Buddhists and Feminists

“How can I discover what I am? How can I become what I am not? Can I do one without the other? In either being or becoming, can I recognize what is particular to my experience and still find commonality with others whose experience is different? These questions, with very different implications, govern debates central to contemporary feminist reflection and traditional Buddhist thought.

Certain forms of Buddhism, like Zen, emphasize that unless one is already an enlightened Buddha, enlightenment is impossible. In this view, enlightenment can only be discovered, not developed. Other forms of Buddhism, including some of the major traditions of Tibet, focus on the process of becoming enlightened, emphasizing the effort involved and making a clear distinction between the path and the goal, between who one is and who one will become. Somewhat analogously, feminist theory moves between two important convictions: one, that essential commonalities among women exist and can be discovered, and two, that gender and all experiences associated with it are cultural constructions.

The opposition between these two positions is an important dimension of what Ann Snitow calls "the great divide" in the feminist movement, a divide she characterizes as a tension between celebrating the fact of womanhood and distancing oneself from it, or in Catharine Stimpson’s terms, between maximizing womanhood as a category and minimizing its significance in one’s construction of selfhood. There is also an inevitable tension between recognizing the role played by culture and society in forming one’s identity and the crucial need to express and experience identity as genuinely one’s own, not simply the construction of other forces.

Women, it has been observed, are continually being asked to behave as "women" and at the same time to accommodate themselves to male social roles and expectations. When the distinctions between the development and discovery of oneself go unrecognized, impossible and confusing demands are made...”

~ Anne Carolyn Klein, Meeting The Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, And The Art Of The Self