The most remarkable woman of the nineteenth century
The year was 1851. A pretty sixteen-year-old Manchu girl named Miss Chao entered through the Gate of Divine Prowess into the Forbidden City in Beijing as a lowly concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. She was to become the most remarkable woman in history.
When the gates of the Forbidden City closed behind Miss Chao, she shut out a busy world. A world filled with family, friends, fun, shopping at the vibrant markets, and a budding romance. Her life’s destiny was to be locked within the limits of a one square kilometre area of brick-paved earth, surrounded by a crenelated wall ten metres high and as many metres thick, resplendent with palaces of unimaginable beauty. Here there was only one “whole” man. He was not her father, brother, husband, or even her friend, and a man whom she might never even see.
Here she would live as neither mistress nor servant, wife nor slave, but one of a basket of peaches which had little chance of being sampled before withering away, dried and wrinkled, in silken finery. Miss Chao emerged a half-century later as the Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala and one of the most powerful women in history.
She had ruled more than a quarter of the world’s population for nearly fifty years, through tumultuous times in China, and had lived a life shrouded in mystery and surrounded by myths of intrigue, betrayal, murder, love, and survival.
Her race, the Manchus, had ruled China as the Qing Dynasty for four hundred years and were the last imperial Chinese Dynasty in a long warlord-inspired history. The Qing Dynasty collapsed after the death of the now daunting old Empress Dowager Cixi Yehonala in 1908, and almost faded from memory after the abdication of the last puppet Emperor, Puyi, of movie fame in The Last Emperor.
Most westerners only remember the Qing Dynasty and the most remarkable woman, Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala, these days through such Hollywood films as this, and through blockbusters like 55 Days in Peking, wherein another triumph of American values embodied in the form of Charlton Heston, the world was made white again.
The heroic Mr. Heston almost single-handedly brought down the Qing Dynasty by defeating the Boxers, a peasant rebellion, who wanted to murder all the proselytes infesting China with their talkative Christianity, a hopeless but arguably noble undertaking.
Thus complete, the western powers carved up coastal China into colonial concessions for a more sanctioned style of rape and pillage.
The Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala has inspired authors and movie-makers for a century and her portrayals as messiah or monster are debated in every story.
What’s the truth about Cixi? The only agreed one is that the most remarkable woman in history is in danger of having her momentous life and achievements whitewashed away by the poorly written history of the men who feared her, and had better literary agents. Let’s take a new look at Miss Chao, the young girl who became the awesome Dowager Empress Cixi Yehonala.
Buy your copy of this extraordinary novel of China’s history and a love story for the ages by visiting Shawline Publishing HERE
Robert Barclay
Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.
Receive your subscriber-only FREE GIFT of “Chavy’s Story” by subscribing to my email list.
Flights of Fancy
Don’t we all treasure romance novels? Those romantic fantasies we create in the world of our imagination? For some, it’s making love scandalously in the surf like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. For others seduced by, or seducing, a handsome rogue while Charleston burns down around you. Or, you may be the type who clings to memories as you’re torn away from your lover at a foggy airport in wartime Casablanca. Closer to home, who doesn’t like a trip down memory lane. Perhaps to that B&B where you fell in love once upon a time…
I wonder if our world is drowning in the imagery of a thirty second grab at the expense of wonder. A plan designed to support the purchase of things we don’t need by sponsors who don’t care, whether they be major news outlets or “influencers” on social media platforms. I’m not promoting another conspiracy theory, just making an observation. And a plea not to lose sight of that true wonder, a book. A private world filled with images that didn’t exist before and a writer created uniquely for each reader’s mind. Like a coming of age after senses are dulled by the senseless.
The good news is that many share the same pleasure as me. Real books, the ones we can pick up and thumb through to find a turned down page with a favourite paragraph, are doing well. Their death has been greatly exaggerated. There is a sense of wonder in the physical presence of a book, new or old. Freshly printed, bookshop books smell of ink and paper and newness. But older books, now there’s a joy. Anyone who has lost themselves in a second-hand bookshop know that sweet, musky smell that wafts into a book-lover’s nose and lingers. Someone told me once it reminded them of chocolate. They’re wrong, and right. Like the images created in our mind by the writer, even old bookshops are unique to the browser. If you’ve never had the experience, your life has missed a wonder and you should make your way there immediately.
Books are all about wonder. Even hackneyed old plots about the unlikely hero who saves the world and marries the girl become best sellers with a fresh coat of wonder applied to them. Readers of books come to their favourite genre, or author, for those reasons. They only stay, and return time and time again, because they fall victim to the lure of wonder on the next page.
