Buddhism: simple answer to define 'woman'

Buddhism speaks of three sexes: female, male, and pandaka (LGBTQIA+), mixing in gender.

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Academic anthology of texts

People are suddenly confused about a stable definition for "woman" (female biological sex)? This is understandable because we confuse and conflate words like sex (biology), gender (psychology), and orientation (sexuality). These things are all social constructs (categories defined by humans); nevertheless, they are not arbitrary. They have a basis. They are not assigned at birth (partition) and carried out post-partum, but during conception or gestation (pregnancy).

They did not arise from nothing, nor by chance, nor by some doctor or doula's whim. There really is a binary of females and males and even another category (pandakas) extending or derived from those two in Buddhism and the other Dharmic religions of Asia.

Variety of Buddhist schools

It is unclear if our long held Western biological distinction (XX or XY) in the West has now failed.

It would seem so if neither scientists nor right wing commentators can win an argument with color-tinted, left-leaning college students wishing to expand our minds and sensitize our hearts to the plight of LGBTQIA+ groups.

It is time to be more sensitive, more inclusive, more openminded. Nevertheless, there is a binary and in addition a recognized exception. The exception (P) is blurry and muddled and confounded with flexible societal norms. There may be no ultimate biological basis for the exception (P). But biology, like everything else, is interdependent.

Beloved LGBT Nemo (Eurovision 2024)

In Buddhism and other Dharmic religions, nama-rupa (name-and-form or body-and-mind) is the name of the distinction and analysis of what are understood to be interdependent categories.

While we debate the old nature/nurture dichotomy, there has always been a third category of gender recognized (and not in a flattering or equal way). The third category is called pandaka.

While most modern people nowadays may want to avoid recognizing this binary, it is nevertheless possible to make a clear distinction between what are biological males and biological females, men and women and the other.

This is a serious response to this very funny satire by The Babylon Bee.

Our post title was inspired by a mainstream media article that scientists

give in and say they have no 'simple' definition for what a 'woman' is.

DEFINITION

• In Buddhist physics (Abhidhamma), What is a "woman"? A "woman" is an adult female, a "female" being a person (gandhabba) reborn through karma in a body (rupa, kaya) with the presence or propensity of itthindriya (femininity, bhava).
• More study (learning, hearting, suta) and investigation (bhāvanā) is necessary. Why? With regard to the condition of wisdom (paññā) arising in Buddhism, one distinguishes three kinds of knowledge: (1) knowledge based on thinking (cintā-mayā-paññā), knowledge based on [study and] learning (suta-mayā-paññā), and knowledge based on [meditation] mental development (bhāvanā-mayā-paññā) (Saṅgīti Sutra, DN 33).

DISCUSSION

Is this a serious answer? Yes. If it is serious, how does it advance the discussion? Just as in the West we argue for the words (social constructs) "male" and "female" to mean XY or XX chromosomes (a biological basis), if we can accept that definition as sufficient, Buddhism says something deeper is going on.

• We do not become male or female (or "other," pandaka = pan, hermaphroditic, asexual, trans(itioning), fluid, ambiguous, confusing, perverted, non-normative, bent, queer, intersex, neuter, eunuch) without a biological/physical basis. Admittedly, this is interdependent not independent of social factors (behavior, culture, training and physical interventions whether intentional or unintentional). This basis has karma-result (vipaka, phala) as its cause and basis.
• Intentional or unintentional interventions? Dr. Joel Wallach claims to have scientific proof and abundant clinical experience for the PHYSICAL basis for sex and gender confusion, which is currently on the rise. The cause, according to Dr. Wallach? A micronutrient deficiency during gestation, that is, during pregnancy the mother does not have a trace mineral or similar essential nutrient and this has a considerable subsequent effect. This is unintentional, and it is not limited to biological sex, gender expression, or sexuality/sexual orientation. A biologically female body in gestation or infancy may be exposed to an excess of androgens or estrogens (more likely plastic xenoestrogens), and this has an effect. A biologically male body in gestation or infancy may be exposed to an excess of androgens or estrogens (and for all we know there may be another class of compounds that in the future will be termed "pandakogens" such as Atrazine).
• Atrazine induces complete feminization and chemical castration in male African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) - PMC (nih.gov) Maybe Alex Jones (InfoWars/Prison Planet) was onto something?
• An interesting question is, What happens to a male who takes The Pill (female birth control)? Males can take it just as water can be put in a gas tank. It will not prevent pregnancy. But it may cause hormonal disruptions, mood changes, cancer, toxicity, erectile dysfunction, or feminization.
• The interesting part is, If there is no biological difference between males and females, why then do substances like The Pill affect males and females differently? There are individual differences, of course, but the point is that there are general differences as well, and that should not be the case if everything is arbitrary and without a biological basis.
• Moreover, there are intentional interventions (administered hormones, hormone blockers, traumas, molestations, surgeries such as female and male genital mutilation called FGM or common circumcision, abuse, exposure to environmental toxins, substances, drugs, etc.)
• Having thought about this, it seems aggressive lesbians and academic sophists may be right: there is no binary so much as a trinary or trinity: male, female, and pandaka (everything else, blends, absences, permutations). Sadly, however, this is not well defined or studied and was subject to a great deal of sexism, sexist assumptions, and cultural prejudices. Definitions change, but the original definitions are not "arbitrary" simply because they depend on changing social conditions.
• One can imagine the needs of a community of humans to perpetuate itself and control its members and their multiplications, combinations, and behaviors. Then the society, because of changing climate or other external circumstance (coming under attack or sudden prosperity) changes from active hunting and gathering to sedentary farming or business dealing, or whatever. Now the needs of that community are different, change, and fluid or more polarized.
• There is normative male, normative female, and everything else (pan-daka), which by definition gets the label nonnormative. Not yet taking the third category into consideration, is there a difference 
• Note: The ancient rendering, translation, definition of pandaka as "eunuch" is very misleading but not without explanation. To us in modern times a eunuch would seem to be someone with removed genitalia, but in ancient times it was understood that those deprived of ordinary equipment (testicles, penis, clitoris, labia, vaginal canal, hormone, pituitary gland, pineal gland, other gland, or any part of the body) nevertheless found ways to be sexual, and these behaviors got them the label "eunuch," which often meant "pervert," "weirdo," "gay," "hypersexual," "flamboyant," "depraved," "pansexual," "nonnormative"... So it is not the lack of equipment that made one a "eunuch" but the subsequent increase of unusual (nonnormative) behavior associated or correlated with that lack.
• Indeed, in India where this term originated (probably in ancient proto-India or the Indus Valley Civilization), there is even today a "Pandaka Festival" and it is NOT a bunch of Italian choir singers coming together and having tea, academic discussions, and a fashion show. What is it then? It is a pansexual, flamboyant, usually drunken or otherwise intoxicated, perverted, hypersexual "Pride Fest" of debauchery and depravity of all of the molested, neglected, abused, shamed, constrained, disciplined, forsaken, and exploited folks along with the healthy, well adjusted, questioning, and curious folks out to see the days long spectacle. It is considered dangerous, just as West Hollywood, Key West, San Francisco, or New York pride fests would be if public drunkenness, mass intoxication, and lawlessness were the norm. But in the US, we tamp it down so that these are nice, family-friendly entertainments.
• Wisdom Q: Pandaka: Sex Addiction and Perversion (West Virginia Wisdom, 2011)
• Pandaka Festivals are little understood annual events in India. It is a time of debauchery, cross-dressing, homosexual revelry, alcohol and drug abuse, adultery, sodomy, and all manner of societally-condemned behavior. The event is certainly not limited to the reviled modern pandaka (a widely feared amalgam of "pervert, criminal, heartless male prostitute, bully, and panderer") but to any curious person full of shame and repression or shameless attempts to come to terms with impulses and urges.
• TRANSGENDERISM IN INDIAN HISTORY (Third Mirror)

Material: What is a physical being?

Ryan Seacrest is not confused; he knows

Further in S. XXII, 95: "Suppose a person who is able to see were to behold many bubbles on the river Ganges as they were floating along. And suppose that person were to watch them and carefully examine them. Carefully examining them, they will appear empty, unreal, and insubstantial.

