Misogynistic much?

Venerable Analayo has looked into these passages and compared them with available parallels. And he concludes:

In sum, just as the proclamation of the five impossibilities for women appears to be a later addition to the Bahudhātuka-sutta and to the foundation history, several other passages voicing attitudes of negativity towards women appear to be similarly late, or at least require contextualization. At the same time their existence testifies to the pervasiveness of negative attitudes towards women in general and nuns in particular among those responsible for transmitting and shaping the texts in the form in which they have come down to us.

Especially the Anguttara has a few of these kind of discourses. Personally I don’t pay much attention to a discourse if it is in the AN (this collection was open longest apparently) + is controversial + has no parallel.

Another interesting remark by Venerable Analayo on trustworthiness:

Had all women without exception indeed been considered slanderous and deceitful, the two aniyata rules, found similarly in the different Vinayas, would hardly have come into existence. These rules consider the testimony of a trustworthy female lay disciple sufficient ground for making a monk’s alleged serious breach of his conduct a matter that has to be investigated.

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