Concubines... are an option (part deux)

[Ninot]

I heard homosexuality is growing at an incredible pace.

[Dis]

how could that be if homosexuality is not a choice?

I'm kind of serious here. I am a firm believer homosexuality is not a choice. but then you do hear stories of prison sex. So maybe it's a thing of necessity. I don't know.

[mindseye]

This year the city of Nanjing issued an order for all public officials to register their extramarital relationships

That part was especially enjoyed on the China blogs. Mistresses blackmailing their big wig officials reaches the point where the CCP sees it as a growing vulnerability. The Response? Classic CCP: have the officials register their mistresses. If the mistresses are officially known, that removes the possibility of blackmail.

By the way, widespread keeping of mistresses is not the only manifestation of this phenomenon. Prostitution has become so common as to be ubiquitious. There seem to be very up-front brothels, often multiple brothels, in most residential neighborhood now. It seems to be common in all parts of the country, major cities to small towns.

I live in a pretty nice middle class neighborhood. Within, say, three blocks of the front door of my apartment building, I know of four brothels. There are likely more that I don't know about.

One of them just opened on the first floor of my building. Last month it was a real estate agency, in six months it will probably be a cigarette store or hair stylists. Stores on the street level change frequently.

The brothels are hard to miss with their magenta lighting and couch full of girls seated by the door. "Welcome" it says in big characters on the door of the brothel in my building. If you happen to look in as you walk by, girls will leap to their feet, smiling and waving you in. These are places right on the streetfront, between the other little stores and shops.

Besides the brothels, you can easily meet prostitutes in places like pubs and nightclubs, hotel bars, various neighborhood streets, net bars, pedestrian bridges, etc.

I personally don't have a problem with prostitution as long as it's a freely consensual transaction. I do have to admit, though, I'm starting to feel increasingly creepy about the prevalence of hookers and mistresses here. That they've suddenly reached such numbers and operate so openly is a worrisome sign. I hope it's just another odd blip in the whirling chaos of change here.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Ninot

I heard homosexuality is growing at an incredible pace.

Hmm, I haven't heard anything about that from anyone, gay or straight, on this side.

Any perceived increase in homosexuality is far more likely to be connected with "gay China" rapidly opening up. For example, there are now several mainland Chinese magazines catering to gays openly available on newsstands downtown. TV shows occasionally talk about gay stars and their boyfriends, and there are a couple of just-ambiguous-enough lesbian celebrities. So, gays have a fast-growing "presence" here, I suspect that explains it.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Dis
how could that be if homosexuality is not a choice?

I'm kind of serious here. I am a firm believer homosexuality is not a choice. but then you do hear stories of prison sex. So maybe it's a thing of necessity. I don't know.

That's a subject of some amount of psych study, apparently. It's largely an aspect of frustrated male horniness seeking an outlet. True, they could just milk themselves like a lot of guys, but there's something about the presence of a physical partner that conveys psychological satisfaction. Given the unnatural circumstances surrounding imprisonment, I wouldn't take what I see there as a good case study for the real world in any case. Keep a guy in a cage long enough and he just might start screwing the bread he gets for rations. But then, I'm not a shrink, so I don't know.

As for gays in China, you'd think the government would gladly allow it. Anything to reduce the birth rate. The problem with a lack of women is more complex, from what I've read; men who can't get wives tend to turn to crime at seven times the rate of married ones, or something like that. It's just a statistical correlation in some studies, but there have been a lot of reasons offered for the link that strike experts as plausible. This is just off the top of my head from memory of a Washington Post article, mind you.

[mindseye]

Well, you also have to get past the western notion that there are "straight" people and "gay" people. That idea just doesn't cut it when it meets the reality of other cultures like China's.

Here, a "heterosexual" (not even a word for that in Chinese until recently!) male who is only interested in women might get it on with another guy under the proper conditions, even if he would not normally seek this out himself. And afterwards he would not think that this was a big deal, or had somehow changed his identity or sexuality. Unlike western males, Asian males are not brainwashed from birth that physical contact between men is a terrible, unmanly thing.

If you look at how most primates live, you can see that the current western thinking about sexuality is the one less connected with nature. In most upper primates there is occasional male-male sexual activity which appears to have little to do with "heterosexual" and "homosexual" identities.

[Seeker]

"Well, you also have to get past the western notion that there are "straight" people and "gay" people. "

or watch Korean TV for even one hour....

[Bosh]

----

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Seeker
"Well, you also have to get past the western notion that there are "straight" people and "gay" people. "

or watch Korean TV for even one hour....

ooooooooooopa waeeeeeeeeegoraeeeeeeeeee

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Seeker

"Well, you also have to get past the western notion that there are "straight" people and "gay" people. "

or watch Korean TV for even one hour....

Will one of you guys please elaborate on that a little. Despite the "Korean Wave" sweeping China (and Japan), I'm woefully underversed on Korean culture - pop, gay, or otherwise.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by mindseye

Will one of you guys please elaborate on that a little. Despite the "Korean Wave" sweeping China (and Japan), I'm woefully underversed on Korean culture - pop, gay, or otherwise.

lucky bastard

[Bosh]

Seriously though:

Korean dramas: very very sappy, people having emotional fits and crying every five minutes, guys mooning for hours over girls, improbable coincidences etc. etc.

Korean music: sappy "ballads" and techno-pop for the most part, only a handful of decent groups. DJ Doc is full of campy goodness:

http://arilover.net/bbs/zboard.php?id=laugh&page=1&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=subject&desc=asc&no=156

Korean movies: They're amazingly good, very well-done and artsy for the most part with a good mix of fun gangster movies for the most part. Old Boy, Taekuki (called Brotherhood of War in English I think) and The President's Last Bang are my favorites but there's a lot of other fun movies like Chingu (called Friends in English I think), JSA, Public Enemey and My Sassy Girl (fun romantic comedy and a good intro to korean pop culture).

Korean TV comedy: The less said the better, most of it is along the lines of a five minute sketch in which the only joke is "there's a man and he's wearing a dress! A dress, teee hee!"

[DaShi]

Chinese dramas are basically the same just a little simpler so that nobody misses the point.

Anyway, what seems to be occuring is return to older customs in Asia in regards to women's social status, specifically in China and Japan. Japan was forced to give its women equality in its post-war US written constitution. Since then there has been a movement, albiet minor, to return women to their traditional subservient role.

In China, the communist party played a significant role in improving the status of women. For all the horror they released throughout their country and others, they give women a lot more rights and freedoms. Despite that there is still a lot of gender discrimination. Cases of bosses demanding sexual favors from female employees are commonplace and the women have no recourse but to quit the job (if they can even do that) or give in.

The problem with a rise in prostitution, mistresses, and concubines is that it does degrade the image of women no matter how it's dressed up or how consensual it is. In China, it's very strange as a rapid prevalence of prostitution is usually a sign of a struggling or declining economy, something that is certainly not happening in China. What I worry about is that traditional attitudes toward women are reemerging.

[Last Conformist]

I recently read an article about how the proportion of females is declining in the US (don't recall why it's happening), and how that would probably increase their social status. Doesn't seem that theory applies to China.

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by mindseye
Well, you also have to get past the western notion that there are "straight" people and "gay" people. That idea just doesn't cut it when it meets the reality of other cultures like China's.

Here, a "heterosexual" (not even a word for that in Chinese until recently!) male who is only interested in women might get it on with another guy under the proper conditions, even if he would not normally seek this out himself. And afterwards he would not think that this was a big deal, or had somehow changed his identity or sexuality. Unlike western males, Asian males are not brainwashed from birth that physical contact between men is a terrible, unmanly thing.

If you look at how most primates live, you can see that the current western thinking about sexuality is the one less connected with nature. In most upper primates there is occasional male-male sexual activity which appears to have little to do with "heterosexual" and "homosexual" identities.

Are you saying the Chinese are closer to the primates than white people?