During a recent interview, the Dalai Lama made a shocking declaration: If he should have a female successor, he specified, she must be physically attractive.
“If female Dalai Lama comes, then (she) should be more attractive,” he said with a laugh. He then made a distorted face, according to the BBC, and said that if a female Dalai Lama looked a certain way, “then people, I think, prefer not see … that face.”
Asked whether that might be perceived as objectifying by contrast with a person’s intrinsic value, the Dalai Lama responded, “I think both.”
The Dalai Lama made similar comments in 2015, when he told the BBC that a future Dalai Lama certainly could be a woman but would have to be good looking or would be “not much use.
The Dalai Lama apologized today and tried to brush off the remark as a joke. But sexism is no laughing matter—even if the feminist responses to the Dalai Lama’s initial statements had us in stitches.
As the world collapses and our brain cells continue crawling out of our ears, Twitter is the one place we can count on to help us mourn the only way we can: laughter. And that’s where feminists came out in full force to talk back to the Dalai Lama’s sexism.
These were our 10 favorite responses.
