So naked, young women are shameful and go to Hell?
This is part II of my contribution to the Jaipur Literary Festival this year which focuses on Buddhism. You can read part I here. It’s another excerpt from the Buddhist period in my book Sex and Power (Sect II, pp.67-110). The central argument of my book is that the concepts of sexuality and sexual morality in any society keep changing over time. And it is the dominant forces–social, political, economic or religious–in any period of time that determine how that society views women, sex and sexual morality.
In the Buddhist period which stretches from about 500B.C. to 100A.D. Buddhism was one of the most powerful institutions, and the teachings of the Buddha impacted on social thinking at many levels. In the first excerpt from my book I talk about how it revolutionized the concept of class and caste based equality and social justice. But by the same token, I discovered that it also had a huge negative impact on social perceptions of gender, women and sex. To me Buddha’s unreserved misogyny and prejudice towards women (more…)
Posted by Rita Banerji on January 25, 2013
https://sexandpowerblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/what-was-buddhas-issue-with-sex-and-women/
Indian temple walls engage in explicit and imaginative love-making, in an array of intriguing poses…A man caresses his delighted lover’s naked breasts with a lotus bud…[Another] kneels before his lover and performs cunnilingus…One couple prefers intercourse in the standing position…[while] another couple in coitus understandably requires assistance…the man below…balanced on his head, the woman…on top held in position by two supporting female[s]…
However shocking the use of such explicit erotica in temples may…it would still be a mistake to regards these temples as (more…)
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