, tiresome retreading of certain well-worn paths by people who seem painfully over-burdened with opinions and are seemingly committed to shooting only from the hip, makes for a rather hostile environment in which I am reluctant to participate. (I almost shot myself the last time the 'epistemological rant' was re-rehearsed.) Often I find myself grandstanding a strange interaction between a pretty restricted group of people for whom the closest analogy is perhaps an overeducated dysfunctional family.  Sometimes Buddha-L seems to be the Buddhist studies internet equivalent of Big Brother * a television programme that I would never admit to watching! But Richard is also right in saying that if we don't like it we can go elsewhere. Personally, I delete! After all Buddha-L still provides a forum which for me occasionally turns up useful and or interesting contacts and ideas, and often enough also provides simple entertainment.  For example, Richard, now a self-confessed tease, has entertained me pretty much as often as he has irritated me, and that seems a pretty good statistic to me. And I have been laughing about Ars(e)burgers Syndrome ever since I read about it. (My dogs love 'em.)

Do we have a duty to promote women's voices in this forum , as Franz suggests?  I'm not sure * its certainly not a goal stated in the Buddha-L constitution, that weighty document.  I do occasionally feel a duty to support or promote the voices of individual women, usually because in some way I have heard them and think the particular statements being ignored warrant being heard and I am well aware that women's voices tend to be ignored, but statements reminiscent of Joanna's are sometimes motivated by negative emotions no different from those that motivated those others who would suppress them in the first place. (A gold star for anyone who bothers to unravel that last sentence.) This is not a comment on Joanna, so let's not start that hare here, please, but this last point may also be some (but not sufficient) justification for the knee-jerk hostile or dismissive response that her comments have provoked.  So I don't think I have a duty to write like this because Joanna is a woman, but because she seemed to me to be expressing something that warranted acknowledgement and exploration and that was not remotely adequately addressed by some of the responses she initially received. 

Andrew Skilton



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Andrew Skilton D. Phil.

email: skiltonat at cardiff.ac.uk

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