INDONESIA — There’s no fool like a governmental fool, and if anyone working within East Java’s Indonesian government has any sense, they realize that they qualify for the term after local masseuses felt compelled to tell them where to get off – and they didn’t suggest that it was in their pants. In an attempt to cut back on prostitution and general sexual impropriety, the government of tourist-rich Batu focused its attention on its massage practitioners, instructing the female workers to wear padlocks on their pants.
According to the Jackarta Post, Meuthia Hatta, the State Minister of Women’s Empowerment, considers the suggestion to be insulting.
“It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity,” she told the newspaper, which ran a photo of a masseuse with a padlock affixed to her trouser waist band. “It insults women, as if they are the ones in the wrong.”
As Hatta sees it, installing CCTV security systems makes a lot more sense than trapping women in their trousers, if the goal truly is to make prostitution more difficult to solicit.
With its cool temperatures, natural hot springs, and beautiful mountain scenery, Batu is a popular tourist destination – and Indonesia’s thriving sex industry is a common attraction. With many massage parlors offering more than just Reiki, Swedish, and traditional deep tissue work, they have become the center of a lively debate about morality which has revealed wide disunity within the Southeast Asian, heavily Muslim nation.
Indonesia banned access to pornographic and violent websites last month and its parliament continues to wrestle with a controversial bill aimed at protecting minors from pornographic content and inappropriate sexual behavior. The bill previously attempted to criminalize kissing in public and participating in art and traditional culture activities that emphasize sensuality, but was reworked after critics argued that it could limit freedoms and hurt Indonesia’s reputation for tolerance.
