ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Thai women's knowledge of Buddhism may also be expressed through food and commensality, an important part of Buddhist rituals. Soteriological inclusiveness confirmed women's ability to attain higher spiritual goals; soteriological androgyny furthers the task of breaking down the relevance of gender categories. Attachment and clinging are more significant problems than self and sexuality in the ideology and practice of Theravada Buddhism. Buddhism should be totally irrelevant to practices such as beauty contests that commodify women's bodies and create the illusion of beauty on the surface of those bodies. Buddhism and feminism share many features; both Buddhism and feminism begin with experience, stress experiential understandings, and move from experience to theory. When Buddhism is evoked in discussions of gender or women in Thailand, it is usually attacked as a patriarchal institution that oppresses women. Feminists writing on Thailand often make use of Buddhist texts to make their arguments about the subordination of women.
