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Tighty Whitey Tuesday #3
17 Tuesday Jan 2012
Posted It's A Gay World, Tighty Whitey Tuesday
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17 Tuesday Jan 2012
Posted It's A Gay World, Tighty Whitey Tuesday
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17 Tuesday Jan 2012
I’ve seen a lot of Buddhist nuns in Cambodia. In Thailand, not so much. Or at least what I’ve always referred to as nuns. Perhaps due to being sexist, or more familiar with traditional western religious practices, I never considered that they might be monks. Turns out there are in fact female Buddhist monks. Just not very many. And it turns out Buddhism is sexist too; the practice of ordaining women into the monkhood is controversial. Except in Thailand. Where it’s not allowed.
You can, however, find female Buddhist monks, or Phikshuni, at Wat Thepthidaram Worawihan in Bangkok, a large and somewhat decrepit temple tucked behind Wat Ratchanadda, about 300 meters further down Mahachai Road. The wat, a Third grade royal temple formerly known as Wat Ban Phrayakrai Suanluang, was built by King Rama III in 1836. It houses 52 Phikshuni. But they are about the size of a hobbit and are made of gold leaf covered brass. Meditating, sitting, talking, listening, smoking, and chewing gum, they gather in front of the Buddha inside the wat’s wiharn, and serve to honor the Buddhist Phikshuni order.
Phikshuni, in Thailand, Bhikshuni in the rest of the Buddhist world, originated by decree of the Buddha. Though that may have been more acquiescence than decree. Pranangmahapachabodhicotamee, the woman who took care of the Buddha when he was young, asked him to allow women to be ordained. She asked three times. He declined to open that bail of hay each time she asked. As wise as the Buddha was, he wasn’t smart enough to know women do not take no for an answer.
Shaving her head and gathering 500 of her hen posse with her, she approached the Buddha and asked again. He still said no. Then she tried tears. Usually a good ploy, that didn’t work either. Then, using her feminine wiles, she convinced Phra Anont, a male monk, to take up her cause. Phra Anont asked the Buddha if a woman were ordained could she then reach enlightenment. The Buddha said she could. So Phra Anont used the Buddha’s words against him and persuaded the Buddha to allow the ordination of women into the monkhood.
From that original 500 female Buddhist monk allowed to be ordained by the Buddha, their numbers became legion as they spread throughout India. Their movement travelled into Sri Lanka where the Phikshuni existed for about 1,000 years before finally disappearing for some unknown reason.
Though the practice of ordaining women into the monkhood never spread to Thailand, King Rama III honored their memory by having the 52 statues that are housed at Wat Thepthidaram built. Conflicting records say that the wat was built in honor of a woman who had worked for the King for a long time, or in honor of and dedicated to his daughter, Princess Kroma Muen Apsomsudathep.
Approaching the temple from Wat Ratchanadda, it appears abandoned. There is a large weed choked lot between the wat’s inner and outer walls, and it’s ubosot, the first building you come upon, is closed and looks to not be in use. Its roof gable is decorated with Chinese Porcelain and has none of the traditional finials you normally find on wats in Thailand. The temple has a distinct Chinese flair to it and numerous old Chinese statues can be found around the temple’s grounds. Around its small courtyard there are four large red wooden doors, barred and padlocked shut each leading to a space no bigger than a closet. Not sure what that’s all about, but I like old wooden red doors.
The temple’s wiharn sits in its own courtyard beyond a set of low wrought iron gates and is in much better shape. There are several old wooden monk residences both at the front and backside of the wiharn, one of which was the home of Sunthorn Phu, a famous Thai poet who is considered the Shakespeare of Thai literature. He was ordained as a monk at Wat Thepthidaram and spent three years of his tumultuous life at the temple after he fell out of favor with King Rama III.
As uninviting as the wat’s grounds are, on all three visits I’ve made to Bangkok’s angel’s wat, there has been a small group of local men at the wiharn who greet visitors warmly and beckon you inside. The faded red interior of the wat, with gold leaf decorations adorning its walls, is a dramatic background for the mass of gold Buddhist imagery that forms the altar area and takes up almost half of the room’s space.
At first glance, you might not realize the significance or meaning behind the mass of monk statues kneeling in reverent positions before the Buddha, or even that they depict female monks. But a three panel storyboard at the back of the front entrance explains their story. What it does not explain is the current status of women monks in Thailand. Of which there is only one. And she was ordained in Sri Lanka and is not recognized by the Buddhist church in Thailand.
Dhammananda, Thailand’s only Theravada Buddhist female monk, was fully ordained in Sri Lanka as a valid Theravada Phikshuni along with seven other women when the order was reestablished in that country in 1998. The Thai Sangha does not recognize her, nor the Bhikshuni of Taiwan, citing differences in philosophical teachings and monastic discipline. The idea of female monks in Thailand is a controversial one, with 90% of Thais opposed to woman monks. Women attempting to ordain have been accused of attempting to impersonate monks (a civil offense in Thailand), and their actions have been denounced by many members of the ecclesiastic hierarchy.
“When I was first ordained, there were people that wanted to be ordained also, but they didn’t dare, so they waited to see if I got clobbered first,” says Dhammananda.
The dispute over women in the monkhood has fallen on deaf ears. And a female senator who called for the ban on women to be scrapped received death threats. While Buddhist patriarchs concede that the Buddha himself ordained women, they point to monastic rules that require that both five ordained monks and five ordained phikshuni be present for any new phikshuni ordination. Without such a quorum, they say that it is not possible to ordain any new women monks. And since there are no phikshuni in Thaialnd, that quorum can never be reached.
For the time being, woman who want to devote their life to Buddha in Thailand have to settle for being a nun, though that is still a lay position. Under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, the Institute of Mae Ji is composed of non-ordained religious specialists who shave their heads and wear white robes, vowing to practice Buddhist precepts which include a vow of chastity, refraining from taking food after noon to dawn, refraining from dancing, singing, listening to or playing music or watching plays, refraining from using garlands, scent, unguents, wearing finery, and using high or large beds. They are expected to live a monastic life, making merit in the hopes of being born in a different role in their next life. Uh, that’d be as a man.
Mae Ji do not generally receive the level of support given to ordained monks, nor do they have rights or status. But they are honored as higher than general lay men due to their formal uniforms, vows, and religious practices. Buddhist nuns primarily participate in religious life as participants in collective merit-making rituals, or by doing domestic work around temples. Nut Thailands roughly 30,000 Buddhist nuns wind up spending more time doing menial chores than meditating, says social worker Ouyporn Khuankaewm, who works with monks and nuns. “So many are controlled and oppressed by the monks,” she says. “The monks say, ‘Your job is to clean and cook and if you don’t do that, you don’t get to eat or stay at the temple.’”
So the only female monks you will see in Thailand are at Bangkok’s Wat Thepthidaram. Though they are only statues, they seem to exemplify the characteristics the Thai Buddhist male dominated religious hierarchy expects out of its female members; shut up, kneel, stay quiet, and keep out of the way of those who have a true purpose in life: men.
17 Tuesday Jan 2012
Posted Chiang Mai, Travel Photography
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16 Monday Jan 2012
Posted It's A Gay World, Out This Week
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I never thought to consider the ranks of international male models as a base for those who will be coming out in 2012. Their sexuality always seemed to be a given. But evidently, like Olympic male ice skaters, the majority claim to be straight and homophobia looms large within the industry. Huh. Homophobia in the world of fashion. Right.
Be that as it may, the first celebrity to open the closet door in 2012 is Brazilian model Francisco Lachowski. Yeah, I know, Kristy McNichol, blah, blah blah. But she’s a has been who can’t even get a spot on Dancing With The Stars, and fish too boot.
The 20 year-old little hottie started his career in 2009 after winning a modeling contest in São Paulo. Currently ranked as the hottest Brazilian male model and 16th of the 50 Top Male Models, Francisco has worked for designers such as Gucci, Dior Homme, Armani, Mugler, and more. He’s become a familiar cover model and has appeared in magazines such as GQ, Vogue, and FHM, as well as in campaigns for DKNY, Armani Exchange, and D Squared.
Rumors about Francisco’s sexual orientation have circulated since his career in modeling took off, and he finally made it official during an interview with the Advocate magazine which will appear in their February 2012 issue.
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16 Monday Jan 2012
Posted Monday Muscle
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This hottie’s torso fascinates me. It’s not so much ripped, as rippled. It’s like his abs are by Ansel Adams. Except in color.
16 Monday Jan 2012
Posted It's A Gay World
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Today in the U.S. it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which marks the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was a civil rights leader who preached nonviolent activism in the movement to prohibit racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. Ronald Reagan grudgingly signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed on January 20, 1986. Some states resisted observing the federal holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000. MLK Day isn’t so much a party your ass off holiday, but rather a ‘thank god we got a holiday it’s been almost two weeks’ kinda day.
“I have a dream,” is inarguably one of the most recognized phrases from any political speech given, throughout history. And like MLK, I frequently have dreams too. Here are a few princes who could easily appear in them:
15 Sunday Jan 2012
Posted It's A Gay World, Stay In Bed Sundays
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15 Sunday Jan 2012
Posted It's A Gay World
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I saw on the news that the world could soon be experiencing a laptop shortage thanks to the floods in Thailand last fall. Turns out this small SE Asian country represents 25% of the global laptop computer manufacturing industry. No problemo, I’ve got a few and no plans on buying a new laptop within the next several months. But for someone in need of a new computer, that shortage could be disastrous. Life as we know it these days requires connectivity.
I’m not a panic kind of person. You can throw just about any stumbling block in my path and I’ll deal with it rationally and calmly. So booting up my notebook the day I was to leave for my most recent overseas trip only to discover my web browser wasn’t working was not the end of the world it could have been. I didn’t panic. I just packed one of my back-up laptops instead, dreading the fact I’d be forced to travel with a five pound piece of technology. The horror.
But I came close to a state of panic when I booted up my back-up at the airport only to find the wireless was on the fritz. I used the computer in the airline’s lounge to Google a fix and found out that particular model of HP is known for having a problematic wireless card, and all the suggested fixes really wouldn’t solve the problem. Even HP agreed the only answer was a new motherboard. Nice. Not only would I spend almost 20 hours of not being connected to the world, the first thing I’d have to do when I landed in Bangkok would be to dodge the gang of porn DVD sellers at Pantip Plaza and find a vendor who wouldn’t rape me over the cost of installing a new motherboard. I spent the next five hours considering just how irresponsible it would be of me to trash my computer and buy a new one in Bangkok instead.
Several people who had the same problem with their HP reported success by buying an external wireless card, bypassing the card in the computer. HP’s official word was that would not work. That instead you should purchase a full motherboard from them didn’t lead me to exactly trust their recommendation, so after checking in at my hotel I headed to the Power Buy branch in the Robinson connected to my hotel. And actually found a Thai salesperson who knew something about the product he was selling. His geekness trumped his Thai-ness. Not only did he know and understand my problem and how I thought I’d fix it, he went one better and suggested I try a USB wireless adapter. Which cost a whopping 490 baht (about $16).
The gadget, something I’d never heard of, was smaller than the size of your thumb nail. Size counts in my world and I didn’t have much faith that such a small of a piece of technology would fix what seemed to be a very large problem. But the clerk felt it would and agreed I could return it if it didn’t do the job. Being allowed to return something you buy in Thailand is a pretty big deal. Big enough to make up for the small sized fix. And I’ll be damned if that little sucker didn’t do the job. With only a few minutes of playing around to get it to work. Amazing Thailand indeed.
Had I not been able to find a solution to my problem I would have solved it by buying a new computer. The idea of spending almost a month travelling without, just wouldn’t have been acceptable. It’s not just the connectivity issue, but business too. Not to mention hook-ups. Technology has changed our lives. Without being connected to the world, we can no longer survive.
The need to be connected is a given these days. The girl at the hotel’s reception desk no longer asks if you need internet access when you check in. At any hotel in the world. A user name and password is slipped across the registration counter without thought. And if you really need it, you’ll get a key to your room too. But lets keep priorities straight.
I had trouble getting access at my hotel in Laos, and remembering the front desk clerk had said there was a computer available for use at the restaurant, which was close to my room, I took my laptop over there to see if the signal would be better. It wasn’t. But the hotel’s resident geek responded quickly to the problem, came up with an encryption key that needed to be added for the connection to go through, and all was right with my world again. Geeks were once a source of derision. Now they rule the world. They still might not get laid often, but the last thing anyone ever wants to do these days is piss off the geek who stands between you and being connected to the rest of your world.
I was on the BTS, obviously nowhere near rush hour since I had a seat and a clear view of a line of local women sitting across from me. They were all in their early twenties to late thirties. And all but one of the seven had a cell phone cradled reverently in their hands, plugged in, and totally involved in their own little world. The hold out had an iPad booted up instead. It wasn’t that many years ago that a cell phone was a status symbol for bar boys. Having one mounted to your hip was the thing. Even if it wasn’t connected to a service provider. Now any bar boy whose phone isn’t the latest and greatest is shamed; if you don’t have the newest iPhone you obviously have not learned how to help your farang have a big heart.
Telephone technology has come a long way baby. When I was a youngster, our phone was a heavy bakelite thing with a rotary dial. And we had a party line because that’s what you got in those days. (A party line meant while you had your own phone number, there were several other people who shared your line. So when you picked the handset up to use the phone you had to listen first to make sure one of your neighbors wasn’t using the phone.) My folks drummed our phone number into our little heads, in case we got lost someday. They never were that lucky, but I still remember that number. Though in those days for some reason phone numbers started with letters.
When cell phones first came out they were humongous affairs. Big and bulky with terrible reception, you paid through the nose to have service for a mobile phone. Reception can still be a problem, but the size of cell phones has shrunk while their capabilities have increased. Everyone on the planet has a cell phone these days, and between texting, picture taking, web browsing, email, and all the cool things you can do with apps, the one thing no one seems to do with a phone anymore is talk on them.
Considering how quickly the technology of phones has advanced, you have to wonder what phones will look like ten years from now. Undoubtedly we’ll be laughing at those cumbersome useless things we used back in 2012. I’d have to assume the future holds some sort of connectiveness that doesn’t require anything more than a chip. Possibly embedded under your skin. If that picture was not quite so fuzzy, I’d be investing in the technology now and in ten years could hire Bill Gates to shine my shoes.
It seems to me that since computers and cell phones keep getting smaller and more powerful at the same time, and with cloud computing being the wave of the future, the need for an actual piece of hardware should become a thing of the past. Since everything will be ‘up there’ where man once looked to the gods for answers, there will be no reason to have a personal device for connectivity; you’ll just pull what you need when you need it out of the air.
Recently, through a licensing partnership with Nokia, Vuzix announced its plans to develop a stylish head-mounted display solution in the form of Smart Glasses, which would integrate a bright, high-contrast display with a pair of seemingly ordinary-looking sunglasses that would be used as a web-connected device, letting you watch videos or browse the internet while still being able to see-and-avoid pedestrians as you walk on the sidewalk or obstacles while behind the wheel. So hands-free computing and voice recognition software is where we are headed, Siri should be the tip-off for the latter. Our technological advances in connectivity have all been about doing more with less, voice and visulas appear to be the wave of the future.
Or so you’d think. But then texting would seem to be an abomination. It’s a step backward that the masses have embraced. We’ve gone from using voice technology, the phone, to typing out our communications. Instant communication seems to be the key with texting, but that really depends on how quickly you can move your thumbs. That whole opposable thumbs thing finally is making sense. Most texts, however, do not. In our never ending quest for faster and quicker communication, spelling and grammar have taken a back seat. Not that that is a bad thing. Trying to remember if it should be ‘who’ or ‘whom’ is an internal debate of the past when now a simple ‘?’ will suffice.
Sexting is an even worse use of technology considering that it is the one time that hands-free communication makes the most sense. Phone sex was always difficult to pull off with any aplomb. Except for the truly talented, it always comes off sounding like bad porn dialogue (or is that phrase an oxymoron?). But at least with phone sex you could always rely on a few well placed groans. A sexted moan of pleasure just doesn’t cut it. Our technological advances should be serving us better than that. The information highway is most often used to answer the age-old question of, “How big is your dick?” A picture is worth a thousand words; visuals then, not text, is the way to go. Even when it means the end to your political career.
We’ve gone from the Pony Express to Facebook, from waiting weeks to hear if the rest of the world still existed to the seconds it takes for your favorite piece of hardware to power up. The ease with which we can become connected these days makes up for the false promise of a paperless world thanks to the advent of the personal computer. Tomorrow’s technology will be even more awesome. What we do with that technology, not the technology itself is what matters. We are more connected today, thanks to email, texting, cell phones, and social media, and at the same time draw further away from interpersonal, face to face communication. I’d like to say we took the wrong path at some recent point, that by using today’s technology in the manner we do we’ve actually grown further apart, not closer. But then there’s Grindr . . . so maybe our advances in connectivity isn’t really a bad thing after all.