Wonder literature is the world’s most popular literature, and the truth is most of us don’t even know. We search for the books we enjoy under artificial categories of horror, romance, science-fiction and so on. However, there isn’t even a genre called “wonder”. And there should be, it outsells all the others combined as it exists in each of them.
I’ll leave you with one last thought. Next time you pick up one of those romance novels, or any book for that matter, ask yourself, why do I want to read it? The biggest hits of all time have almost always been “wonder” literature. And starts with that best-seller, the Bible, even if we’re not believers.
Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.
Receive your subscriber-only FREE GIFT of “Chavy’s Story” by subscribing to my email list.
Storytelling Matters
Telling stories matters – though I don’t think that should really be such a surprise. However, we live in a world where the distractions of technology for its own sake dominate and diminish our lives. Stories do the opposite; they enrich the world and our humanity.
My new book is to be published soon, a coming of age story for the strong female protagonists who enter a world they don’t know. The story is inspired by an idea, not a person. That idea is every child deserves a childhood and is set in Australia, England and Cambodia. My charity works in Cambodia, with others, fighting the evils of the child sex trade.
I know many people there who work unheralded, sometimes risking their lives rescuing kids from traffickers. These people personify the idea of acting according to one’s conscience, even in the face of personal risk. These kids and those unsung heroes inspire every word I write in my own storytelling.
Never think these stories are far from home, or in someone’s else’s backyard. Just today, in Australia, more than 40 Australian men have been charged with possessing child abuse material and sharing their material online, with 16 children removed from harm’s way.
The AFP said its Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation has in the past 12 months intercepted more than 250,000 child abuse material files online, while 134 children – including 67 in Australia – were removed from harm in 2019/20. The New Daily 23 Oct
Stories matter.
Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his quirky, rather flawed protagonists as they confront the evils of society.
What would Holly Golightly make of all this?
For those of us prescient in the 1960’s, and those born much later, the name Holly Golightly is synonymous with sex and sophistication. Even teenagers know who invented the LBD. It ushered in a new fashion essential for every woman. And for just about every man, Audrey Hepburn created a myth of a myth around femininity, with the power to seduce with grace and divine poise.
So, what are we supposed to make of Audrey Hepburn’s alter ego, Holly Golightly? It’s true that there’s a lot for us to not like about her as she happily steals another’s boyfriend, cares not a whit about who she inconveniences to get what she wants, and seems content in fleeting and meaningless relationships. Had it not been for the rigid censorship of the times, we would know Holly was bi-sexual and an escort who maintained her lifestyle by relieving men of their money. We would call her the classic anti-hero
But there’s also a lot to really like about Holly Golightly as we question who are the good and bad people in the world, and we are challenged to decide whether we are supposed to hate her, love her, or pray she finds happiness in the end. She does not make it easy for us to answer these questions. Holly’s a dilemma for us, though for those of us who know the story, perhaps she isn’t so hard to understand.
Holly Golightly was an orphan who had a very tough childhood, forced to live with some dreadful relatives after her parents died. She runs away with her young brother to live on the street, and they are eventually taken in by a man who she marries when she is just fourteen. We learn her painful past is never far from her thoughts, and when her brother is killed in the war, she laments he was the only one in her life who ever let her hug him on cold winter night.
Audrey Hepburn, who as we do know, gave up her life to devote it to exactly who we may think Holly Golightly did not represent: the underprivileged and desperate children of the world.
Much of what we know about the world comes to us via movies, newspapers, and social media megaphones. We should not forget that behind a lot of what we see and are allowed to think about, there is another world crying out for the same attention, but lacking the voice to do so.
What would the anti-hero Holly Golightly make of all this?
Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his strong female protagonists as they confront the evils of society.
Receive your subscriber-only FREE GIFT of “Chavy’s Story” by subscribing to my email list.
The Parallel World on our doorstep
You and I are lucky to live in a world where many committed people are campaigning for the human rights and dignity of exploited children. But make no mistake – thousands of young children are being entrapped, kidnapped, or sold for sex and subjected to unspeakable exploitation and abuse. Even as I write these words, one young child, perhaps no older than six or seven, is being prepared to be raped. UNICEF tell us that thirty precious girls just like her will die today and every day in this evil trade.