"In exactly the same way does the meditator behold all corporeal phenomena (body, form, ultimate materiality)... feelings... perceptions... mental formations... states of consciousness, whether of the past, present, or future...far or near. And one watches them and examines them carefully.

"After carefully examining them, they appear empty, unreal and insubstantial."

The Five Aggregates clung to as self are compared, respectively, to

1. a lump of froth,
2. a bubble,
3. a mirage,
4. a coreless plantain stem, and
5. a conjuring trick (S. XXII, 95).

See the Khandha Samyutta (S. XXII), The Path of Purification (Vis.M. XIV).

If we seek a "self" (an atta or atman, a soul, ego, personality, essence), what we find is not an eternal soul but a collection of aggregate factors: form (Four Elements, corporeality, materiality); feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousnesses. These are categories of heaps or groups. The first category is fourfold and constitutes the body; the remaining four categories is fourfold and constitutes the mind. These eight are reduced to five and should never be thought of as five things but rather five categories or aggregations of things. There is not one feeling but many feelings, countless feelings, uncountable instances of pleasant, painful, and neutral sensations associated with perceptions, formations, and consciousnesses (of each of the six senses). While referred to as things, this might be misleading. They are dynamic processes rather than anything tangible, stable, reliable, or fixed.

Summary of the Five Aggregates clung to as self

Pope, are you pro-F-ness (Italian slang) in Catholic seminaries? - "Who am I to judge?"

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I. Corporeality (bodily) group (rūpa-kkhandha)

• A. UNDERIVED (no-upādā): Four Elements [characteristics of matter]: solidity or earth-element (pathavī-dhātu), cohesive or water-element (āpo-dhātu), temperature or fire-element (tejo-dhātu), and motion or wind-element (vāyo-dhātu)
• B. DERIVED (upādā): 24 secondary phenomena:

1. physical sense-organs of: seeing [not the eye but the sensitive portion within the eye that discerns forms],
2. hearing [not the ear but the sensitive material that discerns sounds],
3. smelling [not the nose...],
4. tasting [not the tongue...],
5. body [not the body but tactile sensation able to discern impression/pressure, temperature, etc.]
6. physical sense-objects of: form (body),
7. sound,
8. scent,
9. taste; ["bodily impacts" (photthabba) are generally omitted from this list because these physical objects of body-sensitivity are identical with the aforementioned solid, temperature, and motion elements; hence, their inclusion under "derived corporeality" would be a duplication.]

10. 

    A male-born, female-presenting pandaka

    femininity (itthindriya)
11. virility (purisindriya)
12. physical base of 'mind' (consciousness, not the heart itself but the sensitive material in or near the heart, hadaya-vatthu)
13. bodily expression (kāya-viññatti)
14. verbal expression (vacī-viññatti)
15. physical life (rūpa jīvita)
16. space element (ākāsa-dhātu)
17. physical agility (rūpassa lahutā)
18. physical elasticity (rūpassa mudutā)
19. physical adaptability (rūpassa kammaññatā)
20. physical growth (rūpassa upacaya)
21. physical continuity (rūpassa santati, see santana)
22. decay (jarā)
23. impermanence (aniccatā)
24. nutriment (āhāra)

CONCLUSION

You can count on science, Kids. It's testable.

We began with an audacious idea, that we could easily define "woman" with a biological/physical basis. If sex were a binary (on/off, 1/0, male/female, black/white, yes/no), there would be present in the DNA, genome, chromosomes or alleles of the individual either itthindriya or purisindriya, and this would be a simple way of determining who is a woman and who a man. This may still be possible, but it does not easily explain the existence of spontaneous hermaphrodites, intersexuals, and asexuals (neutered). All of this is separate from gender, gender roles, sexual orientation, or how one presents. If modern Western science had XX and XY chromosomes to rely on, Buddhism thousands of years earlier (and the Old Vedic Religion thousands of years before that) had a better, more minute marker. It may even be the same marker. For at the level of the particle (kalapa) there are discernible aspects and components one cannot imagine being present in the West -- odor, color, and so on. There are propensities of the various elements (maha dhatus). Therefore, one with the power to discern them internally could, in theory, discern them (externally) in someone else and would know, "This being is a male or female."

