Compensated Dating in Hong Kong

Enjo-kōsai or compensated dating has become a worrying social problem in Hong Kong nowadays. Compensated dating is a practice which originated from Japan where older men give money and/ or luxury gifts to women as the compensation for their companionship, and possibly sexual favors. Literally, compensated dating is different with prostitution as it involves non-sexual activities such as shopping, karaoke singing and friend making but the latter straightly means trade of sexual services for money regardless of reluctance if there is any.
It is certainly universal to read the news headlines about teenage girls ranging within the schooling age involve in this trend of sex-money-exchange in recent years. Following a talk with my mother who ages 65 years, it was uncommon or almost non-existent in those years (60’s) where she was still a young lady of 20 years. As a student major in Economics discipline, my keen interest in explaining this emerging ethical-code-contravening phenomenon using the cost-and-benefit principle has aroused.
The main motivation for girls partaking in compensated dating, or a euphemism for prostitution, is money. No matter in the past 50 years, or recent years, girls could receive a relatively large sum of fast money. Under the influence of materialism, youngsters crave money to own brand-name luxuries to gain satisfaction and jealousy from friends.
Financial ability of men contributes to the outburst of compensated dating coherently. In the past, people worked hard to eke out their livings. Many cannot even make both ends meet. The picture is totally different nowadays. As a loyal proponent of laissez-faire capitalism since 1960s, Hong Kong’s economy has been rapidly developed . Strong economic growth brings enormous enhancements in the living standard as well as income earnings of Hong Kong’s citizens due to more newly created job opportunities, basically. Men would thus have more extra cash for entertainment expenditure including compensated dating. In consequence, they are able to pay more for the sexual companionship now. Seeing the hike in return, more and more females are attracted and driven to provide such sex trade. This group of girls values the benefits much higher than they used to since they could have a higher service charge on their customers.
One might be asking why there were lesser females partake in compensated dating in the past 40 years than today even though might they be more financially-needy. The below explanations would approach to this question, economically.
Under traditional ethics, Chinese were educated to be spiritually and behaviorally conservative. Premarital sexual intercross was strongly and definitely prohibited in the society. Virginity or purity of girls was sheerly important for themselves and the reputation of family in those days. Once a pair of couple is disclosed involving in such activities, they must be discriminated or even abused either verbally or physically by the society. As a result of this traditional morality, there were seldom rational females selling their bodies for money or/and valuables since the cost of engaging in this promiscuous activity was too high, hardly to be bearable. Yet, as time passes, things change. Mentality westernization and cultural influence in several aspects gradually lead Hong Kong teenage girls on the path of mind-openness. Pornography and erotic visual materials could be accessed easily without any barriers through the Internet. Pre-marriage sex becomes more socially acceptable and less ethically prohibitory. Random sex seems not to be an act of embarrassment anymore, instead of giving them a certain degree of sexual gratification. They do not value their chastity much as what those girls did in the past. That is why engaging in compensated dating has been more and more prevailing today since the cost (social prejudice and judgment) is tremendously lower than that in The Sixties.
Other than morality reason, health security is the second major indicator of the trend of compensated dating. Alternatively, it could be said that health problem is one of the cost of doing compensated dating. We are primarily associated with sexually transmitted disease (STD) or known as sexually transmitted infection (STI) when thinking about prostitution or compensated dating in this context. In this era of information explosion, knowledge including sex education is easily accessed by different approaches. Awareness to STD has consequently been imparted and dramatically enhanced. Girls know more about how to conduct sexual activities in the safest way than 50 years ago. For instance, they know the correct ways to prevent Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Indirectly, the main concern of sexual companionship that is the risk of STD contagion has been mitigated or even eliminated. This means that random sex in recent days almost incurs no health cost, for them.
Additionally, thanks to technology advancement and breakthrough, it is clinically proven that sexual practice seldom inflicts girls on accidental pregnancy today. In the past, contraception method has not been as mature as what have we had today. A plenty of contraceptive tools such as supreme-elasticity condoms, diaphragms, long-lived intra uterine contraceptive device (IUD) and almost-no-side-effect oral contraceptive pills are improved to a highly reliable standard. Therefore, it seems to be hardly to get pregnant if individuals hope not to. Albeit pregnancy happens unintentionally, advanced artificial abortion surgery would eliminate their troubles securely. Unlike in those days, permanent infertility or other side effects especially menstruation system disruption is improbably to ensue nowadays. Again, to a great extent, the cost of involving in compensated dating has been trimmed down.
As what have we argued above, it is clearly shown that the costs of doing compensated dating have been greatly pulled down while benefits of that have been pushed high over the 50 years. After trading off between the costs and benefits, rational school-aged girls are thus prone to be more actively involved in compensated dating though it is unacceptable under the law.