In traditional China, a husband was selected for a young woman as an agreement between families. For the family providing the usually rather young wife, the idea was to do the family of the husband, who could be young or old, a favor by providing a sexual outlet for the husband. The family of the husband, or the husband himself, would show gratitude, initially by paying the family of the wife some upfront money.

If the husband, or the family of the husband, was sufficiently wealthy, a channel for wealth flow, via the wife, from the husband or his family to the previous family of the wife would be established.

The old Chinese marriage customs were an ideological superstructure of a society in which the waste majority of people lived in great poverty. Even for most men, among all concerns, sexual pleasure ranked a distant third or forth, after worries about enough food, sufficient shelter, and, often, basic health.

For the young women involved in traditional marriage arrangements, the idea of sexual satisfaction was totally out of the picture. For this reason, it was also of no importance whether the husbands arranged for by their families were young or old, handsome or ugly. Quite usually, the young women never saw their husbands before wedding day.

It was not necessary that she would know him before the wedding, because anyway, the only quality that counted, the quality of the husband as a material provider, could not be assessed by a young woman. She was kept at home for most of her youth and childhood, and had no knowledge of the outside world.

The concept of love in traditional China was not one of physical, sexual attraction, most definitely not for women.

By all what we know, sexual practices between husbands and wives were also not of a kind that would have facilitated sexual satisfaction for the female partners. Sex most probably was, by and large, only genital, never oral. Wives would have their first child well before the age of 20, possibly as young as 15.

As love, in traditional China, was, on the part of the women, not based on the physical attraction she felt for, or the sexual satisfaction she received from, the husband, what, then, fulfilled the emotional need for love on the part of women.

It was what women felt for their children. Having children together was thought of as the source of love between husband and wife. And this even worked for husbands, as a metaphysical quality has traditionally been attached, and sometimes still is, to having offspring in otherwise atheist China.

The above-cited concept of marrying off young women to men who would be lifelong economic providers, and whose children they then would spawn, is of course not unique to China. It is found in most traditional societies around the world, and even was common in Europe not so long ago. It was, and is, a concept that is based on the modes of production of economies of need, in which a large number of people and families struggle to have enough food and sufficient shelter, and to stay basically healthy.

That Europe and North America have developed different concepts of love, and especially, that perceptions were developed of female sexual desire as a basis for partner choice, has been a direct consequence of the fact that Europe had first achieved sufficient wdidespread wealth, so that women could start thinking about sexual desires rather than having enough to eat.

The modes of material production have changed tremendously in China over the past few decades. No country anywhere in the world generates as much economic growth as does China. And women in modern China have ample opportunities to earn their own lifelihood. They do not have to get married in order to have enough to eat.

Because women in modern China are highly independent, and furthermore, because women in modern China are at least as well educated as men, and therefore have corresponding intellectual capabilities, Chinese women now choose themselves the men they want to associate with, and they apply rather stringent criteria.

Most definitely, they enter sexual relationships, including marriages, only with men whom they love and find physically attractive.

However, the design of the ideological superstructure of Chinese women, in general and in as far as it concerns sexual relationships, has not kept pace with the changes in the modes of production.

While practically all Chinese women today choose themselves their sexual partners and husbands, they are still very much caught within the folds of the old feudal ideology, whereby a woman must become only one man's wife.

Chinese women today assert their right to choose their sexual partners for themselves, but, with few exceptions, they do not assert their right for sexual fulfilment, especially when their sexual orientation is towards a variety of sexual partners.

Many Chinese women have not yet adapted their ideological superstructures to the country's changed modes of production. But, as the pattern of Chinese immigration to the US proves: hardly any non-European ethnic group assimilates as quickly to new social realities as do the Chinese.

It can therefore be predicted with little risk that Chinese women of coming generatins will be asserting their right to engage in sexual contact not just a part of a lifelong subsistence package, but primarily for sexual gratifications.

Chinese women in the coming years will switch from choosing men based on considerations of whether they can be lifelong husbands towards selecting men based on whether they love them and enjoy making love with them, just as in affluent Western societies.

The position of women in Chinese society has improved tremendously over the past half century.

In imperial China, women had few rights, and rich men could acquire as many wives as they desired. Unlike in the West, there were no religious restrictions against a man having many wives.

Young women were frequently not asked when they were married off by families to men they may not even have seen before.

In imperial China, men had it their way with women. In China today, it is much more the women who make the rules. Men cannot just go and buy a wife from her parents. A man has to convince a woman that she should become his wife. Women in China now will not marry a man if there is no love between the two.

Love is not established in a matter of a few days of courtship. It requires that a man and a woman know each other over some time. For love to flourish, a woman has to experience a boyfriend's attitudes in different situations and different phases of development. And a man has to proof that he is kind and serious, otherwise he cannot win over the heart of the woman he wants to become his wife.

If we compare this to the Islamic world, we see that Chinese women have it better.

In the Islamic world, girls and young women are still just married off to men their fathers decide on. Young women and their husbands-to-be are not allowed to first be girlfriends and boyfriends to get to know each other before marriage. They often have talked very little to each other before they have their first sex. There impossibly can be true love on the part of the woman.

Of course, there also is no true love on the part of the man. But for the man, this is probably not so important. For a man, it is easy to initiate a sexual relationship with a woman, even though there is no love, and a man usually can find sexual satisfaction without romantic feelings. By contrast, a woman will get very little sexual excitement out off being used by a man whom she has been married to without really knowing him. It is an entirely wrong start into her sexual life.

And it doesn't get much better.

Women that are married off to men they hardly know, typically will get pregnant after just a few weeks. When they are pregnant, and even more so after having given birth to children, their concerns are not so much whether their relationships are sexually satisfying to them. Instead, they have to cope with feeling sick from their pregnancies, and after giving birth, they are busy taking care of their children. Female sexual satisfaction does not fit into the picture.

The psychology of women is different from that of men in that sexual excitement and sexual satisfaction need much more time.

As mentioned above, men typically can have satisfying sex with women they hardly know.

Women are diffferent. For women to derive proper pleasure out of sexual intercourse with a man, she will have to be familiar with him, and this will take some time. First, she will have to find him pleasant, then develop a liking for him, then feel romantically attached to him. Only then will she be mentally prepared to enjoy sexual conduct with him, and be physically ready for the greatest pleasure of all: orgasm.

Young women in China today can and will demand high qualifications from the men they accept as boyfriends and husbands.

And not just professional qualifications. A man to be accepted as boyfriend or husband must have a qualified appearance and a qualified character.

Young Chinese women today no longer will just marry any man for the sake of just being married. Women in China today can afford to wait. Because modern China treats women equal to men in the country's workforce, women in China now no longer have to get married solely for the purpose of having an economic base for their daily lives. They very well can earn their own money.

Women in modern China will marry only if they love the man whom they are going to marry. And if they cannot find the right man, then staying unmarried is still the better option then having to become the servant and maid of a an ugly and abusive man who treats his wife like an animal.

Now, while women in modern China have come a long way claiming their right to a love-based lifelong marriage with an attractive and attentive man, there still is a problem to overcome.

The number of Chinese men who conform to the requirements of young modern women to qualify as boyfriends or husbands is too small.

Who wants to marry a construction worker who has no own home, and not even a residence certificate for the city where he works? Or who wants a farmer who is looking for a wife not just to have a sexual outlet but also to burden her with plenty of work? These are no good options, and in modern China, women cannot be forced to agree to such poor choices.

Too many Chinese men do not pay ennough attention to their own physical attractiveness. All men desire beautiful women. So why do so few men understand the aesthetic wishes of women?

Middle-age Chinese men who are financially secure and physically attractive usually already have a wife (though they may be looking for mistresses).

And a problem with those young men who would qualify (good looking, good education, good income) is this: many young Chinese women would accept them as boyfriend and husband to be. So there is a definite risk that a young woman loses him to a female competitor.

From the perspective of young Chinese women, there are too few good men.

As a solution, more Chinese women should consider marrying rich foreigners. There are several advantages to this option.

One advantage is that a Chinese woman will not have to fear much competition from the compatriot females of a foreign husband, as Chinese women are more beautiful and will preserve their beauty for a much longer time.

Furthermore, when living in the Western husband's country, they are so much an attraction that a foreign husband will likely be much more careful not to lose his Chinese wife than Chinese husband in China.

Chinese husbands in China are well aware that their wives fear endangering their marriage, especially once the couple has a child.

Because Chinese husbands do not have to fear that their wives will desert them lightly (because a Chinese woman in China will experience an enormous drop in sexual market value once divorced with a child), some Chinese husbands change tremendously, when compared to the times the two were boyfriend and girlfriend.

They will burden their wives with more and more work, and often will search for other women to have sexual relationships with. And sometimes they will not even care if the wives find out.

By contrast, in Europe and America, husbands could not afford such a behavior as wives would file for a divorce more quickly. Therefore, Western husbands would not risk treating their wives, whether Western or Chinese, as carelessly as some Chinese husbands do.

Furthermore, a Chinese wife living with a foreign husband in the country of her husband will likely generate much more attention among the compatriot males of her husband, than she would in China. Other men may fall in love with her even though she is married.

I do not want to advise Chinese wives of foreign husbands who live in Europe or America to have extramarital affairs. But I do want to mention that European or American men are much more likely to try a love affair with the beautiful wife of another man than are Chinese men.

Actually, a large number of women from the Philippine (a country which has a much longer tradition of women migrating to Europe or America as the spouses of European or American men) have married Western men below their own sexual market value, simply for a chance to migrate to Europe or America. Once they have obtained residence status in Europe or America, they ditched their initial husbands and found younger, more attractive, and richer husbands or boyfriends.

While such behavior may be atypical for loyalty-emphasizing Chinese wives, it clearly illustrates that any Chinese woman who is migrating to Europe or America can expect a clear rise of her sexual market value. For example, if she is below the Chinese average for beauty and youthful appearance, she will nevertheless be considered among the most beautiful women in any European or American environment.

Chinese women should also be aware that in Europe or America (when compared to China), it matters much less if a woman has been previously married and is divorced, and even has children.

