This will be a bit difficult to answer, I think I'm unable to answer. First of all: it is very hard to talk about subtleties of meaning and interpretation in written language. Second: english is not my first language. So please interpret my text as amicably as possible.
"Are you claiming it was appreciative of women back then?"
I think it depends very much on context, who said it, where does it get said, to whom and in what type of voice etc. The saying "Wein, Weib und Gesang" as such could be appreciative towards women, and I think it could be said in a non-demeaning way, also in the times, where women had a much worse standing as of today.
I think this, not because I know anything about that time back then, but because I learned in the last decades how heavily the perception or meaning of words can change. And how very personal those perceptions are. When I went to school, we used words casually, that would be offensive today. And I know that my friends and I used these words without thinking twice if they're offensive, because to us, they just weren't. Others could be offended by those words at that time. But this is because other people have a different moral, or knowledge, or education, or age etc.
What I want to say with all that: we are almost unable to comprehend how people back then thought, talked and meant the stuff, they said back then. Because we are pretty much blinded by our own current perception and moral of things. For example, I tend to think amicably about the past, so my interpretation of stuff that was said in the past gets a "rose tint". Others tend to think that the past was bad, people were stupid and crass, and wrong. So they interpret things in a much darker light, than me. I can't say that anyone is more right than the other, because it comes down to very personal interpretations.
> It was expression about loud wild partying, the sort of that is annoying to everyone living on the same street as your beer pub is. The women who were present were not appreciated, they were look down at sort of tramps. A well behaved woman was not supposed to be present.
This is what you learned and interpreted about that phrase and time. For me this is a possible situation you describe, but there are also very different situations, where this phrase could come from. In my social circles, the word "Weib" was used in a very endearing, appreciative way towards women. Women used that word for describing themselves as strong, and emancipated. So the phrase "Wein, Weib und Gesang" could have a very positive connotation. That says nothing about what happened a few hundred years ago, it just shows how personal language in the end is.
> I think this, not because I know anything about that time back then, but because I learned in the last decades how heavily the perception or meaning of words can change.
Yes, but did you considered that original meaning could have been, roughly, "getting wasted and going to strip club"? That is how I have seen it being used in older books I read. It was not meant to be about women, it was meant to be about certain kind of men, certain kind of partying and lifestyle.
>What I want to say with all that: we are almost unable to comprehend how people back then thought, talked and meant the stuff, they said back then. Because we are pretty much blinded by our own current perception and moral of things.
We can get some idea tho, we are not completely helpless here. When you are making an assumption that it was positive, you are being heavily influenced by how you want it to be. Not even being influence by what it might mean today (fun sentence that means nothing), but by how you want the past people to be.
Reinterpreting past so that it appears more positive then it was is equally incorrect. And it is a bit me pet peeve, because it is frequently used to discount actually factually correct statements about history. It is used to make it sound more conforming to our norms then it actually was in practice.
> This is what you learned and interpreted about that phrase and time. For me this is a possible situation you describe, but there are also very different situations, where this phrase could come from. In my social circles, the word "Weib" was used in a very endearing, appreciative way towards women.
That is todays interpretation word and also of women breaking past social mores. In todays movies, a 19 century woman smoking cigarettes is cool. Because it is always an emancipated strong character dealing with tough guys.
But back then, women smoking cigarettes were scandal and looked down on by polite society. They were not emancipated, they were outcasts with all disadvantages that it brings.
I'm pretty sure, that we understand each other mostly but will strongly disagree on things, that are important to us if we engage further. So let's not do that :-) Thank you for your time, it was an interesting discussion!