Gender Issues in Asian Traditions - Assignment Example

Assignment II Scholars often present Buddhism and Taoism as “proto-feminist” traditions, as compared with Hinduism and Confucianism, which are viewedas being hopelessly committed to gendered hierarchies. A comparative and contrastive analysis of the four religions convince one that Buddhism and Taoism offered greater freedom to women whereas in Hinduism and Confucianism women had to play a passive and submissive role both in their social and religious lives. Theresa Kelleher while examining the position of women in Confucianism states that women was thought to be inferior and unintelligent by nature in the Confucian tradition. The Confucians viewed the cosmic order as “life-giving, relational, and harmonious in the interaction of its parts” and this gratitude for life was visible in their worship of the ancestors (Kelleher 137). Even though Confucianism considered family life and marriage as sacred, relationships, for the Confucians, were hierarchical in nature. As Kelleher points out parents, rulers, husbands and older siblings enjoyed higher social positions whereas the positions of children, subjects, wives and younger siblings were inferior(Kelleher 138). Wives needed to remain submissive to their husbands. The role of women was identified with the earth: Confucianism held that “the position of women in the human order should be lowly and inferior like the earth, and that the proper behaviour for a woman was to be yielding and weak, passive and still like the earth” (Kelleher 140). In the same way, one can also find similar passive and submissive roles attributed to women in Hinduism. As Young suggests, the role of women and their rituals during this period was limited to maintaining ‘social and cosmic order’. Even though the Vedic women’s role was esteemed as wife and mother, she had to remain as a silent partner in the Vedic rituals. The husband’s role was much prominent as he was the patriarchal head of the family. In Confucianism and Hinduism women were subject to certain codes of conduct. The role of women in Confucianism was very often limited to the family whereas the role played by men was viewed in the wider social-political order. Women were subject to three types of obedience in the family structure: “as a daughter she was subject to her father; as a wife, to her husband; and when older, to her son” (Kelleher 140). Another crippling factor that restricted woman’s active role was her lack of education. While boys had formal education in history and the classics, girls had to remain at home, “sequestered in the female quarters and under the guidance of a governess” and the only training offered to women was regarding “good manners and domestic skills like sewing and weaving” (Kelleher 140). Similarly, in Hinduism the women were supposed to serve her husband as a God and in her childhood she was to be obedient to her father. However, unlike Confucianism there were a few Hindu women seers who performed religious rituals and recited prayers and hymns. However, practices such as rituals to prevent the birth of a girl, the gulf between the educational achievement of men and women, the practice of considering women to be impure at times of menstruation and pregnancy, and the system of polygamy were limiting women from performing any active gender roles within the Hindu religious tradition. Similarly, women had to face social disparities with regard to divorce and remarriage within the Confucian tradition whereas practices such as early marriages, the sati system and widowhood observances adversely affected women’s freedom and proved to be detrimental to any sort of positive or active role that women could play in Hinduism. In Confucianism, the husband had the privilege to divorce the wife if she was found to be guilty of certain behaviour. The seven traditional grounds for such divorces were “disobedience to parents, failure to bear a male child, promiscuity, jealousy, having an incurable disease, talking too much, and stealing” (Kelleher 143). On the other hand, the women never had the right to a divorce against her husband and she was prohibited to remarry and had to remain faithful to her dead husband all throughout her life. Similarly, the female socialization process in Hinduism involved extreme control of sex and aggression and this led to the segregation of girls from boys (Young 80). The chastity of girls was extremely valued in the Hindu society (chaste daughters were conceived to be virgin goddesses) and this put a lot of restrictions on her social life. This culminated in the increasing rate of child marriages within the Hindu social life. Similarly, Hindu women who could not give birth to male children were looked down; a married woman in her husband’s house never enjoyed this privilege until she gave birth to her first son. Besides, she had to remain servile within her extended family relations and as a result the broader concept of community life was almost alien to her. Similarly, religious practices (or rather social evils) such as the sati system and widowhood observances added to the misery of the Hindu women of the period. Sati was considered as a noble sacrifice and the girl who sacrificed herself in Sati was regarded as “a good wife, a true sati, one who has brought immense dignity and honour to