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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36409 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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So this is going viral Dalai Lama apologizes after video asking child to 'suck' his tongue sparks outcry. This was in February, but only today he apologized after it went viral.

One thing that's interesting is major media sites like CNN are hiding the video, presumably because it's 'too inappropriate', yet it was trivially easy to find footage of the Trump Access Hollywood tape leak when that story broke:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/10/07/donald-trump-women-lewd-comments-origwx-cs.cnn

or nytimes:

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005573743/trump-casts-doubt-on-access-hollywood-video.html

or npr:

https://www.npr.org/2016/10/08/497164654/trump-caught-on-tape-making-lewd-remarks-about-women-in-2005

Other news sites link to a tweet containing the Dalai Lama video.

There are two ways of looking at this: either Dalai Lama knew it was inappropriate but didn't care or did not expect it to viral. Or he actually thought it was harmless.

Tibetan monasteries were extremely gay, allegedly.

So, who knows.

All monasteries are gay, as are all exclusively male total institutions.

I'm not sure about that at all.

Functional European armies of the past often excluded gays on purpose or treated them in line with traditional morality, and if there was any homosexual behavior, it was a rarity, not the norm.

Dunno if you see Tsarist Russian army as "functional", but homosexual rape in this pure Christian institution was common. Russia of today is indeed retvrning to tradition.

Links and sources:

https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?style=1&f=5&t=119002&p=2699850

In the first days of my command of this battalion, I found a picant incident in one of the companies, which had a particular coleur locale; in this company, an aboriginal unter-officer, held by the unnatural vice [remember, historically homosexuality was still seen as a devil's sin], raped young soldiers from his platoon. The regiment commander reported it to me orally, for some reason avoiding an official report, and told me that such sins were happening earlier in the regiment. To myself, uncommon to such caucasian traditions, this event seemed a great crime. Conducting a personal investigation and having uncovered all as it was, I personally reported to my superiors, asking for the unter to be court-martialled.

The following events saddened me even more than the fact of a platoon being turned into a harem for it's commander. A Grand Duke (Velikiy Knyaz) arrived at White Springs (Beliy Kliuch) for a common inspection. After the inspection I receive a note to arrive before his highness for discussing matters of service. In the company of the regiment commander, colonel Sulikovsky, he starts a speech:

  • Why, colonel, do you report about this unter-officer story? It's inconvenient to start a fuss when the 200-jubilee is closing in. Take your report back. It seems such stories are alien to you; we, however, are already accustomed to them. Do you know that last year in my division not just an unter, but a commander of the Tiflis regiment, colonel Popov, was caught with the same crime: he raped the messengers and ordinares sent to him every day on duty. I was pretty much ready to forgive him those little excesses - he was a brave commander. But this history was made public. I had to fire him from the army. But you know what Kuropatkin told me in Petersburg? He said you're losing a good commander in vain; this little mischief is of no importance, which he was caught in. In Turkestan during the conquest, many, many have been doing this - "holding boys". And what would they do without women? But we must wage war. And "without a woman a man is like a machine without steam".

Of course, after that the deal with the unter-officer ended with nothing. I just transferred him to another company.

Functional European armies of the past had camp followers and usually raped everything withing foraging distance.

Why are we hearing so much about this? Cui bono? Starts with "C" is my guess.

Yes, the Catholic's are boosting it to cover up the release of the report about the Maryland Archdiocese covering up child molesting priests that came out last week.

“Corporations?” “Communists?”

I need another hint.

Ends with "a" and has an axe to grind with the Dali Lama.

Crichard Gerea?

Edit: this is possibly my dumbest and also best joke ever, please don't take it seriously

He probably would suck the Dalai Lama's tongue, so...

Probably, as long as Steven Segal or Russell Brand didn't suck it first.

Cameroon

I feel like the Internet is losing its collective mind about that. It is not even a scissor statement, but everyone is aghast: The Buddhism subreddit has threads about people having a religious crisis. The Twitter hashtag is atheists being giddy taking a religious icon down, wokes grandstanding about abusive childhood trauma, evangelicals gladly attacking a trendy competing religion, rightwingers posting old memes of Biden and trying to smear any Democrat as a pedo if they had a photo together with the Dalai Llama…

I am not saying it is ok or appropriate or that his goofing around wasn’t icky. But sexual predator? A pedophile? I am baffled. My model of the Llama is that of a jester and he is someone who doesn’t have much experience with children. Also he is superold, and old people can be sometimes strange and weird. Doesn’t that suffice in explanation?

My thought when I first heard “suck my tongue” was that this is an idiom or cultural thing that might not be sexual at all. It’s just a very odd thing to say at least in English. I haven’t really gone digging for the videos so I’m not sure, but it sounds so Engrish that I find it hard to take as a sexual thing.

I have noticed the same thing, and the bored response it has gotten here makes me happy, because yeah he's just a little old loon.

This was almost my exact reaction. I don't particularly care about the Dalai Llama, aside as an interesting tourist attraction, but...he's like a billion years old. Old people start to lose their mental faculties. He also has been known as a joker AFAIK, and this just seems like an old/senile person trying to be funny with a kid, or gross them out to make them laugh. It comes across as completely inappropriate but...old people are weird, and often crazy. This is an old person behaving crazy. He may have pooped his pants a few seconds later.

I think the people making a comparison to Biden are correct though. It seems wildly hypocritical that this is a "story" and the numerous videos of Biden behaving badly around children aren't/isn't.

I can think of all sorts of reasons why an American political candidate’s remarks should be available. Most of them apply to a foreign religious leader, too, but I’m not surprised if the cost/benefit comes out differently.

Apparently sticking out your tongue is actually a greeting in Tibet. I imagine that the quip about sucking on it was entirely in jest, blown way out of proportion by the usual pedo-panickers in the West.

I wonder how Tibetans would respond on a survey if you showed them the video and asked them whether anything sexual is going on. I'm not sure what answer you would get, but it wouldn't surprise me if they overwhelmingly said "no."

I have been to Tibet, but I'm by no means any kind of expert on Tibetan culture. Still, it's extremely obvious to a casual observer that standards for platonic male behavior are way different over there. If you see two men or boys together they will almost certainly be holding hands or have their arms around each other. It was very unusual to see two males together not making physical contact with each other. It's clear that this is seen as completely normal and expected platonic behavior and not sexual or romantic at all.

Also the tongue thing, as you mention. Everybody sticks out their tongues at each other as a sign of greeting or (platonic) affection. I never saw any tongue sucking going on, but it wouldn't surprise me if the average Tibetan perceived this kind of thing as a form of "platonic goofing around" rather than the highly sexualized act we see it as in the west.

I’ve seen others point out that it would be odd to apologize for mere cultural differences.

The tongue sucking request also came after a full on-the-mouth kiss that was also inappropriate.

Yeah this feels more like a cultural misunderstanding than anything else. I can likewise imagine myself in a playful situation with a 4 year old where I'd say something like "spank my butt" to the child, even if it would sound weird out of context.

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