In the Japan of 2020, women's bodies are still a kind of comfort that can be bought and consumed when you need it.. "Comfort women' first for the Japanese army, then for the allies, then again for employees on company outings, and now also for other women. It is the so-called 'lesbian prostitution'. (lesbian fūzoku).
This is not about prostitution within the lesbian community, but an attempt to expand the prostitution 'market' to women. A real encouragement to the "cannibalism'.which echoes an old derogatory term for lesbians, tomogui ('cannibals').
In recent years, the phenomenon has seen a small boom, fuelled and publicised by the media, for example the manga "Out of sadness I went to the lesbian brothel. Report" di Nagata Kabi, a best-seller in 2016. This is not an erotic comic book: it tells of the twisted psyche of the protagonist, a 28-year-old woman with no sexual experience who may be suffering from depression. Publications such as this, as well as "reportages", have helped raise awareness of this type of venue, provoking a sudden increase in the number of customers and also of women asking to 'work' there.
The so-called 'lesbian brothel'. is proposed to all women as an 'experience', and almost as a solution to loneliness, or an antidote to the trauma caused by male violence. Paying customers can get a taste of lesbian sexuality without being lesbians. Like the protagonist of the manga, they are largely women, from the office worker who may have been harassed at work, to the housewife who spends her life in a gilded cage. Some of the clients are also women who 'work' in the sex industry for men. Rather than leaving prostitution, they report harassment or break up an unhappy marriage, they are offered 'consolation'. temporarily exploiting the sexuality and human warmth of another woman.
Despite being proposed as a solution, so-called 'lesbian prostitution' plays into the hands of the old patriarchal system. a way of dividing women and distracting them from criticism. At the same time, it brings lesbian sexuality back into the service of the masculine logic of capitalism, and makes it possible to monetising violence against women, turning their trauma into a business.
Maria Celeste
