Sex Workers and Women in Antiquity

What is the difference between sex workers (prostitutes) and “non-commercial” women in Classical Athens (Greece) and Ancient China?

Answer:

Women, especially those from the aristocracy, were not educated and lived only to serve their husbands.

Prostitutes could read, sing and dance.  They’re erudite.  The stigma actors face through the millennia is related to this: Singing or dancing or reading lines is the domain of the prostitute.

REFERENCES

Huang, Ginger.  “Prostitutes and Poets: How the Prostitution of the Past Wrote Some of China’s Greatest Poetry.”  The World of Chinese,  30 Nov. 2013.  Web.  <https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/11/prostitutes-and-poets/>.

Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity.  1975.  New York: Schocken Books, 1995.  pp. 74, 88-92.

===

Originally posted on my Facebook wall in a slightly different form on 27 April 2020.

Pandemics

The number of deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic far exceeds that of the current coronavirus pandemic.  But of course, history can repeat itself, i.e., the coronavirus has the potential to surpass the influenza pandemic.

The 1918 influenza virus attacked in waves.  Areas where the novel coronavirus of 2019 has been initially controlled are now seeing another wave of infections.  Governments – our government included – may institute intermittent quarantine periods to control the recurrences.

When World War I ended, people celebrated in throngs, forgetting about social distancing, multiplying the influenza virus exponentially.  Social distancing was largely responsible for containing the pandemic.

Here in American-occupied Philippines, the officials (white Americans) claimed Filipinos had their own indigenous influenza which mixed with the pandemic-causing virus.  One official even said that the Philippine General Hospital was no longer fit for white patients.  Give it to the imperialistic white monkeys to blame the brown chimpanzees for the virulence of the virus.  Oops.  Racist comment.

REFERENCES

Gealogo, Francis A.  “The Philippines in the World of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919.”  Philippine Studies 57.2 (2009): 261-92.

Roos, Dave.  “Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly.”  History Stories.  History, 3 Mar. 2020.  Web. <https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence>.

Strochlic, Nina and Riley D. Champine.  “How Some Cities ‘Flattened the Curve’ during the 1918 Flu Pandemic.”  History.  National Geographic, 27 Mar. 2020.  Web.  <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/>.

===

Originally posted on my Facebook wall on 27 April 2020.