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?
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.
OK so getting paid for sex was already criminalised and now paying for sex is also criminalised.
What will this change for sex workers who are already in the business?
Only PiV is illegal in Japan. All other sex work is explicitly legal.
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.
Probably not much. This, in my opinion, serves two purposes:
- Shaming the men (Japan is huge on appearances)
- Money grab; they get to fine the men now and not just the women
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.
Soaplands and host clubs were already fairly grey wink wink nod nod affairs so not sure that changes much.
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.
Unironically a good thing. Prostitution is one of the most abusive businesses out there, at least in the western world. Idk about japan.
And as we all know, unregulated underground prostitution establishments are much less abusive than regulated legitimate prostitution establishments.
