{"id":4251,"date":"2018-07-09T19:20:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.samita.be\/?p=4251"},"modified":"2018-07-11T12:37:32","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T10:37:32","slug":"changing-genders-changing-buddhists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samita.be\/en\/2018\/07\/09\/changing-genders-changing-buddhists\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing Genders, Changing Buddhists"},"content":{"rendered":"

(By Ayya Vimala)<\/em><\/p>\n

I sit down with my cup of tea this morning and open up the paper. I don\u2019t usually read newspapers but one of the headlines has caught my eye. It reads: \u201cAre you ready for the sensitive man?\u201d with a cartoon-picture of a man who throws away his porn- and car-magazines while holding a magazine on meditation. A tear flows out of his eye. It is an article about the changing gender-roles in our Western society. In the same paper there is also an article about the rising popularity of Frida Kahlo. The paper attributes this to her bi-sexuality and her surmounting of gender-roles.<\/p>\n

A few months ago, Belgium passed a law to allow people to change their gender legally without any fuss: just to go to cityhall and change it and pay a small administrative fee. A judge in the Netherlands recently ruled that a third gender should be recognised in the law.<\/a>\u00a0Things are changing in our world; the traditional social gender-roles that we learn from the time we are born are changing.<\/p>\n

So what does this mean for us as Buddhists? How do we look at gender and work within ourselves and how should we deal with this changing environment within the Sangha? Let\u2019s first have a look at what this \u201cgender\u201d really is. When we are born, we are either male or female. Or are we? This is the assumption on which our gender-binary world rests. But let\u2019s have a closer look at these assumptions.<\/p>\n

First of all, I want to make the terminology clear: there is a difference between biological sex, social gender-roles, gender-identity and sexual orientation. Often these terms are used loosly and as synonyms but that is a mistake. Although these terms have something to do with each other, they are still independent from each other in that any individual can have a unique combination of each.<\/p>\n

Terminology<\/h2>\n

Biological Sex<\/h3>\n

Sex refers to the anatomical and other biological differences between females and males that are determined in the womb. Most people are born with either male or female organs, but certainly not all. There are also people who are intersex. In our world, they are often operated at birth in order to fit into the gender-binary world outside.<\/p>\n

Then there is such a thing as spontaneously changing sex. This is rare but it can happen in puberty, mostly from female-to-male. Scientifically this process is not yet well understood. (Salt, 2007)<\/p>\n

Social gender-roles<\/h3>\n

Gender is a social concept that denotes the social and cultural differences a society assigns to people based on their biological sex. Each society imposes on people the expectations of behavior and attitudes based on their biological sex. This we call gender-roles. Gender is therefore a social construction. How we think and behave as males or females is not determined by our biological sex but is a result of how society conditions us based on that biological sex. (Lindsey, 2011)<\/p>\n

Biology vs Social conditioning<\/h4>\n

For many years there has been the debate if differences in gender stem from biology (Workman & Reader, 2009) or social conditioning or a combination of the two. Of course there are differences between the capabilities of our respective bodies, but in our world these differences are subject to change too. We no longer live in a society where day-to-day survival is of the utmost importance. Everybody still has unique traits and possibilities, but these are no longer determined solely by our biological sex. Even if biological differences did influence gender roles in prehistoric times, these differences are largely irrelevant in today\u2019s world. (Hurley, 2007; Buller, 2006; Begley, 2009)<\/p>\n

Some of the most compelling evidence against a strong biological determination of gender roles comes from anthropologists, whose work on preindustrial societies demonstrates some striking gender variation from one culture to another. This variation underscores the impact of culture on how females and males think and behave. (Mead, 1935; Morgan, 1989; Murdock, 1937)<\/p>\n

Gender-identity<\/h3>\n

Gender-identity is how we feel about ourselves. It is a mental construct that in most cases is in line with the assigned gender-role and biological sex, but not in all.<\/p>\n

Attempts to reassign gender-identity can result in gender dysphoria; the condition of feeling one\u2019s emotional and psychological identity as male or female to be different to one\u2019s biological sex. These people literally feel to be \u201cin the wrong body\u201d (or being forced to play the wrong gender-role) and feel more comfortable if they can assume the gender-role of the opposite sex or no particular gender-role at all.<\/p>\n

Next to the usual terms of \u201cman\u201d and \u201cwoman\u201d, there are many terms to describe various forms of gender-identity. If you want to know more, here is a short video that gives a great introduction:<\/p>\n

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Trans 101 - The Basics<\/div><\/div>
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