Japan moves for the first time to criminalize paying for sex

8 months ago by schizoidman to c/world

The Justice Ministry is moving toward revising Japan's anti-prostitution law to punish the sex buyers, addressing a legal imbalance that has only targeted the sellers for 70 years, according to government sources.
TheBat 75 points 8 months ago
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pulsewidth 57 points 8 months ago

Probably just make their fairly crap job worse. The new, more conservative government is pushing this as a pro-women "equal rights for both buyer and seller" policy, when really it just takes rights away from customers and furthers the goals of their puritan mindset.

The larger problems sex workers face (than equal penalties) is that they don't do a 'real job' according to the govt, so cannot get social security coverage, no unions, and very limited legal protections for their high risk job. A situation ripe for exploitation by a criminal class.

If the government really wanted to protect them with equal rights they would follow the example of many/most western countries and legalize prostitution completely, granting tax status, social services and welfare, regulation of the industry, and legitimizing the work (thereby reducing the social stigma eventially).

NB: I was just reading that only intercourse is illegal, and even that was pretty lax law because the fine is only ~$130 US - less than prostitutes would generally earn from an individual client. So; oral sex, anal sex, etc: fully legal - this allows brothels and prostitutes to operate quite openly, advertise etc with few legal issues.

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dohpaz42 12 points 8 months ago

Probably not much. This, in my opinion, serves two purposes:

  1. Shaming the men (Japan is huge on appearances)
  2. Money grab; they get to fine the men now and not just the women
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bobzer 9 points 8 months ago

Only PiV is illegal in Japan. All other sex work is explicitly legal.

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AntiBullyRanger 2 points 8 months ago

They’ll get raped in jail, forced natalization, and lobotomized to breast feed.

RETURN to IMPERIUM.

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paris 17 points 8 months ago

The Justice Ministry is moving toward revising Japan's anti-prostitution law to punish the sex buyers, addressing a legal imbalance that has only targeted the sellers for 70 years, according to government sources.

I hope it's obvious why only punishing the sellers puts them in a very very vulnerable position, so evening the playing field in that regard is probably good. That said, prostitution should be decriminalized, or better yet legally protected.

"I want to sell sex." "I want to buy sex." "Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" The state shouldn't be preventing people from having sex in exchange for money; it should be protecting them to minimize exploitation and generally bad outcomes.

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Miaou -6 points 8 months ago

... And what if that protection comes through criminalisation? It's legal in Germany, and has arguably made things worse

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paris 6 points 8 months ago

You're welcome to present data to that end. Everything I've seen indicates that criminalization worsens working conditions for sex workers and raises the risk of violence. The only negative outcome I know of from legalization is that it apparently leads to increased trafficking, but I don't see that as an impossible challenge to solve that negates all of the positives of legalization.

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menas 1 point 8 months ago

Germany have its sex work system focus on brothel. It force sex workers to depend on bosses or proprietary. That exploitation 101 We need unions to defend sex workers too

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TheAlbatross 16 points 8 months ago

Amazing that this news org is able to hold onto asahi.com in the modern era

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flyingSock 12 points 8 months ago

even more amazing that the news vorp belongs to the beermaker of the same name

Efit: This actually doesnt appear to be true :(

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TheAlbatross 5 points 8 months ago

Is that true? That makes more sense then, actually! I thought they somehow resisted what I'm sure would be persistent high-priced offers to buy the domain from one of the largest beverage holding groups in Asia.

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f314 13 points 8 months ago

TBF, “Asahi” is a better name for a newspaper than for a brewery 😅 (It means “morning sun” in Japanese)

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pulsewidth 7 points 8 months ago

TIL Asahi was named by an epic alcoholic I guess.

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flyingSock 3 points 8 months ago

This is what i was told once upon a time. But upon actual research it sadly appears not. At least the newspaper is not on the list of properties of the asahi holdings that owns the beer company. (for some reason i am not able to paste the link onypjone)

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tigeruppercut 2 points 8 months ago

It's not the newspaper, but interestingly enough drink companies don't bother hiding their connection to alcohol the same way they would in eg the US. Asahi also produces all sorts of soft drinks like teas and sodas and the Asahi branding is prominent. Maybe this is common in some places but for the US it'd feel like having ads for "delicious Budweiser cola".

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Not_mikey 8 points 8 months ago

Looks like the paper is one of Japan's biggest, on the level of NYT in the US so it makes sense. If they have very large circulation the domain is probably worth more for them to distribute content then it is to a beer company where the website matters far less. Like unless there's some promotion going on why would you go to a beer companies website?

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k0e3 6 points 8 months ago

What do you mean? Asahi shinbun is a big news company in Japan and they probably grabbed the domain way before the beer company would have even needed a website.

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Not_mikey 10 points 8 months ago

Gotta get those birth rates up, don't want any sexual energy going into anything but making a baby. If they could get away with banning porn they probably would, especially with this new far right government.

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duelistsage 7 points 8 months ago

Outlawing prostitution does more harm than good.

Do you seriously want to be with someone who is only avoiding prostitution because the law told them so?

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Stern 7 points 8 months ago

Soaplands and host clubs were already fairly grey wink wink nod nod affairs so not sure that changes much.

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tiredofsametab 3 points 8 months ago

I seem to remember sex as being strictly defined as p-in-v penetrative action very narrowly thus allowing other acts to not count for those purposes. Soaplands aren't technically that and host clubs don't do any action on the clock or directly for cash.

Edit: clarity.

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AntiBullyRanger 0 points 8 months ago path: 0 21910133 21924220, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 6
Stern 4 points 8 months ago

I don't think a party that has like 1% of the seats in the diet can really be used as evidence of the entire JP government being fascist.

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AntiBullyRanger -2 points 8 months ago

et tu ineruditus‽ Praxis ≠ Concensi.

Everything the government has been doing is fascism, it's just leaning extra on poppulus praxis.

All that's missing now is deathcamps.

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Stern 4 points 8 months ago

Seems like you're wheeling those goalposts around now friend.

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tiredofsametab 5 points 8 months ago

This could be interesting for another reason. Alienation of affection laws (i.e. breaking up a marriage) are a thing here. In the past, some have gotten out of the fines/penalties because this was clearly a transaction and not love. Not being able to legally pay anymore makes that interesting.

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gandalf_der_12te -12 points 8 months ago

Unironically a good thing. Prostitution is one of the most abusive businesses out there, at least in the western world. Idk about japan.

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Shayeta 20 points 8 months ago

And as we all know, unregulated underground prostitution establishments are much less abusive than regulated legitimate prostitution establishments.

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menas 2 points 8 months ago

If you've listened to organized sex workers, you would know that cops are the aggressors. Clandestinized them will only invisible those agressions and forbid legal actions

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