WE have all watched those hugely popular TV soap operas but few people give much thought to the hidden messages behind their homogenized story lines.

From Huang Yiyi, a math prodigy and code breaker who seduces her widowed boss and other married men in the spy thriller "Ansuan" ("Calculating Minds") to Guo Haizao, a young woman who becomes the mistress of a powerful official and enjoys sudden fortune in "Woju" ("Humble Abode") a prominent theme is the intrusion of a third party in a marriage and her role in wrecking it.

But instead of portraying these women as decadent gold diggers, which used to be the norm a few decades ago, these characters are sometimes depicted as victims of philanderers or damsels in distress, hungry for love.

In a word, mistresses, who once had an unsavory reputation as calculating courtesans, are being rehabilitated - and not only on the screen.

Infidelity used to carry a stigma for both errant parties, but much more so for women. Mistresses were spat upon and cursed in the vilest language, called poxie, literally "worn shoes" that have had many owners; or huli jing, literally "fox-like demon," or femme fatale.

However, now that the doors of once staid Chinese society have been flung wide open, Western concepts, good and bad, are flooding in, insidiously yet significantly changing people's attitudes toward extramarital affairs.

No phenomenon illustrates this trend better than some brazen mistresses who no longer lie low but stand up and assert their "rights."

Badge of honor

My colleague Xu Chi wrote a series of articles in the past two weeks about the controversy surrounding the so-called "All-China Mistress Alliance."

This is an online community (www.xeixe.com) where a coterie of outspoken self-described mistresses met, shared pride of ownership and railed against what they called "pervasive bias" against them. There they've turned "Little Three," a critics' insult, into a badge of honor.

They went so far as to organize an online "Mistress Day" on March 3 and challenge the prevailing view that their unethical involvement causes couples to split up.

In various postings, mistresses argue that many wives' lack of feminine charms and cooking skills cost them their marriages. Mistresses play only a secondary role, they claim, suggesting that a truly solid marriage cannot be destroyed by an intruder.

Their open defiance of traditional Chinese family values so incensed some critics that their website was shut down on March 4, immediately after an ICQ debate meant to vindicate mistresses morphed into bickering between mistresses and angry wives.

The website's organizer, said to be a 23-year-old woman known as "Sister Three," dropped hints that she was forced to shut it down under official pressure.

Registered members, mostly mistresses and sympathizers, who paid their dues, were left holding the bag by the abrupt closure. The website charges 100 yuan (US$15.22) for the right to post comments and access content hiding behind a pay-per-view wall.

Several mistresses contacted by Shanghai Daily called the website a sham and "Sister Three" a con artist cashing in on the "Little Three" phenomenon, although she denied the charges and asked impatient members to wait for "surprises."

And "Sister Three" meant it. She reopened the website after five days of "internal cleanup," only to come up with a new home page replete with images of scantily clad women striking flirtatious poses.

My interest in this dramatic turn of events is not as a vigilante probing whether the website is some phishing tool, but in knowing how these women had the audacity to emerge from the shadows and defend themselves in a way certain to outrage the public. Does it say something about our vanishing moral bottom line, or has public sensitivity to the mistress issue been numbed because people have seen and heard so much of it?

Days ago, when I shared the story idea with my girlfriend, she exploded in indignation in the same way irate wives reacted during the ICQ row.

Tables turned

From her I learned of the miseries of a friend of hers, who was six months pregnant when her husband - and his mistress - came home to declare that he would divorce his hapless wife right after she gave birth.

Mistresses used to act furtively to avoid attention to their adulterous trysts, but now they are turning the tables upon wives and public opinion. Isn't that outrageous? My girlfriend gritted her teeth in anger.

My comment that it takes two palms to clap and the husband was more at fault were dismissed as nonsense, whereupon I desisted from pointless reasoning, concerned lest she perceive me as a mistress sympathizer, or worse.

Some scholars, however, question the relevance of anecdotal evidence suggesting mistresses' new-found assertiveness. Studies show only 10 to 30 percent of the divorces in China are triggered by mistresses, said Xu Anqi, an expert on divorce at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Just because there are a growing number of websites like www.xeixe.com doesn't mean mistresses are getting the upper hand. After all, they still speak behind a mask of anonymity. The impunity granted by the Internet emboldens them to say things they otherwise don't dare say in real life, such as confiding their secrets in strangers.

They are still not rebellious enough to reveal their identities online, a clear indication of shame, Xu said, adding that they feel secure in numbers.

Xu is among those who object to pillorying mistresses as the sole culprit in divorces, saying the contributing factors are rather complicated.

Sometimes mistresses themselves are victims, having been cheated by womanizers into ill-considered relationships; sometimes they attend to the physical needs of men who are ignored by their mahjong-obsessed wives and get repaid for their generosity.

"Although I think society at large still considers mistresses morally inferior, we need to approach the issue on a case-by-case basis, rather than slam them from the moral high ground," said Xu.

Besides, we cannot hope to save marriage by penalizing mistresses. China's Marriage Law punishes only those caught committing adultery. It is silent on what to do with mistresses.

Regulating family matters, as the Chinese saying goes, is difficult even for a wise judge. The rise of "Little Threes" is as much a result of general moral decay as a failure of education.

When even underage girls today proudly declare that the way to enter the upper crust is through a good marriage rather than hard work, it conveys the gravity of a spiritual void that TV idol dramas exploit with "Cinderella" tales of glamorous, unearned comforts.