Does the mind have a gender, or is it only a property of the body?
Gender is only a property of the body.
Good question, really.
I mean, people don't realize that, but yeah.
Gender actually is, in Buddhism, it's a physical, it's called itindriya and purisindriya, I think is the other one.
So females have the physical, female faculty.
Males have the male.
And I suppose you could conjecture that some people have both or neither.
I don't really know how it works.
But the important point is that, yes, it's only physical.
There is no mental aspect to gender.
Except as to, first of all, how the physical affects the mental, because the female physical faculty
produces certain chemicals and the male faculty produces different chemicals and those chemicals affect the mind differently and to some extent, I think, I don't really, I'm not a biologist, but they affect the mind in different ways and so condition the person's mind in different ways.
This is why
you would expect that females exhibit certain characteristics, whereas males exhibit certain different characteristics in general, because of the influence of the different chemicals, I would say.
Among other things, of course, the physical characteristics, differences between the female body and the male body,
will also affect one's behavior indirectly through conditioning.
And then on top of it you have culture and society that highly specializes gender roles and gender expectations and so on.
Gender, the way we look at gender.
And all of that of course has a profound impact on the mind.