I was very pleasantly surprised to see R. Elisabeth Cornwell’s articles The Evolution of Religion and Why Women Are Bound to Religion: An Evolutionary Perspective in these pages recently. Could Suicide Girls become a journal of serious discourse on religious matters? Incredible. And to think there are a bunch of “Buddhists” out there who say I shouldn’t be writing here.

You can’t argue with Cornwell’s thesis in her latest piece that women have generally been extremely poorly treated by religion and yet continue nonetheless to propagate the very beliefs responsible for their often sorry position in society. You hear a lot of talk about primitive matriarchal religions that treated women well. But most of those religions are so ancient and so thoroughly dead that what we can say about them is mainly conjecture. The powerful patriarchal religions of the modern world have mostly treated women like shit.

Except for Buddhism.

You knew I’d say that, didn’t you? But it happens to be true. Historically Buddhism has been much better to women than any of the other major religions*. To be sure, there are examples of times when certain Buddhists have treated women just as badly as any other religion. But in doing so these Buddhists have gone against the explicit directions of the founder of their faith.

Buddha’s first order of monks was an all-boys club with a big “No Girls Allowed” sign on the door. But there was a group of women, including Buddha’s step-mom (his mom had died giving birth to him and he was raised by an aunt) and the wife he ditched when he first went on his quest for the truth**, who hung out with the monks, listened to Buddha’s lectures and practiced the meditation he taught. One day Buddha’s step-mom went to Buddha on behalf of these women and asked that they be admitted to the order. Buddha said, “Forget it.”

But a little while later, Buddha’s right hand man Ananda asked Buddha, “Are women less intelligent than men?” Buddha said no, women were just as intelligent as men. Ananda said, “Are women less capable of reaching enlightenment than men?” Buddha said no, women were just as capable as men of reaching enlightenment. Having thus backed him into a corner Ananda went for the kill and asked, “Then why don’t you admit them into the order?”

Buddha had to admit that his initial decision had been wrong. So he opened the order to women. But he was a realist. He knew India in his time was a male-dominated society and would look very much askance at a religious order that admitted women. Plenty of people were already bitching at him for a lot of the radical stuff he’d done. So he made up a list of rules women had to follow that were much stricter than the ones men had to observe and he separated the boys from the girls into different monasteries. He also predicted the order would eventually fail because of this decision. He was wrong there.

Once Buddha was dead, though, less sexually liberated men took control of the order. After a while some male monks developed a stupidly superior attitude that led a lot of them to take ridiculous vows such as that they would never touch a woman or speak to one, some even vowed never to so much as look at a woman. The founder of the Buddhist order in which I was ordained, Dogen Zenji, called bullshit on that.

Dogen wrote a piece called “Prostrating to The Attainment of the Marrow” (Raihai Tokuzui in Japanese). You can read it in volume one of his masterwork, Shobogenzo.

Dogen says, “nowadays (nowadays, in this case, being the year 1240) extremely stupid people look at women without having corrected the prejudice that women are objects of sexual greed. Disciples of the Buddha must not be like this. If whatever may become the object of sexual greed is to be hated, do not all men deserve to be hated too? As regards the causes and conditions of becoming tainted, a man can be the object, a woman can be the object, what is neither man nor woman can be the object, and dreams and fantasies, flowers in space, can also be the object. There have been impure acts done with a reflection on water as an object, and there have been impure acts done with the sun in the sky as an object.”

I can vouch for that last bit. I used to work in a group home for mentally handicapped adults. We had one guy there who had a thing for shoes. You didn’t dare take yours off when he was around lest you find a sticky present inside when you put them back on! Dogen says, “if we hate whatever might become the object of sexual greed, all men and women will hate each other, and we will never have any chance to attain salvation.”

