It’s not just Japanese Maid Cafes that are a little crazy that way. Now I’m guessing Hooters doesn’t do much business in China either.
are these cafes quite degrading to women?
Short answer: usually
Long answer: they cater to customers with a maid fetish. It is possible that some staff do not mind, or even enjoy, working there. It is possible that a maid cafe might put clear boundaries, and protect its staff. But in the real world, most of the time, yes it is quite degrading.
Local officials found that hundreds of cafés and e-sports venues in Yiwu were offering maid café-style services, with female servers forced to kneel to serve tea, massage male customers, and shout “Welcome home, my master!” to anyone entering.
The procuratorate brought a public interest lawsuit to a local court, arguing that such services “belittle and damage women’s rights to human dignity.” They also said that some local businesses had failed to take measures to protect their female staff from sexual harassment.
[…]
“Maid cafés have been a symbolic space where women are defaulted to being the subject of sexual exploitation,” Chen said. “The key to solving this problem should be educating the public to respect women.”
Sounds like banning this might not be such a bad thing? Stricter regulation and severe penalties for violators would maybe help instead, but I don’t know enough about Chinese culture to really be able to comment on whether that would even be effective. At least taking steps to make sure this doesn’t continue is a net benefit, I think.
Not that they’re the same, but this feels like not letting people be strippers because some people may feel degraded by it. I could understand having legislation that provides protections for employees through employer obligations to ensure a safe environment, but ultimately it’s the choice of the individual if they’re okay with the work or not. I don’t have a dog in this fight, but this feels like Chinese conservatism forcing “modesty” on women.
You mean Chinese conservatism? My take was as means of combating foreign cultural influence.
So uh, at these cafés, are there any male maids? A-asking for a friend 👉👈🥺
Those are butler cafes unless you mean crossdressed guys in which case I’ve no idea.
There is, or at least was, at least one place catering to your friend’s tastes: https://urnotalone.com/male-maids-serve-it-up-at-japans-first-cross-dressing-maid-cafe/
Edit: More recent article: https://www.tokyoweekender.com/food-and-drink/restaurants-and-bars/boys-magically-become-girls-at-the-maho-ni-kakerarete-crossdressing-bar/
