Trying to eat the air: Vasubandhu’s Objections to Vaibhāṣika Gender Metaphysics

It is often assumed that Abhidharma Buddhists hold the same essentialist view of gender due to their shared belief in the existence of material sex indriyas that are powerful over the arising of sex characteristics and gendered behaviour. In my paper, I demonstrate based on passages in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya that this is not the case. While Vasubandhu agrees with his Vaibhāṣika interlocutors that the sex indriyas are material in nature, he draws on Sautrāntika and Vijñānavādin arguments to provide several objections to the Vaibhāṣika account. He proceeds to redefine the sex indriyas and reduce the scope and nature of their causal powers, resulting in a deflationary account of sex and gender.