I always think of this when I hear people talking about the supposedly great virtue in the way some religions force women to cover their bodies lest men become sexually greedy. If we follow that logic then an oil magnate who owns a flashy Cadillac ought to drive around with it covered in a burlap sack to keep those who can’t afford such cars from suffering the sin of envy. We’ve all got our own specific objects of greed and it’s up to us to deal with that ourselves. It’s not up to other people to shield us from temptation.

Dogen goes on to say, “Even in China, there was a stupid monk who made the following vow: ‘Through every life, in every age, I shall never look at a woman.’ Upon what morality is this vow based? What wrong is there in a woman? What virtue is there in a man? Among bad people there are men who are bad people. Among good people there are women who are good people.”

He cites numerous famous female Buddhist masters whose understanding far surpassed most men, saying that a guy who took a vow like this would never get a chance to learn from them. He then derides the then-current Japanese custom of not allowing women to visit certain temples.

To get back to what Cornwell wrote, in her article on women and religion she says, “In order for women to abandon religion and its securities, there needs to be something tangible to replace the support that it offers.” This is truer than I think even she realizes.

One of the greatest marks of Buddha as a real man of genius was that he didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. He realized religion and spirituality were pretty fucked up. But he also understood the very important role they play in human society. As Cornwell points out in her article on the evolution of religion, religion serves a need much, much deeper than anything the intellect can ever hope to reach.

This is why atheism, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for religion. It’s like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food. It’s an intellect-based solution for a problem that has nothing at all to do with the intellect.

Buddhism did away with deities and belief systems, but did not do away with ritual and practice. Buddhist temples, though they aren’t strictly speaking “religious temples,”*** look like religious temples and the things you do in Buddhist temples seem like the same things you do in religious temples. You chant, you prostrate yourself in front of statues, there are people in funny clothes inside, there are rules to be followed, there is a community of fellow adherents, and all the rest. Thus the deep need we all feel to belong to that kind of an institution is satisfied. Yet there is no pretense that some big guy with a beard who lives up in the sky will smite you if you fail to do these things or reward you if you get all the steps just right. It’s all up to you.

I know I sound like a shill for Buddhism here. But I’m not really interested in converting anyone. If you can find another philosophy that does all these things, by all means go for it. Or if Buddhism’s just not for you, that’s fine too. No skin off my ass either way.

Although technically I am a Buddhist monk, I’m also a bit of a reluctant Buddhist. I’m a Buddhist because I have to admit that Buddhism really is the best thing on offer. I tried the rest and went with the best. But I don’t really self-identify as “a Buddhist” unless I’m specifically called upon to do so (such as when I’m asked to write a column about Buddhism for a pin-up website).

Still, I think in its attitude towards women and in its immensely practical attitude towards religion itself, Buddhism hasn’t been bested yet. Maybe someday. But not yet.



*Actually I don’t consider Buddhism to be a religion at all. But for the purposes of this article I’m treating it as one. It’s not a religion in the sense that it doesn’t have a deity and it isn’t based on spirituality. It is a religion in terms of its age, its function in society and its number of adherents. This subject is much too deep to get into in a footnote, though!

**Yes it's true, Buddha left his wife. But he didn't exactly dump her in a roach infested tenement with four screaming babies. Buddha was a prince at the time and knew his wife would be very well cared for when he was gone. There was a tradition in India of householders leaving home on spiritual quests and there were, and still are, customs and legal regulations in place to deal with such cases. And please note that later on his wife too entered the Buddhist order. Again, this is way too big for a footnote!

***See first footnote.

For further reading check out this page on the history of women in Buddhism.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up! and his latest, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff and a MySpace page too. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

To see where Brad will be speaking next take a look here!

Buy the new CD by his band Zero Defex at CD Baby now!

Why isn't it as discriminatory to vote for a woman "just because she's a woman" as it is to vote for a man "just because he's a man"? What difference does sex make? Who cares if the government is run mostly by white men or mostly by black women or mostly by purple dogs--it's the *ideas* that matter!

Bull. Shit.

Reading this piece in the WaPo brought to mind all of these annoying arguments that keep cropping up. And since if Clinton gets the Democratic nod (and believe me, folks, she will--you can say you heard it here first, 'kay?), we're going to hear EVEN MORE of this stuff, I'ma post a li'l explanation right now and you all can bookmark it and refer back to it as needed, 'kay?

1. Seeing gender/racial/gay/etc. representation as important /= voting for (or hiring, or admitting to college) someone "just because they're" a woman/a person of color. The argument itself is sexist/racist/homophobic, if you think about it for just a second: it implies that the *only* reason one would vote for a woman is because of her gender, and that being "a woman" makes one devoid of ideas--as if Candidate Girl is a cardboard cutout with boobs.

Folks who are happy to see a woman/a black man running for office, and want to vote for Clinton/Obama on those grounds, wouldn't vote for, oh, say, Phyllis Schlafly or Ward Churchill. Women and ethnic minorities are not all the same. They have ideas, just like the white guys.

2. Gender/racial/gay/etc. representation *does matter.* It would be lovely if it didn't, but we just happen to live in a world where, all other things being equal, a given woman's experience of America is going to be different than a given man's. Just as an Indian's, or a black person's, or a Filipino's experience of America--all other things being equal--is going to be different than a white person's. I know *that* black people are much more likely to be tailed by security guards while shopping in fancy stores, but I don't actually know what it *feels like* to be in that position. In theory, I think it sucks. In practice, it's probably a less urgent issue for me than a lot of other things. I'm all for gay rights, and I know that there are states that have laws making it illegal for employers to offer domestic partner benefits. I also know that some employers (universities, for instance) offer individual insurance packages to people as a way of trying to make sure they can make job offers to smart gay scholars. What I *didn't* know until an Actual Lesbian pointed it out to me--because it simply never occured to straight li'l gay-friendly me to think about, since it *never came up in my life*--is that these packages mean that gay academics earn less than their straight counterparts--because they end up spending a big chunk of their paychecks on "private" insurance, not to mention lawyers, in order to make sure their partners and kids have health coverage and legal protections in case something happens to them.

Hence, for instance, in the linked article, it's a woman representative with a young child who *just happens* to be introducing federal legislation to protect women's rights to breastfeed in public. Back when Plan B was getting blocked by the FDA, it *just happened* to be a woman who quit the FDA in disgust, and it *just happened* to be two more women, Senators Clinton and Murray, who stepped up and put a hold on the nomination process for a new FDA chair until the FDA stopped stalling. It *just happens* that the people who pushed hardest for women's right to vote were women. Yes, there were male suffragists, and god bless them. And there were women who thought that women's suffrage was unnecessary, and that the suffragettes were man-hating hysterics. But women--*all* women--didn't get the right to vote because men who had the "right ideas" gave it to them. They got it because enough of them stood up and demanded it.

3. We are not, contrary to what a lot of people would like to believe, brains on sticks. The idea that bodies don't matter, because ideas are somehow pure and universal and perfectly communicable, is itself, if you think about it, a sexist (and racist and homophobic, etc.) idea. Or at least, believing it perpetuates sexism, even if the person convinced of its truth thinks him- or herself perfectly convinced that All People Are Equal. Equality /= "the same," and (for instance), it is a simple fact that women are the ones to bear children, and that women bear the lioness's share of caring for children. Yet when we talk about these issues, we talk about them as peripheral to, rather than central to, human experience--if you "choose" to have a child, then the consequences of that for your life are, at best, something society as a whole "accomodates." Because the default, universal, brain-on-a-stick way in which we're all "equal" assumes that we're all autonomous individuals, and that being imperfectly autonomous (pregnant, a parent) is somehow an "aberration." Which is true--if you're a guy. If you're a chick, pregnancy/motherhood are pretty central to your humanity--even if the way that centrality manifests itself is that you remember to take a pill *every single morning* in order to avoid it.

This argument brought to you via a couple centuries of feminist philosophy. If you want to think about this stuff in depth, as opposed to getting the severely condensed web-friendly SG newswire version, go pick up a copy of The Second Sex, which oughta be required reading for everyone.


Bitch_PhD loves the header image, which is a (slightly altered) detail from "Simone de Beauvoir With Bear," by Gordon Lester, a former student and TA.

As I implied in the the tagline to a recent post, y'all know that Cheney's pushing to get us in a war with Iran now.

Or maybe you don't--because the story ISN'T IN ANY OF THE BIG AMERICAN NEWS ORGANS. According to the Guardian, though,

I guaran-fucking-tee that there will be a lot more "news" about how awful women's rights are in Iran, as the pro-Iran-war propaganda mill gets going. Care about the issue, but don't buy the bullshit: women's rights in Iraq are worse now than they were before we decided to "help the Iraqi people" by replacing a stable totalitarian dictatorship with utter chaos, and while some things have improved in Afghanistan (remember Afghanistan?), the overall picture is grim, not least because chaos and insecurity affect women--who after all, have children to worry about and don't have guns--more than men. (If you truly give a shit about the status of women in Afghanistan, start here and then bookmark RAWA, who was working for change before we knew Afghanistan existed and is still doing so now that we've almost forgotten again.)

Not to mention the situation of our own women soldiers in Iraq, many of whom have died in what are apparently listed as "non-hostile" situations--some of which actually mean "of dehydration, because the women were so afraid of being raped by their own fellow soldiers that they didn't drink enough water so that they wouldn't have to go out at night to pee." (Video at the first link in this paragraph includes interviews with women soldiers on this subject.)

Read that again. Women soldiers in Iraq died because they were so afraid of being raped by their comrades-in-arms that they don't drink enough water, so they can avoid having to go to the latrine.

Oh, the Army's got a nice li'l sexual assault prevention and response web site; but of course, commanders can reject reports they decide "aren't credible," and there's not a whole lot in the way of protecting women who report assault by their peers or superiors. Given that the military tried to cover up these deaths, I kinda doubt women soldiers feel like the bosses have their backs.

For all we know, soldiers are still dying because other soldiers will rape them if they have to go pee. It's difficult to find out, because there's no recent news on this issue, which came to light in January, 2006.

So if you hear the powers that be wringing their hands all of a sudden about how awful things are for Iranian women, ask yourself: if they don't care enough about American women in American uniforms to put that shit in the papers, why are they suddenly so agitated about women's rights in Iran?

Bitch_PhD couldn't fit it into the post, but she wants to point out that a report on sexual assault in the military "found that low sociocultural power (i.e., age, education, race/ethnicity, marital status) and low organizational power (i.e., pay grade and years of active duty service) were associated with an increased likelihood of both sexual assault and sexual harassment." Duh.

According to a new study (.pdf) by the Women's Campaign Foundation, women give only 25% of the money raised by Political Action Committees (PACs) and candidates. You can see a brief blurb summarizing the results over at Salon's Broadsheet if you don't want to download it.

Now, I would be curious to see these results compared to studies that show that women spend more of their money on children and family needs than men do -- see for instance this news article, which focuses on a UN finding about women's economic inequality worldwide -- and whether this holds true in the US, as I suspect it does. I'm also curious about what percentage of their incomes women give to PACs and political candidates; there's still a wage gap, after all, and you'd have to correlate those statistics with statistics about single moms for a start. Then maybe you'd want to do some research into how women and men view the ways m/f couples with kids allot mom's and dad's respective incomes -- does "her" money pay for daycare and summer camp and so forth, while "his" money goes towards things like housing and political contributions? Because even though in theory it's all the same pool, in practice I think a lot of couples don't view it that way.

Nonetheless, it's a sobering study, especially if you're at all concerned about the political power of fundamentalist anti-feminists, or the attacks on reproductive rights in the US. Equally so if you're inclined, as some very important men are to think that concerns about gender equity are themselves sexist or frivolous. I'd like to challenge guys who think that way to dedicate all their political giving to women candidates this year, and while they're at it, why not make a point of reading only women authors, women's blogs, and feminist news sources? Or at least making sure that that's half of what you're reading -- just in case you're not *quite* as gender-blind as you'd like to think you are?

And of course, at the same time, we chicks ought to take up the implicit challenge to give more fucking money, already, to women candidates -- even if it's only $20 or so a pop. How much do you pay a month to read this site, for instance?

If there are no women candidates running for office in your local or state races, try giving to Emily's List or the Women's Campaign Forum or NOW PACs. Or google to see if your state political party (which oughta be the Dems, natch) has a women's PAC.

Bitch_PhD hereby pledges to send $300 to various women candidates and/or women's PACs this year. Hopefully more.

Paris Hilton’s short-lived jail stay has sparked outrage among many. A celebrity receiving preferential treatment within the criminal justice system is nothing new, but the media attention to Paris’ plight only heightens awareness of the problems facing women who go to prison. For me, all I can think about is, well, women in prison movies. This exploitation genre’s popularity is due mostly to scenes involving women taking showers, females sharing intimate moments as well as much-loved cat fights.


Paris received no jail time for her performance in 2005's House of Wax, though many critics thought her bad acting was criminal.

When Paris was about to enter prison, she was quoted as saying that she would bring books to read. I can’t think of a more outrageous idea. Paris reading? Who would believe such complete nonsense? I prefer to think that she’d load up her Netflix queue with a selection of women in prison films.

So, for Paris and as a public service to anyone facing jail time, here’s a round-up of notable movies about women behind bars.



Women in Cages (1971)
This lackluster entry in the category centers on a women sent to prison on an island to serve ten years after being set up by her drug dealer boyfriend. Escaping into the jungle proves to be a bad idea when bounty hunters have their way with the ladies.
Kinda hot.

The Big Doll House (1971)
Director Jack Hill points his camera at Pam Grier who heads up a cast of virtual unknowns in a fairly forgettable film in the genre. As usual, Pam is badass. If this is what prison is about, then sign me up.
That's hot!


Black Mama, White Mama (1972)
Pam Grier returns to prime form co-starring with Margaret Markov in this women on the run film. These two ladies are chained together and must fight the wilderness and their differences (so cute) to survive. They soon find creeps like fine actor Sid Haig actually deserve to die.
Love it!


The incredibly sexy Barbara Steele from the memorable 1974 classic Caged Heat directed by Jonathan Demme.

Caged Heat (1974)
The tagline from the poster reads like a warning: Rape Riot and Revenge! White Hot Desires melting cold prison steel! Barbara Steele stars in what is known as probably the best film of the genre and the one that set the tone for future female incarceration flicks. Director Jonathan Demme delivered all the elements one would expect, the nudity, the violence and the sexual tension, while grounding the story in a disturbing reality. Viewers should be warned about graphic scenes with electroshock experiments and raping drugged prisoners.
That's hot! Hot! Hot!



Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (1974)
Ilsa spawned a series of forgettable sequels, but the original stands the test of time as a classic. One of the best in the genre, this is not only a great women in prison film, but a fetishists' dream. The Ilsa in the title is the sadistic prison warden at a Nazi death camp who inflicts suffering in ways people pay top dollar for now. No one is good in this film, and by not being good, I mean bad, and by bad, I mean really good. Make sense?
Mean... and hot!

Reform School Girls (1986)
Reform School Girls would be one of the worst films ever made were it not for the amazing cast. Sybil Danning and the tough as nails warden, and punk icon Wendy O. Williams as a violent inmate made sparks fly in all the right ways.
So hot!


