Not sure that it was acting per se, although during the Ching dinasty one emperor ordered all theatrical troupes to be one-gender only for fear of promiscuity or some such, but the stigma was already in place by then and had been for centuries.
IMO, and I'm not an expert on the history of Chinese theatre, mind you, it had more to do with being outside the accepted social boundaries in being people who moved around a lot and that often lacked a family/clan affiliation (the only other group barred from the exams were the descendants of prostitutes, and often the two groups were more or less one and the same)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-11-23 07:23 pm (UTC)IMO, and I'm not an expert on the history of Chinese theatre, mind you, it had more to do with being outside the accepted social boundaries in being people who moved around a lot and that often lacked a family/clan affiliation (the only other group barred from the exams were the descendants of prostitutes, and often the two groups were more or less one and the same)