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you call a difference? The same pocket? It is because there is not much difference that now science has discovered a man can become a woman just by simple plastic surgery; a woman can become a man just by plastic surgery. If there was some fundamental difference then it would not be possible. By plastic surgery you are just turning the pocket out or in, and nothing much is there.
Jainas say a woman is condemned by her having a female body. First she has to become a man. So there are Jaina nuns -- they are not striving for liberation, they are striving to be born in the next life as a man, then they will work for liberation. There is one step more for them than for a man. "Ladies first" does not apply.
One woman in the history of the Jainas must have been a woman of tremendous courage, intelligence, and a rebel; she rebelled against this idea. Her name was Mallibhai. She simply rebelled against this whole idea; she said, "This is just created by man." And she must have been a charismatic woman, certainly, to become a Jaina monk. She was not going to become a nun, because a nun has the goal to become a monk in the next life. She became a Jaina monk. A Jaina nun is allowed to have clothes, she is not to be in the nude; that stage will come in the next life, if she succeeds.
But this woman Mallibhai is a rare rebel. I have looked all around the world -- I don't find another woman of the same rebelliousness. She became a monk. She dropped her clothes and she declared to the Jainas, "I am a monk and I am striving for liberation, and I don't care a bit what your scriptures say." She was certainly charismatic, and she fulfilled all the requirements that are prescribed for a tirthankara, and the Jainas had to accept her as a tirthankara.
But they played a trick. When she died they changed her name: Mallibhai -- bhai designates a woman; they made the name Mallinath -- nath designates man. So if you read the history you will not find in twenty-four tirthankaras that there has been a woman, because for her name they don't say Mallibhai, they say Mallinath. And they have deceived the whole world, and they have continued on the old trip. One woman
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