Their average life span is seven years in this vile business. Child sex-slavery is thriving in the poorest countries, like Cambodia, and thousands of children need rescuing from the terror, drugs, and brutality that steals not only their childhood but their lives. Unless rescued, their life expectancy is short, most don’t live beyond twenty, and if they do they live lives replaying the horrors they endured, many finding respite in drugs or suicide.
The poverty and corruption that causes this problem, and the distress that is its result, is the greatest challenge to our compassion. These innocent children could be your children, in a way they are, and we are all responsible
Child sex traffickers prey on the weaknesses and difficult circumstances of their victims in the poorest countries in the world. Their intentions are sometimes masked behind a warm and friendly smile, offering a welcome job to someone’s child whose family is in desperate need for the basic necessities of life. Then, they are sold into the violent and heinous world of the sex traffickers.
Human trafficking is an intricate web of deceit, greed, and depravity. It’s a vast industry of corruption that is bigger than the illegal drugs and arms industries combined. Whatever methods traffickers use for any given situation, the innocent lives they target are lured into a life of unimaginable horror. Sometimes, tragically, it is also the family desperately trying to find money for essential living costs which cause them to knowingly or unknowingly sell their young daughters to sex tourists, businessmen, and officials. Once done, these children find themselves in brothels and the back rooms of bars, prey for further predators. Sometimes, as broken young women they are smuggled into the underground sex industry overseas, even into Australia.
The Sunlight Foundation’s vision is to give these children their childhood back by working to end the monstrous crime of child sex trafficking. The Sunlight Foundation will play an important part in saving these children from harm, but rescue alone is not enough – we want to give these children the chance to change their own world for good and go further than they deemed possible, despite their circumstances.
I am passionate about fighting the atrocity of trafficking children for sex, and preventing as many children as possible from ever suffering the unimaginable exploitation and abuse that follows. I hope you will follow my journey as I try to raise awareness and support against this vile business.
Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his quirky, rather flawed protagonists as they confront the evils of society.
VIRGINITY
A few months back maybe you read, as I did, that the rapper T.I subjects his daughter to the degrading ritual of “virginity testing” and were as disgusted as I was. I couldn’t decide if he was protecting a higher bride-price for his daughter in the marketplace, or callously demonstrating his power over a woman by forcing his will on her rights to her own body. Probably both, I concluded, as he apparently encourages promiscuity in his own son.
The article got me thinking. These attitudes, in part generated by rapper T.I’s Trumpian egoism I suspect, just continues to add an unhealthy value to virginity, which will undoubtedly drive up sales in the black market of the child sex trafficking industry, increasing a child’s profitability to their sellers.
Attaching value to a woman’s virginity is an age-old belief which has played a pivotal role in perpetuating hideous practices such as trafficking children for sex. This man’s actions simply reconfirm interest in the whole virginity issue by reinforcing a claim of male ownership of a woman’s body and what she does with it.
It is not hard to trace the link between that man’s pathetic power-game to other young girls trafficked and raped – and let’s call it for what it is – because these attitudes have everything to do with young girls and sex-trafficking. Even more so in countries afflicted with severe poverty and an ingrained gender inequality. But what role does virginity play in all this?
Firstly, in many developing countries, women are still treated like commodities. Perpetuated by myths among their men that sex with virgins gives them “magical superpowers”, virginity is big business. The belief that sex with virgins increases male vigour has long been popular among powerful men in Asia, including people like Mao Zedong and North Korea’s Kim family of dictators. Even the idea that HIV/AIDS can be cured as a result of having sex with a virgin has been identified as a factor in the rape of babies and children in South Africa. These myths, posing as conventional wisdom, just reinforce the sexual subjugation of women as necessary to satisfy men’s power needs. Almost unbelievably, some families trying to survive in poverty have daughters purely for the purpose of selling them to men.
Secondly, the children being sold are younger and younger. The buyer needs to be sure that, in fact, he will be purchasing a virgin’s magic powers, and not being tricked into buying a child who is not pure, so girls as young as four years old are often on offer. This request for proof of purity has been around for generations, in many cultures, and shows little sign it is out of fashion in some quarters apparently, if the likes of the abusing T.I. is any guide. Despite the truth that this test has absolutely no value or is proof of anything except as evidence of sexual assault.
Do not rest easy, because there is no “we are better than that” defence for western cultures either. What motivates the western sex-tourism paedophiles, and people like (happily ex) Jeffrey Epstein, and his Royal, Presidential, entertainment and business accomplices is probably much the same.
