Monks see women as inferior.

When the Dalai Lama turned out to be a pedo, that was it for me.  https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/india/dalai-lama-apology-kissing-boy-video-intl-hnk/index.html Buddhism, like all other mainstream religions, is in the toilet, as far as I am concerned.

I wouldn't be surprised if they also have a history of grooming and abusing children and women as far back as they go, as they are, fundamentally, very male-centered.

It was always right in our faces that they were MGTOW.

The fact that, according to them, you must reincarnate as a man first to achieve enlightenment was all I needed to know about yet another male-centered religion.

Same. I've had a very casual interest in Buddhism for a long time, but I could never get past how male-centric and female-hostile it is. Like basically all religions.

I've thought about researching female Buddhist leaders through history (there have been a few) or female-focussed Buddhist organizations currently. But I'm also uninspired by the idea of women trying to shape fundamentally misogynist traditions into something palatable.

I remember reading a paper in which it was stated that Buddha hesitated for women to become nuns (female monks) but eventually admitted women to the monastic order after being persuaded . However, women had to adhere to additional conditions and rules which did not apply to monks. Also, there was stuff on the lines of how women can never achieve enlightenment.

I swear all religions that put women in a worse off position. Even when buddhism developed as a more progressive religion to hinduism, it never accommodated equality for women.

When people praise buddhism for being so called an egalitarian religion, it stems from the idea of picking worse from the worst. Misogyny and female subservience is such a central theme of all religions.

I can't speak for all Buddhists, because there are so many schools of Buddhism I can't possibly know what's up with all of them.

That comments section in the link is full of some wild stuff I have never heard of.

I don't idolize anyone. And what's keeping me from enlightenment is probably watching too much trashy TV. I can only imagine it would be worse if I were a man, because porn and video games would most definitely steer a person off the noble eightfold path 😂

But seriously, I've never heard that you have to be a man to achieve enlightenment. I don't doubt someone could have said it, possibly in a time when women were basically all indentured servants and none had time to do their own thing. And then someone else probably said something to the contrary at some point. Stuff like this isn't set in stone in Buddhist teachings.

One of the things I appreciate most about Buddhism is the lack of pressure to get married and have children. I'm free to do it if I want to. It would not be frowned upon. And neither would not doing it. It's totally up to me.

Plus it's easier to be pro-choice as a Buddhist, because to us the soul is not doomed if it's not born. It'll reincarnate somewhere else. It'll be okay.

This is far from the only thing I'm into where some men are out threre being like "this is our thing, it's not for women". So far I haven't let that stop me.

In my own real-life circles, there's only one guy who's kind of like that, anyway, and he's not even a monk. Just a dude who likes the sound of his own voice. The rest of us have a running joke that he's here to put our zen to the test 😆