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   I know I'm "late" on this viral phenomenon
July 9th, 2014

   I know I'm "late" on this viral phenomenon… I know that what most people care about recently is football, tennis, summer holidays… I know my recent posts were mostly videos… And yes, I also know that it's 3'19'' of advert…

   But the "No! I mean… Yeah… I insulted 'girls', but not my sister!"  doesn't subside easily later in life, it just becomes sexualised: "all whores, except my mother!"  or other similar fallacies about 'all' (e.g. thread gplus.wallez.name/bds7Ra3UwQo).

   And it's time to stop: women closer to you are neither better nor worse than other human beings (other women, or men), just by their familiarity: 'my'  sister, 'my'  mother, 'my'  friend…
   It doesn't work to be prejudiced 'only' about indistinct 'others' (or broad categories like 'girls'). Specific daughters, mothers, friends or even self are not better simply by being closer to you.
   It doesn't work to criticise and blame the mistakes and ignorance that you know of solely because you're close enough to the perpetrators; when others are vulnerable to you, it's easy to find faults, but that doesn't give you the moral high ground. Daughters, mothers, friends or even self are not worse simply by being closer to you.

   And yes, there are differences (even at the broad category level: female bodies don't function exactly like male bodies), but differences don't automatically require 'ranking'. And specific preferences aren't automatically representative of 'all', even when embraced by a 'majority'. Many differences at high levels are actually what makes 'ranking' stupid, by taking away what's similar and comparable… making 'ranking' a simple manifestation of arbitrariness!
   Are apple better or worse than tomatos? Both are fruits, both might be green or red, and they still differ… Any projection of intrinsic 'better' would be arbitrary though! Appropriateness to a specific context at hand might differ, but this introduction of a 'context' prevents any claim of 'intrinsic' value.

   Gender is not intrinsic ('being' of a particular gender doesn't require you to appropriate the limits that others put on you —so that they can anticipate your reaction, make your predictable, put you in a little box of reassuring 'known': gplus.wallez.name/PAwdSuczvUc & gplus.wallez.name/3sreNpBwGm9), and gender has no intrinsic value.

   If you want to enquire into 'right' gender in Buddhism, don't fall for the sexist fallacies: just enquire into the gender you're experiencing 'right' now (similarly to how "right views" might be considered as the views 'right' in the centre of our attention, 'right' there, embraced or rejected 'right' in one's specific circumstances… the views we take on as we embark in the life without greed, without aversion, without ignorance… the views we cultivate when we embrace the 'fourth ennobling task' after completing the third… gplus.wallez.name/5tnJHhk437v)! Enquire into how you appropriate a gender as some 'fixed' phenomenon even though it's without self, without essence.


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