1) Re: Buddhism and sex, I recommend (along with Jon) the works of Bernard Faure and also a book called Male Colors about Japanese homosexuality. You can also look into the founders of Shingon and Tendai who were pro-queer sex (as well as queer themselves).
2) As for porn, for me sexual material that is arousing is deemed "porn" when it is viewed negatively/shamefully and "erotica" when looked at positively. I remember being a teenager and finding a paperback copy of Gordon Merrick's Forth Into Light in a little local stationery store (which adds credence to the fact that porn/erotica used to be more widely available). Well, I could not buy the book, but damn if I didn't read my favorite parts ever time Mom/Dad shopped at the Grand Union supermarket next door LOL. (Interestingly that little store was where I got my copy of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" as well.)
I now read Gordon Merrick's as more of a gay artifact of the times, erotic yes, but not pornographic.
3) Which brings me to scholars. I know Ken has said that he believes porn was invented in the 19th century. His approach is one filter or way of looking at the evidence. Now, I am not against scholarship, but each scholar will use the filter/approach that he believes in and is most conducive to his temperament.
Ken for instance deplores taking Buddhism out of its historical framework, but is content to strip it of its philosphy when he studies it. His choice. If I were a scholar (I freely admit that I am not), my inclination would be to keep both the historical frame and the philosophy. Two different approaches that will result in two different histories.
The recent discussion of Charming Cadavers is instructive. The following is from a review from the Journal of Buddhist Ethics (the entire review can be found at http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/4/bart1.pdf
"As Wilson herself makes plain, the account of Buddhist saints lives and their meditations on women's bodies is the product of her own training as a 1990's feminist scholar. In an interesting rumination on scholarship on Buddhism and gender that she includes in the Introduction, Wilson situates her own study in the context of several decades of Buddhist scholarship. With perspicacity, she remarks that the history of Buddhism reflects the concerns of scholars reconstructing it, thereby guding us to the conclusion that just as all things are subject to change, so are all interpretations. In other words, whether the male gaze empowers or disempowers the female, or whether there is a male gaze at all, remains to be seen."
I believe that hostility to scholars can arise when they present their work as fact rather than an interpretation of facts.
4) As for body parts and the fun that can be/was had with them. A person (scholar or otherwise) can only reconstruct the past using the record that has been left behind. Much of queer history has no record (for many reasons). Just as before there were supercolliders, we did not know about the existence of quarks and gluons, so we may not know about joyful sexuality until we find the records (if they exist).
And even with perfect records, approaches will vary (such is the fate of living in a pluralistic world). A good, scholarly tome just released is Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton which does try to reconstruct queer history. It takes a position opposed to the view of Foucault.
So who is right? The Foucauldians or the Cromptonites? Or are they both? Or neither? Whatever the answer turns out to be, I think scholars run into danger when they try to join the Infallibility Club (Pope John Paul, George Bush, etc., etc.). It is the arrogance that causes resentment, not the scholarship.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister