SEOUL, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A South Korean appellate court on Thursday ordered Japan to compensate a group of 16 women who were forced to work in Japanese wartime brothels, overturning a lower court ruling that dismissed the case and prompting a stern protest from Tokyo.
This kind of pedantry doesn’t add to the conversation, it takes away from it. “South Korea orders Japan to compensate sex slaves” is a genuinely worse article title than the given one, and contains far less information than referring to them as “comfort women.”
Yes, these people were sex slaves. The reason the term “comfort women” is helpful is because these are very specific sex slaves from a specific time, a specific place, and under specific circumstances. South Korea doesn’t want Japan to compensate sex slaves, South Korea wants Japan to compensate these sex slaves.
AFAIU Japan uses this term for a different reason. The government (at least domestically) does not recognize these people as slaves. When they reported on their investigation on whether the sex labor was forced, they purposefully used a language that can be taken both ways. I don’t know if Abe’s cabinet changed the stance, but the word comfort women is still in use because Tokyo can refer to them without classifying them slaves.
If you have a source for that alternative fact you argue, you are welcome to share it here.
Here in Japan, the term comfort women is used for the exact same reason it is used in English and around the world: it clearly and unequivocally describes the people being it is used to describe.
It’s not a weasel word used to avoid talking about the truth. It’s just the word that people use to talk about a specific group of victims. It’s a useful term that quickly gets us to the core issue, rather than starting at an extremely vague term and requiring clarifying language every time we talk about it. It’s just basic communication.
I’m a Japanese. Can you point me to your source now?
Edit:
Here are mine. I should’ve put these before all this nonsensical nightmare with this person that follows after.
A scholarly article
explaining how Shinzo Abe’s government denied coercion in 2007.
Here’s the formal Japanese record from the congress.
What source are you looking for? That comfort women refers to women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during the first half of the 20th century? That’s just the definition of the word. I’m not sure what you’re asking for.
That Japanese people recognize them as sex slaves. The government, media and commoners.
This means that I want a FORMAL source from the government. And news articles explicitly stating this. And some scholarly articles that analyze the perception among the commoners.
No god-damn Wikipedia.
If I don’t reply the next time, regard it a failure on your side.
Jesus Christ what a level of pedantry is this… I’m not engaging with this kind of bullshit, so go ahead and regard it as “a failure on my side.”
Fucking trolls wasting everyone’s time and poisoning every discussion…
So, no, you don’t show your source. I treat your argument as such.
I made no argument. There’s nothing to source.
You’re trying to start a kindergarten-level fight and I’m not interested in engaging in that kind of behavior. I’m here for discussion, not pedantry.
Go waste someone else’s time with your trolling.
Kishida has been pm since 2021, sure you’re Japanese?
I raised Abe’s name because Abe’s conservative voter base who demanded such a change.
Get rid of that “this person is not Japanese” attitude. It only humiliates you. Are you a proud nationalist or something?
If someone references the last well known leader to ask about a country, that’s a giant red flag that they’re lying about being from the country. Same for saying “as far as I understand” to describe the situation in that country. I’m not at all humiliated by not automatically believing someone I don’t know online behaving suspiciously, nor does it imply I’m a nationalist.
And you were wrong. Nice try.
I asked a question. You answered. How is that wrong?
Woman selling or giving themselves for comfort or sex isn’t an issue.
Being enslaved to do so is.
Sex workers are not comfort women. What’s the confusion?
Yeah, fuck no, not calling things what they are called is a very long standing way of obfuscating the severity of a wrong.
Sorry to hijack your comment, but I’m tired of these people who can’t be reasoned with. They have poor reading comprehension. They criticize people for wrong reasons. And when cornered, they make up word definitions to pretend they’ve said nothing wrong. They call people trolls.