Saturday 27th of April 2024
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the male eunuch versus the female fatale...

lama

The Dalai Lama has apologised for controversial comments about the possibility of a woman succeeding him. 

Speaking to the BBC last month, the Tibetan spiritual leader said that any future female Dalai Lama should be "attractive".

But a statement from his office apologised for his words, suggesting he had been joking.

"He is deeply sorry that people have been hurt by what he said and offers his sincere apologies," it said. 

In the interview, the spiritual leader, who is 84 this week, touched on topics including US President Donald Trump, his dreams of returning to Tibet, and refugees.

However, it was his comments on the prospect of a female Dalai Lama that raised eyebrows. 

"If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive," he said in English, while laughing.

The statement apologised for any offence caused and put it down to a misunderstood joke.

 

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48844825

I am a woman, not a castrate...

“Maybe I couldn’t make it. Maybe I don’t have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky arse, a sexy voice. Maybe I don’t know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I’m sick of the masquerade. I’m sick of pretending eternal youth. I’m sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I’m sick of peering at the world through false eyelashes, so everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought hairs; I’m sick of weighting my head with a dead mane, unable to move my neck freely, terrified of rain, of wind, of dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls. I’m sick of the Powder Room. I’m sick of pretending that some fatuous male’s self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I’m sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either. I’m sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate.” 


― Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

solving the female privacy of nature's call...

It’s the great injustice of festival life. While men don’t have to think twice about it, for women the question of when and where to pee is always there. Do you brave a long queue and risk losing your friends, or are you drunk enough to relieve yourself in a more informal setting?

Gina Périer, a French architect living in Copenhagen, thinks she has the answer. In a boost for “pee-quality”, her company is rolling out Lapee, which she claims is the world’s first industrially-produced female urinal, at this week’s Roskilde festival in Denmark.

“When we were here on Saturday and Sunday, it was only used by girls and they were so happy,” she said, as she inspected her 48 pink plastic spiral designs. “We were spammed by Instagram messages. They were all saying ‘finally, something for us’, because it’s so degrading for women, the situation of urination.”

The concept is fairly simple. The Lapee takes the idea of a single moulded urinal unit with built-in storage tank and adapts it for women by extending the divider to screen the user off, lifting it up and raising the hole into which you pee to make it easy to hit. A spiral design assures privacy.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/04/the-penny-drops-at-last-a-...