Last year, porn star Eimi Fukada stoked controversy and pissed off her male fanbase by arguing that men should pay for dates (since the woman is investing in other costs for the date, such as clothing, hair styling, and makeup). The controversy got so bad that she was forced to issue an apology video.
Clearly, the government has no such qualms. A government agency has included not paying for dating expenses as part of a list of things that constitute domestic violence.
The Gender Equality Bureau, which is part of the Cabinet Office, has defined violence in a very broad way. Its website outlines four categories of violence: psychological, physical, sexual, and economic.
The latter might include using or borrowing a partner’s money, but also refusing to pay for dating expenses, according to the list of examples for each category.
According to the Gender Equality Bureau, a shocking one in five women have been the victim of domestic violence.
The bureau’s chart and examples are not new (they’ve been online since 2018, it seems), but have recently attracted attention, with some criticizing not its intentions but its choice to apply such a broad definition of violence.
Likewise, some have not liked the bureau’s inclusion of what it calls “dating domestic violence,” in which one partner comes under the control of another because they think that dating must follow the scenarios from TV dramas and game.
Male netizens have pointed out that men too are victims of this kind of domestic violence (and others).
It got to such a point that a bureau representative had to issue a clarification to the media recently: “Someone not paying for a date doesn’t immediately qualify as domestic violence.” There needs to be some form of financial coercion involved, either implicit or explicit. “If both sides are fine with just one of them paying for dates, it’s not domestic violence.”
