Japanese panties

[foliumnondefluet]

Here's a disturbing old article on Japanese shops selling used panties:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040226204619/http://www.smn.co.jp/e/key/burusera.html

Personally, if I could get good money from selling my worn-out underwear to a shop that caters to perverts who get off on that sort of thing, I would.

That said, I find it disturbing that the author of the above editorial reserves her moral outrage for the fact that girls are "allowed to sell themselves" - not only does it seem like a huge leap to equate selling panties with "selling yourself", what I find particularly disturbing is that the author deplores that girls are allowed to make their own choices, not that there are schoolgirls in a possibly unhealthy relationship with the sex industry. One gets the feeling the author wouldn't object to parents selling their surplus daughters into sex slavery (a historical practice in Japan), or would prefer a situation where girls are forced by poverty to sell their panties ("girls who come in to sell are not from poor families") over one where they can freely choose to do so for whatever reasons appeals to them.

I find *that* far more scary than a guy who likes to stick his face in other people's laundry. I am a bit shocked that the panties bought for $20 sell for $50, but I guess having to interact with pervert customers is worth that much...

(I totally don't understand the objection that material things are exchanged for material things, or how the situation could be made in any way better by involving the girls' "soul" in the transaction.)

Someone else objected to the shops because "it does contribute to the overall culture in which the men buying these panties are free to dream about schoolgirl panties as if they were illicit. The underwear may have actually been freely sold, but the image in everyone's minds, the thing that I think the shops are trying to evoke, is that of illicitly-stolen underwear. By reinforcing that image as something that's okay for everyone to partake in, one is encouraging guys to get off on girls' underwear that they feel like they "shouldn't" have, which of course encourages a feeling that these guys have taken advantage of the girls without their consent, even though they haven't. This feeling thus becomes more commonplace in society, and then society becomes more complacent to the idea of guys taking advantage of young girls without their consent, and that is what is bad."

I'm reluctant to agree that an activity is problematic, based on assumptions about the way people think in general. In my opinion, these shops didn't *create* the attraction of stolen underwear/taking advantage of young girls. I doubt one can "encourage" someone to get off on something one wouldn't otherwise get off on. I'm not convinced that offering a legal, harmless outlet for that attraction necessarily makes society more complacent about harmful actions. There are some really scary things happening in Japan, but is it actually worse now than, say, during Meiji when it was acceptable to take advantage of girls as long as they were poor? If access to escapist fantasy material had a detrimental effect, things *should* be exponentially worse now than ever before in history.

Also, if there is no relation between our actual consent and the way our actions are perceived, what can we do? We could refuse to sell our used panties, or we could burn them to make sure they don't fall into the hands of perverts, but that seems like playing into the trope - we pretend that we don't want people to perv over our panties, whereas we really couldn't care less.

If you sell your dirty underwear, openly and unambiguously, with full consent that any stranger may use it for whatever, and the buyer nevertheless likes to imagine that he really obtained it from you against your will, what can *you* do to disabuse him of the notion, except to repeatedly and enthusiastically say - and demonstrate - that you really want to sell your dirty undies? Criminalizing possession of dirty laundry hardly seems practical. =P And it would only re-enforce what you try to avoid by making it actually illicit.

The answer that you simply can't ever consent to selling your underwear is not only totally objectifying, it's also promoting a society where consent really is meaningless. No doesn't really mean no, unless and until yes really means yes.