In an interview with the BBC this week, the 14th Dalai Lama told reporter Rajini Vaidyanathan that if he were to have a female successor, she should be attractive.
The Dalai Lama says he doesn’t see much point to a female successor if she’s unattractive. pic.twitter.com/9QRTAeCQWz
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 28, 2019
“You once said that you would be open to a female successor. You also told one of my colleagues that that female must be attractive. Otherwise, it’s not much use,” Vaidyanathan said, referring to an interview with the Buddhist monk in 2015.
Rather than backtracking, the Dalai Lama embraced his comments, repeating: People prefer not to see “a dead face.” This was enough to send observers on Twitter into a tiresome social justice frenzy. One commenter went so far as to argue that the Dalai Lama’s Nobel Peace Prize should be taken away.
Nobel Committee should seriously start thinking a process of how to strip Nobel Peace Prize! https://t.co/6Oxzsv7fxD
— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) June 28, 2019
Having to cancel the Dalai Lama is about as 2019 as it gets https://t.co/VHUPNRJSdF
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) June 28, 2019
The Dalai Lama said a female successor would have to be hot. We are so far past seven in the seals of the apocalypse department https://t.co/h3EL5CXtwk
— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) June 28, 2019
wow wasnt expecting to have to cancel the dalai lama when i woke up this morning but here we are pic.twitter.com/qmYUVz1vs1
— raina douris (@RahRahRaina) June 28, 2019
Get it together, people. Just because the Dalai Lama made a dumb, sexist comment, that doesn’t mean we have swear him off altogether. At best, your complaints are useless whining. At worst, your attempt to impose “woke” Western values on an Eastern spiritual leader is a form of cultural imperialism.
What’s truly insane about this story is not the sexism. It’s the recklessness of cancel culture.
