Today, civil rights leader Dolores Huerta issued the following statement:

[usonian]

65. Personkind? Womankind? Oh, the hu...

Can't win.

Tagalog has no gender.

Tagalog, the official language of the Philippines, is a genderless language — there’s no concept of female or male. For example, the english pronouns: she, he, her, and him, translate to one word in Tagalog, siya.

But, getting outside the misogynistic western system of thought, the Buddha, in the Lotus Sutra, indicates that on the spiritual plane, there is no distinction between men and women, and for an entire chapter, a young girl achieves buddhahood, indicating in this highly metaphoric work, the potential in everyone to attain the highest life condition. In this and a companion sutra, the wise Shariputra has his gender flipped and flipped back to drive the point.

Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra states that all are equally human, but different. Western thought is built on inequality, using diffrences as fighting points, and blaming others to the point of marking or stamping others, rather than rejoicing in diversity, as the universe of which we are part does in spectacular ways, and denying that they have the ability to change their ways.