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

[jkirk]

Replies interlinear and bracketed by {  }  JK
==================
From: "Andrew Skilton" < skiltonat at Cardiff.ac.uk  >


> 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.

{ begin my reply:
Thanks Andrew for your guarded remarks, guarded being better than nada.
Here is ONE example of a post by me that was currently relevant because of 
hurricane Katrina, to which there was no response on the list at all. (I 
simply do not have the time to go back and repeat every one of the 17 posts 
that were just ignored.)
Suddenly today, everybody is on about charitable giving. The header was "So 
much for tsunami dana."  I posted this on 9/29/05.  Since so many of the 
charitable folk on this list automatically delete what I post, I am 
reposting it minus the article:
------------
{begin reposting}
The same thing is going on right now with reconstruction in New Orleans.
Even the Red cross, which is supposed to be a reliable conduit for aid, ran
into FEMA blocks in New Orleans and was not even present in many of the
Mississippi flooded-out areas. We have undoubtedly entered an era of
increasing natural calamities of great proportions, and the only way that
victims of such emergencies can properly be helped is if the local and
regional forces get themselves organized, planned, and structured for such
eventualities.
The more local the organizing, the better chance they might have to escape
corruption because the more local, the more visible.

In the case of Sri Lanka and other Asian areas, I doubt if such organization
will happen or that any of it will be corruption-free. Civil society in
these countries is weak. (In India similar issues have been exposed about
tsnunami relief in the Tamil Nadu area.) Seeing how the feds are now handing
out competition-free contracts to favorite companies like Bechtel and
Halliburton, seeing how many local corporations in the New Orleans area
already have their hands out for special relief courtesy of the taxpayers,
at the undoubted expense of ordinary flood victims who now have nothing to
return to, I see no difference between Sri Lanka, India, or the USA. It
almost makes one wonder if there is not some international agreement among
elites to just let millions die of disease, starvation and homelessness in
order to reduce their claims on national wealth.
Joanna
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=1,1751,0,0,1,0  }

------------ 
> 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).
-------
{I see you have had similar academic work experiences to mine, and I am 
grateful that some things I wrote were read by you and prompted a 
response. }
--------
[snip]
>
> 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 really don't know how Franz intended this to mean-- "promote women's 
voices?"--
I don't see how this can be done any more than it can be done in various UU 
congregations who keep trying desperately to attract African-Americans, gays 
etc to their all white congregations (like the one I know here) by 
constantly talking about it but doing nothing much.   As the old housing 
industry saying goes, "If you build 'em, they will come." Well--the only way 
to "build 'em" on a list like this is to make it more open and attractive to 
women as well as men, and the way to accomplish this is STYLE. Yes, I said 
style. The rhetorical style found too often on this list is one that would 
send most intelligent women off to more hospitable lists and has already 
caused one more of them to leave. }
-----------
>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.)
----------
{I suggest that there are honest negative emotions, and then there are just 
plain role-playing fake emotions or masks of real hostility that pass for 
banter.  Negativity is a fact of life, especially if someone is making 
objections. }
-----------
>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

{Thanks Andrew for pointing this out----naturally, I --and a few others as 
I've already mentioned several times, but who seem to get left out of the 
equation -- agree.
It is not just "me against everybody else" on this list!  Joanna}

> Andrew Skilton D. Phil.
>
> email: skiltonat at cardiff.ac.uk