herself, her family and the community” (Young 84). Similarly, widowhood was another constraint for women in Hinduism where the widow was supposed to practice absolute asceticism. There are many who argue that the nominal identification of women with a goddess and the existence of powerful goddess like the Mahadevi have assisted Hindu women to break away from patriarchal and other hierarchical structure that constrained them. According to David Kinsley, the underlying theological assumption behind Mahadevi is that “the ultimate reality in the universe is a powerful, creative, active, transcendent female being” who creates, governs and protects the universe (Kinsley 133). Kinsley goes on to argue that Mahadevi’s favourite role ‘as protector and preserver of the cosmos is that of the warrior’ which has been viewed as ‘a traditionally male role’ (Kinsley 138). However, a close analysis of the religious and social practices in Hinduism shows that the prevalence of female deities and goddesses has not brought about great changes to the life of women in Hinduism. Unlike Hinduism and Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism offered almost equal status to women in their religious lives and stresse on the equality of men and women even though both the religions originated and grew up in highly male-dominant societies. Buddhism displayed egalitarian outlooks towards men and women and held that “women are quite capable of becoming arhants, that is, persons who have attained nirvana” (Barnes 107). The regulations on men were equally applicable to the women too; however, there were certain special rules which applied to women alone. The Eight Chief Rules for Buddhist nuns form the basis for Buddhist way of life for women; these eight rules ask each nun “to treat every monk as her senior and superior, they forbid her ever to revile or admonish any monk, and they direct that all the sisters’ formal ceremonies be carried out under the guidance or in the presence of the monk’s samgha, including the setting of penances for erring nuns” (Barnes 108). The ultimate results of these rules were that women had to assume a subordinate position in Buddhism and they never could perform leadership roles; however, Buddhist nuns were free to seek nirvana in their own way. Similarly, in Taoism too women were given the freedom to seek spiritual fulfillment beyond their family duties and to get educated in Taoist principles. In the same way one can notice that the roles of the mothers were deeply acknowledged among the Taoists and that Taoism maintained a more liberal and positive view towards female pregnancy, menstruation, and sexual union compared to that of Hinduism. Barbara Reed (1987) observes that neither pregnancy nor menstrual blood was conceived to be impure in Taoism (172-173). Taoism believes that the union of menstrual blood and semen can create an ‘embryo for an immortal body’ and therefore for Taoists sexuality assumes religious and spiritual dimensions. As Barbara Reed points out Religious Taoism put undue stress on “the power of the female and the interdependence of male and female” and for the Taoists “harmony in this world depends not on male domination of female, but on male-female mutuality symbolized by the balance of yin and yang principles” (181). To conclude, it can be stated that both Hinduism and Confucianism put a lot of restrictions and gendered hierarchies characterized the religious and social practices of both the religions. On the other hand, Buddhist and Taoist doctrines offered greater freedom to women, displayed “proto-feminist” traditions and stressed on women’s and men’s equal rights for religious practices and spiritual fulfillment. Works Cited Barbara Reed, “Taoism”. Women in World Religions. Ed Arvind Sharma. SUNY Press, 1987. 161-181. Katherine Young, “Hinduism”. Women in World Religions. Ed Arvind Sharma. SUNY Press, 1987. 59-103. Kinsley, David R. “The Mahadevi”. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. Illustrated Edition: Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1998. Nancy Schuster Barnes, “Buddhism”. Women in World Religions. Ed Arvind Sharma. SUNY Press, 1987. Theresa Kelleher, “Confucianism”. Women in World Religions. Ed Arvind Sharma. SUNY Press, 1987. Assignment 1 Foucault’s concept of discourse stresses on the potential power of discourses to construct gendered subjectivities; this paper seeks to bring out how Hinduism and Buddhism contributed to gender constructions of the female and how Western cultural meanings have interfered in such gender understanding with special references to the four articles under review. Marglin at the very outset of her article states that the “Westerners’ understanding of female sexuality in the Hindu world has been strongly colored by cultural meanings from Western traditions” (39). She cautions the readers that Hinduism involves multiple traditions, sects and practices which make the Hindu world a complex one. She is of the opinion that the Hinduism brings the picture of world renouncing ascetics to the Western mind due to the contributions of writers such as Weber and Schweitzer. However, one should bear in mind that the cultural meaning attached to female sexuality has got great difference in India from that of the Westerner. For instance, while menstruation and sexual intercourse are depicted