Unravelling the Mysteries of Mind and Body through Abhidhamma (Inward Wisdom)

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Abhidhamma (Sayalay Susila and Dhr. Seven)

However, there are a number of problems. Problem 1: Would a shapeshifter (a being possessing the iddhi called the "power of transformation") exhibit femininity or masculinity, and would that remain constant throughout the transformation? It would likely change with the shift and revert to what it usually is, making it a viable marker only in the long run. This is impossible; no one can shape shift. Problem 2: If it is not discernible externally, we would only have self-report and not an objective measure. This is impossible; no one can discern particles (kalapas). Problem 3: What if everyone has both indriyas in varying measures, making not a binary but a propensity or predominance of one or the other? This is impossible; no one has indriyas (faculties). Problem 4: If it is not one OR the other but a combination of both, then it becomes a social construct as to what we mean by it, and if it is that everyone has "masculine" and "feminine" biological and psychological components (which is almost certainly the case) then there is instantly the possibility of a third construct, a blend resulting from a more or less equal level of both. This is impossible; no one has faculties. Problem 5: Once one is able to discern particles and sees the characteristics of femaleness and maleness, does it change in a single lifetime? It can, although this is extremely rare, or it can seem to change, which is common. This is impossible. No one does anything nor can they do anything. This applies to humans, which is a very rare kind of birth, but would it to devas or ghosts and animals. This is impossible; no one is reborn as a human, deva, animal, or anything else. So, as Douglas Adams would say, if you've already done six impossible things, could you call us so we can discuss a seventh: nailing this definition down and determining if this is a reliable basis for a stable definition of "sex."

FOR FURTHER READING

• Indriya: 22 phenomenological faculties, femininity (itth-indriya), masculinity (puris-indriya), life faculty or vitality (jīvit-indriya)
• wisdomlib.org 4.1. The Meaning of Indriya (Faculties) — femininity, masculinity, vitality, the first two material qualities designated as bhāvarūpa determine...
• jstor.org NĀMARŪPA IN BUDDHAGHOSA'S PHENOMENOLOGY (name-and-form): taste (rasa), the feminine faculty (itthindriya), the masculine faculty (purusindriya), life faculty (jīvitindriya), the heart-substance (hadayavatthu)...
• budsas.org BUDDHIST DICTIONARY: Explained in Pug. 55. itthindriya: 'femininity'; see bhāva.
• dhammawheel.com What karma (Pali kamma) relates to gender differentiation? - Dhamma Wheel... Weak wholesome karma (kusala kamma) generates the female controlling faculty (itthindriya). Strong unwholesome karma (akusala kamma) causes the male controlling faculty to...
• wisdomlib.org 22 Phenomenological Faculties: 1 definition... mind faculty (man indriya). Three physical faculties: femininity (itth-indriya); masculinity (puris-indriya); life or vitality (jivit indriya)
• philpapers.org/rec/NGATAB Towards a Buddhist Metaphysics of Gender (PhilPapers, Sept. 25, 2023) Buddhist tradition, the Buddha is depicted as claiming that there is something called woman-faculty or power (itth-indriya) and something called man-faculty or power...
• discourse.suttacentral.net Pali glossary for Ven. Bodhi and Ven. Sujato (SuttaCentral.net, Feb. 6, 2019) itthindriya, [faculty of] femininity. idappaccayatā, specific conditionality. iddhābhisaṅkhāra, feat of psychic potency, used his psychic...
• themindingcentre.org The Body in Buddhism: femininity (itth'indriya); masculinity. (puris'indriya); physical base of the mind (hadaya, vatthu); 35 bodily intimations (k ya,vi atti), verbal intimation (vac ,vi ...)
• budinoucenje.wordpress.com What does dhamma mean in Theravada Abhidhamma? Aug. 13, 2020... For example, a property of femininity (itthindriya) was added for the description of the matter or the physical mind-base (hadaya-vatthu)
• Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly