“Sexist patriarchy dressed up as feminism, is like a butch man in a woman’s dress. Obviously fake and generally ugly.” –Adele Tomlin
“You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.” –Erin Mckean
Since posting last week about the sexist, ageist, regressive, and it now it has been revealed, nepotistic choice of female Marme Monlam MCs in the North American Kagyu Monlam 2018, despite the ‘best efforts’ of all the Karma Kagyu people I asked who are associated with organising the Kagyu Monlam events, such as Khenpo David Chophel, Chloe Roberts, Lama Chodrag to avoid (or refuse) to disclose the identity of the English-speaking”unknown” female MC (even saying that they were irrelevant and no-one cares) a kind Chinese follower of the website revealed to me that she is Anna Yeshe/Germano, whose father is the well-known Tibetologist professor at the university of Virginia, David Germano.
When I contacted Prof. Germano to confirm it was his daughter and why she had been asked to do the prominent public role, he told me because she is a mixed race Tibetan and speaks Tibetan fluently. When I replied that there are many women who speak Tibetan fluently, and asked again what her connection is to the 17th Karmapa and Karma Kagyu, he did not say and furthermore replied that she was looking after her young son/had personal issues and did not want to respond either.
Everyone has personal issues to deal with (including motherhood), but frankly, why is it that people who take such public roles and happy to get the perks/admiration of doing it at the time, are then unwilling to honestly reveal why they were asked to do it and by whom when someone from the public requests it. Whatever happened to basic honesty and transparency?
For example, when I emailed the British businesswoman and pop star manager, and COO of Y.o.u.n.g.com Chloe Roberts (whom I met many years ago in Bodh Gaya during the Kagyu monlams, when they were under the Bodhi tree) to ask her about the event and who organised it, she told me she did not know, but also refused to disclose the identities of the women either (yet some of her musical acts were booked for it). Even more oddly, Chloe told me not to email her again and that she no longer follows the 17th Karmapa! How’s that for thanks and gratitude (as well as broken samaya) for being given such big Bodh Gaya and London ‘gigs’ in 2017 by the 17th Karmapa and Karma Kagyu?
Chloe never even had the courtesy to mention the 17th Karmapa when she speaks about winning a 2022 award for Women in Music either. She obviously does not consider his presence in her life to be important enough to credit. Although she was also the executive producer for an album of chants by the 14th Dalai Lama launched in 2020 (clearly Buddhism helps her “business’ a lot).
In any case, forget about Chloe, it does not take a genius to work out that Anna was likely chosen for her connection to Prof. Germano, and like the other two women, for her looks and age (that very “relevant” factor which the Kagyu office chose to focus on when reporting about the event!), and not for anything substantive or worthy connected to Buddha Dharma or Karma Kagyu. If the organisers of the concert wanted to be genuinely progressive, rather than regressive, there are many nuns, female scholars, translators and practitioners within their tradition (with backgrounds similar to the prior MC Khenpo monks) who could have done it.
Some people might wonder why I care, six years after an event about this issue. Because dressing up sexist, ageist patriarchy to look like progressiveness, when it is not, is like a butch man in a woman’s dress, obviously fake and generally ugly. If Karma Kagyu are serious about empowering women in a non-regressive way, they need to show that in their events and actions, right?
In which, case I have now made the slightly tongue-in-cheek, but also serious request to the organisers, that for the Marme Monlam 2025, please can they arrange three unknown “young and handsome” male MC presenters (straight men) in the interests of equality, fairness and for the nuns and female audience? Needless to say, I have yet to get any response. When the shoe is on the other foot, the men might not be SO understanding and admiring, right? Truth is stranger than satire, as they say! ha ha ha
Or do the women and nuns audience at Marme Monlam only ‘deserve’ these expert, qualified elder Khenpo monks?
And while we’re at it, any ideas who this ‘pretty, young’ lay woman is seated on the front row seat alone in front of all the monks and nuns at the Kagyu Monlam Marme Monlam Bodh Gaya 2017 concert? Another unknown woman in the Tibetan Buddhist world for sure. Answers in an email please!
Scholars, translators, practitioners, women above 40, nuns, monks, handsome men all to the back please! Pretty, young females at the front. Have to laugh as it is just SO regressive, not progressive at all.