as impure in the Hindu tradition, they could be auspicious in certain cultural setting. Marglin exhorts one to distinguish between social reality and symbolic reality; while the former is associated with life the latter is associated with rituals, practices and myths. For instance, Marglin shows how a goddess represented without a consort becomes a symbol of a dangerous force while she transforms herself into a benign force in the role of consort to her lord (43). Many tend to understand this as male domination and female submissiveness. Marglin then deals with the concept of purity and pollution and purports that these terms can refer not only to impurity of the female body but even to the caste system; the terms stem from the power relations between the opposing sexes and she states that “this set of cultural meanings has led most scholars to see the status of Hindu women as similar to but worse than that of Western women” (44). Marglin cleverly narrates the story of goddess Lakshmi who shares food with an untouchable and later shows her inner power to her husband and brother in law by cursing them to be beggars for 12 years. Thus for Marglin the story highlights that “female power is great, that it revolves around life maintenance, and that it is an anti- hierarchical power” (46). The author then elaborately deals with the danger of male celibacy, the question of male and female nudity, the partial nudity and the secret rituals of the devadasi, the myths regarding the Hindu fertility theory, and the dangers of the female celibacy; she concludes that female sakti as symbolized by the goddesses is a single process which can be considered as both auspicious and inauspicious depending on how one conceives the cultural meanings. Uma Chakravarty, in her article, deals with the bhakti experience and the role of women in South India. She attempts to unearth the ‘conventional gender and social relations’ and brings out how notions of the female body contributed to the identity of the bhaktins (300). Portraying the life of the Avvaiyar Uma Chakravarty shows how Avvai and Tiruvalluvar, both having low caste births, adorned great place in Tamil literature; while Avvai cannot reconcile to a wifely role Tiruvalluvar is moved by the devotion of his wife. Similarly, the stories of Punitavati and Akka Mahadevi shows how females could assume supernatural powers through ardent devotion to the gods. The conflict between ‘unqualified devotion to God and the single minded service to the husband’ was evident in the case of all these women; the tension between being a wife and a devotee is clear in Mahadevi’s case (312). In the case of Karaikar Ammaiyar she becomes a terrific figure for others something like a kali like figure. All these women conceive God to be a male; however, as Chakravarti purports while two of them transcends socially defined feminine roles and female sexuality, the other two (Mahadevi and Antal) work within the frame work of physical femaleness” (319). Thus, Chakravarty shows how women could cross both the grahastha and samnyasi divide. Liz Wilson, in the article “Like a Boil with Nine Openings” elaborates the Buddhist constructions of the body and their South Indian milieu. The author shows how the cremation-ground meditations led to the loss of lives of many Buddhists and emphasizes that mindfulness in breathing constitutes ‘awareness of the decay that is the natural condition of all composite beings” (43). The author also brings out the link between aversion and liberation and pinpoints how aversion can take one to passionlessness and ultimately to liberation. Liberation necessitates aversion from all the four sustainers-food, sense contact, volition and consciousness (44). Similarly, the best way to pursue the mindfulness of the body is to “cultivate tranquility through awareness of the body’s loathsomeness” (47). Therefore, one needs to grasp the foulness of the body, impurity of sexual consummation, and also the power of womens bodies in decay as a central object for meditation. In “False Advertising Exposed” Liz Wilson stresses the importance of realising the foulness of the body; the underlying notion is that one can get rid of his lust for samskara (worldly life) when one realises the foulness of the body. As Wilson puts it: “Although it is technically not the woman but the man’s deluded ideas about her that are responsible for his desire, the destruction of her beauty often suffices to destroy his desire” (81). Having analysed the four articles, it can be concluded that each of the above mentioned discourses permeate gendered assumptions of women either in Hinduism or Buddhism and one needs to be cautions regarding the subjectivities propagated by each of the texts. Works Cited Uma Chakravarty, “The World of the Bhaktin in South Indian Traditions: the Body and Beyond” Frederique Apffel Marglin, “Female Sexuality in the Hindu World” Wilson, Liz. “Like a Boil with Nine Openings”. Charming cadavers: horrific figurations of the feminine in Indian Buddhist hagiographic literature. Illustrated Edition: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Liz Wilson, “False Advertising Exposed”. Charming cadavers: horrific figurations of the feminine in Indian Buddhist hagiographic literature. Illustrated Edition: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Read More