Chicago (2002)
Chicago proves two things: that a women in prison movie can get Academy Award recognition and that musical numbers should never appear in a women in prison movie.
Hmmm...



Brokedown Palace (1999)
Kate Beckinsdale and Claire Daines decide to blow off a trip to Hawaii to vacation in Thailand... the land of adventure and really scary prisons. This humorless film completely misses the mark taking a serious approach to the ridiculous story. There are no catfights or scenes of women getting close. A huge disappointment.
Gross.

Chicken Run (2000)
Chicken Run is actually based heavily on the Steve McQueen World War II prison camp movie The Great Escape, except in this case all the characters are chickens. Yep, chickens. Nick Park, who brought the world the amazing clay-animated adventures of Wallace and Gromit, is brains behind the most unique women in prison film ever. Sure, the conventions of the genre are turned upside down, but you will find plenty of chick fights.
Yummy!

Bamboo House of Dolls (1974)
This Shaw Brothers Hong Kong-sploitation flick is probably better known by its original title Nu ji zhong ying. A Japanese POW camp is the setting for this Asian women in prison film in which a nurse plots her escape. There's plenty of nudity and extreme violence as the Japanese prey on the Chinese women resulting in abuse and rape.
Gross.


Prison-A-Go-Go (2003)
This prison movie parody contains the standard issue shower scenes and the evil doctors while throwing in bizarre elements like kung fu food fights, mud wrestling and zombies. It makes little sense, but there's plenty to laugh at.
Funny and hot!

Slammer Girls (1987)
Released when comedies like Airplane! were at their height, this is perhaps the very first spoof of the genre. Unfortunately, it goes to prove that satirizing something that is already itself ridiculous doesn't always lead to laughs.
Not hot.

Gore gone.

Chris_Gore is an author, a filmmaker and the creator of Film Threat. Chris' rap sheet includes a charge of possession of alcohol at the age of 19 resulting in one night spent in a Detroit jail.

Scientists are researching methods of producing sperm cells from bone marrow. It's been done already with marrow extracted from male subjects, but now the question's been raised about whether it should be tried with females' marrow.

Aside from providing another alternative for otherwise infertile couples, the article points out that this could also be a breakthrough for lesbian couples. Two women could produce a true biological daughter together, eliminating the obstacles faced by having a child who is only biologically tied to one partner. The other partner typically goes through an adoption process, which can be frustrating and difficult.

It's only a matter of time, however, before the conservatives start crying about how this procedure would only make it easier for lesbians to breed more lesbians. They seem to love claiming that the children of gay couples will somehow always turn out to be gay.

In any case, who's gonna help me start my lady army?

Tattooing Chinese women was a coming-of-age ritual that guaranteed marriage in the Li tribe. Up until the 1960s, the women living in isolated areas of the resort island Hainan have been covered from head to toe in a series of intricate geometric patterns that often times represented centuries of their family history. For over 2,000 years these tattoos were considered talismans against evil, and were used to make the tribe's women appear ugly to foreign kidnappers but beautiful to their own kin.

The weeklong process is done by piercing the skin with thorns and rubbing soot mixed with water into the wounds.

While in the past marriage was almost impossible for women without these tattooed designs, the ritual has now become an undesirable practice that limits chances for success in modern times.

Reuters.com reports, "The tattooed women of China are a dying breed."

For once in our lives, some good news about what women can/should eat: the Harvard School of Public Health says that women who eat ice cream every day are healthier, at least where fertility's concerned.

So throw that goddamn "What to Expect When You're Expecting" book away (for the uninitiated, it lectures women to eat crap like wheat germ and avoid candy, suggests that they enlist their husbands to "help" them by reminding them what to eat and what not to eat, and says lovely things like "with every forkful of food, ask yourself: is what I'm eating the best thing for my baby? If not, put the fork down") and eat some goddamn ice cream.

Bitch_PhD's favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor is "Chubby Hubby."