Through the centuries, the stereotypes reinforcing attitudes about virginity have ingrained themselves subtly and sometimes forcefully into our psyches. They appear as religious dogma about a virgin birth, in the Lourdes miracle, in Joan of Arc dramas as well as in the Madonna/whore complex of Freudian psychology, to quote just a few examples. The virginity myth also shows up in the form of humorous clichés: from the ritual checking of the sheets after the first night by the groom’s parents in some comedy classics – and for real in some Eastern European cultures where the “Red Apple” check is essential to retain family pride – to the primae noctis of feudal lords to take the virginity of newly wedded women in movies like “Robin Hood”, to a vampire Countess needing to drink the blood of a virgin in order to keep her eternal beauty in “Love at First Bite”. The list is endless and disturbing when collated as cultural mores about virginity generally.
My personal stance is that I will continue to push for the rescue and protection of young girls. The cultural conditioning we have received for thousands of years is not going to be undone overnight, I know this, but that is no reason to sit back and deny the inequalities and obscenities it has created in our modern world, and the very real dangers for innocent children born into a world of poverty where their virginity is their only marketable value. These children deserve their childhood and a future where they can dream – and achieve those dreams – and every voice should be lifted in protest at these grotesque crimes.
Robert Barclay is an Australian author of some of the best Australian crime/mystery novels. His Australian romance novels and stories follow the lives of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, his quirky, rather flawed protagonists as they confront the evils of society.
UNICEF in CAMBODIA
Here’s a statistic to start: UNICEF tells us that 30 children die every day from being trafficked into the sex industry, they die from neglect, drug overdoses, disease, HIV, violence and torture. If that’s not enough for you, consider this, every two minutes a child is being groomed for rape and the average life expectancy for kids trafficked this way is 7 years, unless they are rescued.
While in Phnom Penh earlier this year, I was privileged to meet with Silvia Pasti, UNICEF’s Head of Child Protection in Cambodia to learn more about child abuse and what is being done to address the problem. Like everyone, I believe no child should be exposed to violence, abuse or neglect and she explained that In Cambodia the situation is tragic for many. One in two children has experienced severe beatings, one in four has suffered from emotional abuse, and one in 20 has been sexually assaulted. Many children are trafficked, forced to work, separated from their families and unnecessarily placed in residential care institutions or find themselves in unregulated orphanages where they are exploited for sex and child labour for profit.
Cambodia has not recovered from the genocide of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s. The children of those times are the grandparents and parents of today and are raising children in poverty while having never recovered from the trauma of their own childhoods. As a result, they fight to survive with a moral compass that is at best poorly aligned leaving them prey to predators and actions driven by their own basic survival needs.
Silvia says it is getting better, but there are few laws to protect children, and UNICEF is working with the Cambodian government, police and NGO’s to develop a national vision on which to base a legal framework as a first step in giving legal protection for children.
Social workers are the backbone of a solid child protection system. UNICEF supports the government to train social workers in the areas of health, education, justice and child protection, so that they can they handle cases related to violence, juvenile crime and institutional care in the most appropriate and effective manner.
Today, young and older children are at high risk of dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, child marriage and violence. This is due partly to social attitudes that perpetrate violence, and partly to the limited number of services designed for children in education, social work, health and justice. Education, especially for girls, is a practical decision when the families are living from one meal to the next. Investing in the future, at a high cost for education, is sacrificed for immediate needs for money giving rise to sexual and other crimes against children.
Robert Barclay is an Australian author and philanthropist through his charity, The Sunlight Foundation. His popular novels follow the life of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, as they confront the evils of society.The International Year of The Girl Child
As there is an official day for more or less every cause and circumstance in society, I am well pleased to discover that the eleventh of October each year is dedicated to “the girl child.”
I am just one parent who was fortunate to raise a little girl, and I treasure my memories of my little girl, now a woman, married with three children. I still remember the pretty Laura Ashley dresses, sharing an ice cream with me. This is something my daughter, my girl child inside the body of a woman now, does every day — takes my breath away.
However, I read about another kind of girl child. This one featured on the website of an internationally-recognised non-profit organisation dedicated to rescuing children trapped in the sex trade.
Instead of describing a little girl running outside and marvelling at the design of her dress as she swirls, this article talks about one with eyes bowed and small clasped hands. Why would the article describe this little girl as being “shrouded in shadows of shame, cultural oppression and helplessness?” She is only seven years old, after all. That’s too young to retain a firm grasp on concepts like shame. But then it all makes sense. Of course, this article is describing the survivors of child sex trafficking, rescued from a childhood bound to this monstrous fate. This is how those little girls are — instead of running and playing with the fairies, they curl themselves up in a ball as their fairies have long been destroyed.
There is a glaring difference between these little girls. Taking into account language and cultural difference, there should be no other disparity — yet there is and it’s huge! The story goes on to describe that, once rescued, these little girls go to sleep for days. It’s like they are renewing their tarnished souls. They have a lot of healing to do, and sleep is when much of the growth occurs. As these little girls are helped on their road to recovery, they will create a new identity that is free of suffering and fear.
Something that girls all over the world have had to contend with for centuries is a quest for freedom and fight against oppression on so many levels. In some places, girls nowhere near close to being women are forced to marry adult men and perform as wives. Girls need greater protection from street harassment and assault, greater access to education (and a changing of overall attitudes to reflect this), as well as sanitation access and greater religious rights and freedom for girls. Or equal rights to that of men. Not more, just equal.
Many of us in charities are aware of these battles for girls and women in developing countries, but at the same time, our society faces a similar sort of discrimination. Here are just a few to jog your memory: sexual harassment and assault, domestic violence, education inequality, gender-based violence, sexism and stereotypes, self-esteem issues in girls, employment disadvantages, breast feeding in public, access to safe abortion, and even a girls’ rights to enter places of worship or public spaces during menstruation. As a society, we fight each issue at a time, and sometimes win. Sometimes we will take one step forward only to take two back, for example whenever Donald Trump gets busy on Twitter.
Because of this, because of the sheer amount of battles to fight, and because there are currently little girls learning that their liberty comes with safety and rest, we have an International Girl Child Day on 11 October every year. This is a day to remember how far women have come. It’s also a day I think more of the plight of those little girls sold to the sex trafficking trade. Those little girls who I describe not as ‘victims’ but as ‘survivors.’
Robert Barclay is an Australian author and philanthropist through his charity, The Sunlight Foundation. His popular novels follow the life of Katy Yehonala and her daughter, Clara, as they confront the evils of society.
- Published in Blog
Epstein is silenced but the issue lives on
Some months ago I published a post about the arrest of 66-year-old hedge fund billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, charged with sex trafficking and paying underage girls to give “massages” in his luxurious homes and the Virgin Islands retreats. The irony of the latter destination should not be lost on anyone. Now we have his partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, safely (we hope) tucked away in a cell waiting for her day in court.
Epstein took his own life in a New York jail cell. Few will mourn, many will sleep more easily. In my opinion, he showed us he was too timid to face the shameful crimes for which he stood accused.
What else does this tell me about Epstein and his mates? Well, that perhaps they might feel remorse about misusing their power and wealth, hiding behind their position, money, and lawyers to keep from the public gaze to avoid the full legal wrath for their crimes. But I don’t think I’m fooling anyone: much more likely these predators are only ashamed about being exposed and abandoned by other rich friends, more than feeling conscience-stricken.
By committing the ultimate act of avoidance, suicide, Epstein has dodged allowing the women, some as young as 14, the chance to have their day in court. At the very least, they deserve the opportunity to speak of how Epstein’s vileness has altered the course of their lives, and then witness his punishment for poisoning the adolescence of so many young women. He was facing around 45 years in jail, society’s measure of the seriousness of his crimes.
However, his recent suicide means none of this will happen unless Ms. Maxwell turns into a canary. Epstein’s rich and famous pals, who happily availed themselves of his illicit sexual largesse, won’t have the opportunity to see what happens to those who flaunt the law in this way unless she does. They clearly lack the morality to understand how appalling their behavior is anyway if their public ducking and weaving is any guide. So, is there a way that we can still bring Epstein’s and his accomplices’ crimes to account, even though he’s no longer here, with or without Maxwell?
Instead of closing the book, I think it’s time to read further into the chapter. We know child sex trafficking is rampant and, if even only some of the stories we are hearing are true, there is pervasive cancer infecting a large cohort of rich, well-connected men. How can we, as a society, shine the light of exposure into these dark corners of our humanity. Is there a way we can look at what happened with Epstein so that his death was indeed not in vain and the many victims can still feel as though justice is possible? And, more importantly perhaps, that a legacy from their suffering may even be created.
Whether official or not, a conversation has begun, and the public is more aware and less tolerant of misogynistic, sociopathic behavior perpetrated by powerful men. Young women are also becoming more informed and aware, more protective of themselves, as they should be, and more likely to look after one another. I would like more to be done from a higher level too and believe that this is entirely possible and in fact, integral to change.
As a society we must let this episode be for nothing and need to be calling loud and long to our political leaders to step up and be counted. They have mostly ignored the calls or meted out their platitudes; some have even been complicit in these crimes against vulnerable young women. I suspect many still are.
Many brave young women have gathered the courage to come forward and have set a fine example to us, and the result has been less than ideal for them, though perhaps Epstein’s death may be partly attributable to their voices.
Let this be the start, not the end, of this investigation.
- Published in Blog
What’s Really On a Man’s Mind
One of the biggest mysteries in the world of relationships is why do men in serious and committed relationships stray when they can get sex right there in their own backyard.
For curious people like me, who are fascinated by this seemingly self-destructive behavior, we could study the work of the early psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud, who thought it was a symptom of what he called the “Madonna/whore syndrome”. Freud was the pioneer of psychoanalysis and a man driven by theories of unconscious childhood urges lurking just beneath our veneer of social morality. He proposed the answer lay in the way men divided women into two types: the wives and mothers of their children (picture-perfect angels of purity), and the raw, lust-filled harlots who were only good for one thing, which was to satisfy the pent-up desires of men, thus protecting their wives from their unseemly ravages of desire. I suppose the idea of cheating never really came up as a problem. The theory went that men chose one type to marry, the other type to have raunchy sex with on the side, and that everyone should be pleased with the arrangement. Especially, no doubt, the men.
Sigmund Freud was a man of his times. Come to the present era of female “liberation and equality” and we don’t look at things in quite the same way, though perhaps the vestiges of his ideas still linger in the unconscious mind. Some people, again mostly men I suspect, believe a better solution to the stigma now attached to cheating might be for women to act more “erotic” and “uninhibited” with them to prevent men from straying. With a bit less the Lady and a little more the lascivious libertine, if you like, men would do women the honor of their monogamous attentions. A little more of a scrub-up occasionally and an appreciative word in the male’s ear occasionally might, in response, also keep the women’s eyes from wandering – an interesting topic for another post!
Others discuss the desirability of re-visiting the good old days when Freud’s theories held sway. Especially with the pressure-cooker environment, we all live in. But I wonder whether it’s again time to accept the wonderful social role of the courtesan to ease the stresses of long hours, time-poor recreation and, let’s face it, the general loss of interest that happens with just living together for so long?
Like most people, you may not have considered this novel proposition very deeply but go with me on this for a little longer. A courtesan could be just the therapy people need to save their failing marriages. With one constructive move, partners could completely sidestep the problems of affairs and bring back the sizzle they both had in those heady, can’t-keep-your-hands-off- each-other days. Remember those? The possibilities are endless, and both husband and wife could benefit from someone telling them what they could both do better in the bedroom. By hiring a courtesan to watch the action and give them pointers, it would be much like a coach correcting a golf swing or a bad yoga position. Plus, a little competition in the bedroom during the practicum would undoubtedly get her wanting to lift her game and him, happy to contribute to their mutual domestic debauchery.
A seasoned, worldly-wise courtesan could easily correct those little misunderstandings that lead to large divorce settlements, thus in effect, the exercise is, as it were, a terrific investment. Once the wife sees all the tricks that drive him wild, that spark would ignite her competitive side and he’ll be vying for her affections like a teenager at a Taylor Swift concert. He would likely never want to leave the house, let alone run to the charms of another.
Also, there’s always that lingering “suburban women” epithet so beloved by Mr. Trump, that seems, unfairly, to carry such negative connotations. It may be that the wife doesn’t work, staying at home, and having children to raise, but it’s really starting to set a bad role-model example for a teenage daughter. This alone could be the catalyst for seeking “professional guidance”. The last thing any caring parent wants is a daughter growing up thinking a man is going to take care of her all her life.
You’ll want her to know the value of an honest day’s work. Getting a courtesan running around the house will set that perfect example of a strong, independent working woman for a daughter that she so desperately needs.
It’s high time to look past the touchy-feely counseling remedies we’ve grown too comfortable with lately: the psychologists, social workers, and those facilitated circles of whiners who all seem to think a few hours baring your soul to another bunch of similarly afflicted souls will actually help anything.
I think we should look to the past to find a way to navigate the complexities of our modern relationships. Thanks to the likes of pioneers like Freud, we can find real solutions to the problems that bedevil healthy marital relationships, while also avoiding the mental dilemmas about having affairs. Surprisingly, we can find a modern, practical solution from the oldest profession in the world.
- Published in Blog