Just Saying | Hong Kong’s part-time girlfriends and the Disneyfication of prostitution
Yonden Lhatoo says the phenomenon of part-time girlfriends in Hong Kong is just prostitution by another name, and another by-product of crass consumerism
Part-time girlfriends. So that’s what they’re calling them these days. Or PTGFs, for short and trendy.
Funny, this phenomenon used to be known as “prostitution” in the not-so-distant past, and then a nicer-sounding “compensated dating” until lately. It may seem more innocuous with every iteration of the term, but the song remains the same.
When a man (and seriously, what is wrong with us men that we have to perpetuate this?) basically rents a woman for company or companionship on the face of it but with coitus as the underlying intention, the world’s oldest profession comes into play. All the Disneyfication with soft-focus selfies and shy social messaging does not change the facts.
I can understand where they’re coming from when liberals say consenting adults have a right to choose how they make a living. It can quite rightly be seen as hypocritical to judge them when parallels to prostitution can be drawn from every facet of work and life among all of us.
“I wonder how many of you prostitute yourselves for your company and country, since you have such a perception of what a prostitute is. And a misogynist view also,” writes a reader in our comments section online.
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