• paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    19 hours 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.

    • Miaou@jlai.lu
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      14 hours ago

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

      • paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        10 hours 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.