CHINA, COURTESAN and CONCU --BINAGE

FOR MEN ONLY or not?????????? Feedback from ladies, please.

Courtesan and Concubinage in China

“It is impossible to exaggerate the romantic, literary, musical and political importance of the courtesan in China. Men thought it improper for decent family girls to handle musical instruments, which were dangerous to their virtue, or to have too much literary learning, which was equally subversive of their morality, and rarely encouraged painting and poetry for them, they did not, however, cease to desire the female company of the artistic and literary type. The singsong girls cultivated these things. So the scholars went to these girls-, especially in the Ming period.

Then courtesan supplied the need for courtship and romance which many men missed in their youth before marriage. The singing girl had to be courted, the prostitute not. Many a man had to court a singing girl for months and had to spend three or four thousand dollars before he was permitted to spend a night in her boudoir. Such a relationship was legitimate and proper-what else should the men do? Chinese take mistresses with public consent (including the wives), whereas Westerners have the decency not to talk about it.

Ming Dynasty: A man aged forty without a son could officially marry a concubine.

What divorce is in the West, concubinage is in the East.

The Chinese regard marriage as a family affair and the family still continues with a concubine.”                                                                          Lin Yutang

Europe: The Catholic Church: Monks and priests killed altogether about 100.000 women, the best of the best, during the MIDDLE AGES and beyond, 1300 to 1700. Why: They could (officially) not marry or have "girlfriends, could not manage spiritually their sexuality, were totally torn, angry and terrified within, projected their inner turmoil on the outside world (looking for scapegoats), and projected all their inner "filth" on women; on women who were exceptional: e.g. - who had the knowledge of healing etc. We men have ALWAYS- for thousands of years looked at women as witches, very dangerous beings- and found them FASCINATING-Latin

FASCINARE= TO BEWITCH. These "witches" were tortured, killed or burned on stakes. Today: People who are unhappy look for scapegoated or escape into war at home., in their workplace or in real war-- and behind all !!!!PROBLEMS is always the same problem: OUR TREMENDOUS FEAR OF DEATH:

Thukydides, 2.500 years ago, in his “History of the Peloponnesian War”, saw the problem of death as the primary cause of protracted violent conflict.”

Socrates defined the task of Philosophy as “learning how to die”.

History, for Hegel, German philosopher, was the record of “What man does with death.”

Have I, Edwin, Shocked you????