'lance
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1064
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posted 29 May 2002 03:55 PM
Click! quote: Some 1,700 years after it was written, the English-speaking world is about to get its first glimpse of what the real "Kamasutra" says, thanks to a new translation scheduled to appear in June. It rights the many wrongs Burton did to the text, and reveals the "Kamasutra" for what it truly is -- a guidebook for cultivating a highly eroticized life. It's "Sex and the City" circa A.D. 300, only the focus is on men instead of Sarah Jessica Parker and her girlfriends (though some of the text is clearly intended for fourth century Indian women). The new translation reveals a "Kamasutra" in some ways remarkably modern and progressive: Women are as sexual as men, and men should work to provide women with erotic pleasure, including orgasms. But before you embrace the book as your new sexual bible, be forewarned. Some of what it says is controversial: Adultery is a fact of life and it's all right, even fun -- for men only -- as long as the women's husbands don't find out. Some of the "Kamasutra" is callous and repugnant: If a woman persistently refuses a man's advances, he is justified in raping her. Perhaps most remarkable, the "Kamasutra"'s vaunted sex advice is surprisingly tame. For example, the book expresses considerable ambivalence about oral sex, a very popular universal element in modern Western lovemaking.
[ June 01, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]
From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001
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