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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36376 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.

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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