Message from skelly

[Anonymous]

I’m starting to struggle with the idea of teaching the values of Confucianism. The five aspects of humanity, reverence-generosity-truthfulness-diligence-kindness, all seem to be subsumed by filial piety. But when I looked up filial piety in Ebrey’s text, Confucius speaks of children honoring BOTH their father and mother: “When your parents are alive, serve them according to the rules of ritual and decorum” (Ebrey 21). That does NOT say that mothers must honor their sons, so what is the source of the ideology that that women have no value until they produce sons?

Sadly, however confusing the logic, female degradation does seem to explain why authority figures condone trafficking of women and girls for sexual slavery. How repugnant that Japanese men go on sex tours! Their reward for working hard is the right to rape young women? That seems very different to me than an evening spent in the entertainment of the geisha who are treasured for their wit as much as their beauty.

Is this really the consequence of political marriages? That question is, returning to British literature once again, one theme in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Juliet’s father is following a sad, but well-established protocol when he forces Juliet to marry in order to advance his own status and reputation. The final haunting imagery in Ellen Bruno’s documentary Sacrifice seems a powerful metaphor for loveless sexual intercourse. Rather than experiencing the rich sensual pleasure represented by the young girl running freely through the field, the sexual act is removed from mutual pleasure and becomes merely a travesty whose purpose is to produce heirs, to exert brutal power, to relieve tensions.

How tragic.