In China, all men want to marry a virgin. And if they cannot have a virgin, the woman at least should not have been married previously, and certainly, she should not have children from another man. If she has, her sexual market value declines tremendously.

In Europe and America, no man expects to marry a virgin. It is considered normal that a girl loses her virginity as a teenager, usually before she reaches the age of 18, to a boyfriend approximately her own age. It is not expected that the two will get married. Even the girl's parents expect that a teenage daughter will sleep with a teenage boyfriend, and the parents would almost always advise her daughter against a marriage with that boy.

European and American men from their early 20s will not expect to ever again have a sexual relationship with a virgin, and men from their mid-30s onwards will not expect to ever again have a sexual relationship with a woman who is not yet a mother.

In China, the sexual market value of a woman who is divorced or has a child will decline rapidly. Chinese men with a high sexual market value will simply not consider marrying a woman who is divorced and has a child from another man.

So, for a Chinese woman, whether she is still single without children, or whether she is divorced, with or without child, it can make very good sense to enter a marriage or permanent relationship with a Western man.

Because many Chinese women have a poor understanding of European social and legal systems, I want to stress that in Europe, marriages always have a religious taint. Getting married also feels very old-fashioned to many modern European men (America is more conservative in that respect).

So, in Europe, many men and women of a high sexual market value, and even those in high public positions will have lifelong sexual relationships without gettiing married, simply because getting married would feel too old-fashioned and too religious.

Anyway, what counts for legal rights in Europe is not so much whether a man and a woman are married but whether they have a child or children together.

To give an example: if a Chinese woman marries a European man, she does not automatically have the right to live in Eurpe. Her Western husband can apply for it, and then it will usually be granted. But if the two shall split after some time, with a formal divorce or not, the Chinese wife has no chance to obtain a residence permit for Europe on her own.

But if a Chinese woman has a child with a European man, whether the Chinese woman and the European man are married or not, then the Chinese woman will have the legal right to live in Europe all her life, even if the European father of their child disappears after a short while, and even if the European father of her child never takes her to Europe herself.

Version 1.0, August 2007

When, in the context of this website, I talk about intellectually advanced women, I have, by definition, a very narrow understanding of what constitutes intellectual advancement.

Women, whether by genetic encoding or on the basis of their socialisation, tend to be more romantic than men. Women are more susceptible to the idea of lifelong love and marital bliss with just one partner than are many men. Furthermore, the idea of genuine love (the exclusive attraction to one person) plays a larger role in the sexual arousal of women than in that of men.

Nevertheless, the more sexually sophisticated men are, the more they will understand the magic of romantic feelings. I do believe that, even though I have not slept with many women, or maybe because of it, I am, indeed, sexually sophisticated myself. I am sophisticated to the point that I am not, and never have been, interested in sexual relationships without the element of love.

I do, in fact, believe that it would pollute my emotional landscape if I were to sleep with prostitutes, or even just with women of low sexual market value.

As can be observed from men and women who indisriminately have sex with a multitude of partners, this practice easily results, not in sophistication but in learned emotional incompetence: the progressive inability to get the greatest possible joy from a sexual relationship. And rightfully, people who indiscriminately have sex with a large number of partners have a reduce sexual market value.

But while I understand the magic of sexual experience that rides on a wave of genuine love, as most women instinctively do from the onset of their love lives, I am also a man and have the (most probably genetically encoded) reduced sexual attention span that differentiates men from women.

Because what men, even primitive men, know better than most women is this: that lifelong marital bliss with just one partner is probably not possible (unless one of the partner cuts this 'lifelong' short by a premature death).

This doesn't mean that lifelong partnerships would not be possible. I just assess that these lifelong partnerships will not be accompanied by unending marital bliss, and (this is the hard part) not by lifelong exclusive sexual attraction.

Now, this awareness (and not just the theoretical knowledge of it) is what determines, in the context of this website, the first level of intellectual advancement.

The second level of intellectual advancement is achieved when a woman understands that, despite the impossibility of lifelong marital bliss, and in spite of the fact that sexual attraction will stray, this isn't reason for disillusionment.

Life does not proceed in a linear, but in a dialectical mode. When our first love relationship declines, and there is pain, it is plain silliness to swear to oneself never to fall in love again.

For, in order to live a life full of optimal sexual joy, it is neccessary that we emotionally fall in love again, even if intellectually, we know that this subsequent love, again, will have its phase of ascent and its phase of descent.

These, however, are cycles that are too important to play games with, or to wear them out mindlessly. This is one important reason why I myself, unlike other men, am careful not to enter sexual relationships indiscriminately.

Neither will those women who are intellectually advanced enough to know that lifelong exclusive sexual attraction is unlikely, and nevertheless enter sexual relationships under the pretext that it were.

Whether a woman will achieve this particular intellectual advancement does not depend on her other intellectual advancement, the formal education she acquires. It doesn't even depend on her age, as some women achieve this kind of awareness, and draw the correct conclusions, at the age of 17, while others do so only at the age of 30, and still others never get it.

If there is one condition that, however, will facilitate this understanding, then it is a bisexual orientation.