Yeah, I keep hoping some queer groups will show up and protest the Dalai Lama as they would any Western anti-gay religious leader. It doesn't seem likely though, somehow!
Perhaps there are some good reasons why they don't - as Christian Gregory suggests, many of the Dalai Lama followers are people who are progressive in other ways. But there's a dishonesty - and sentimentality - about the way the DL and Tibet are portrayed to Westerners, with their reactionary aspects sanitized (anti-gay material has literally been edited out of the DL's English language books).
now I must rant biliously about that dopey NW column.
As for Naomi Wolf - is that a parody cooked up by the Exile?? If not, she seems to have been the victim of an identity theft by Virginia Postrel! All I have to say about that article is, most left anti-shopping rhetoric is preachy, and just as shallow as capitalist exhortations to shop more, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't make *stores* the targets of protest. Just because you take pleasure in shopping doesn't mean you solidarize with capitalists and don't object to Gap sweatshops, etc. And, I thought it was profoundly sexist to suggest that girl anti-globo protesters who dress unfashionably were somehow brainwashed by BOYS. Anyone familiar with the history of female protest knows that political women are perfectly capable of looking like ragpickers on their own, without male guidance. And many of them look great. I think those anti-globo girls look very cute in their hoodies! Not sure why she assumes that whatever she buys at the mall makes her look better. Ms. Wolf obviously hasn't seen the Radical Cheerleaders, or any of the other femme protest looks. I really wish people wouldn't write about stuff they know nothing about. I keep thinking it must be a spoof because it's so stupid, but I'm sure it isn't.
Liza
> From: Michael Pugliese <debsian at pacbell.net>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 17:00:39 -0700
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] dalai lama foolishness
>
> http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_budd.htm
> THE BUDDHIST RELIGION AND HOMOSEXUALITY
>
> http://www.gaybuddhist.org/
>
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tibet/interviews/schell.html
> Frontline documentary, "Red Flag Over Tibet." Schell wrote, "Virtual
> Tibet:Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood, about
> Western perceptions of Tibet."
>> ... q: What is it about Tibet and Tibetan culture that holds such an
>> allure for the West?
>
> schell: I think the West trapped as it is in its own post-industrial
> culture really misses the idea that there is some place apart from all the
> getting and the earning and the commerce where there's a different currency
> - a spiritual currency. And so I think Tibet has become the place, or one
> of the places on which we've projected the notion that there are enclaves
> sort of wilderness areas that are set apart, that we can imagine is sacred.
> This place is a spiritual destiny where other imperatives of life are at
> work and this is very important to us and the more we become enamored of
> our own materialist commercial culture the more we like to imagine that
> there are these other refuges still existing just in case we want to at
> some point in our life repair to them. <SNIP>
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tibet/china/
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tibet/understand/
> Here are three selections from John Powers' lucid and illuminating book,
> Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism
> http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/Tibetan.html
> PSYCHOLOGY IN TIBETAN BUDDHISM--A BRIEF SUMMARY NOTES ON WALTER TRUETT
> ANDERSON'S OPEN SECRETS: A WESTERN GUIDE TO TIBETAN BUDDHISM. New York:
> Viking Press.
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk