Red Lights Out in Amsterdam?
A plan to clean up Amsterdam's historic red light district is sure to make life more difficult for pimps, criminals and rowdy young men, but it won't succeed in getting rid of the world's oldest profession, writes Michael van der Galiën.
The Netherlands is famous for such things as wooden shoes, windmills, and cheese. Of course my humble little country is also famous for less innocent things such as its soft policy on soft drugs (weed). Although growing and selling weed isn’t officially legal, it is condoned. This means that wherever you go, you can see someone smoking a “sticky,” as we call it.
Aside from drugs, the Netherlands is also well-known for a particular area in Amsterdam: the Red Light District. (As it happens, other cities such as Groningen, Rotterdam, Leeuwarden and the Hague have similar districts, albeit on a smaller scale.)
The Red Light District is a neighborhood in Amsterdam where women sit, barely dressed, behind windows, while trying to persuade passersby to come inside to have some good ol’ fun. Most of these women are from Eastern Europe, and, contrary to prejudice, beautiful. They wear incredibly revealing clothes; their beautiful, long legs are spread out as if they want to welcome you… OK, sorry about that, what I mean to say is: it’s the prostitute district.
Sadly for those of us who like to look at beautiful women – and even sadder for those who actually want to use their services – Amsterdam has decided to clean up the neighborhood. This week, Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen said that prostitution and drugs shouldn’t be made illegal, but that he nonetheless wants to shut down the “shops” where prostitutes are sitting behind windows. This, of course, is exactly what made the Red Light District so famous.
The reason for the decision to clean up the city is that the approach taken back in 2000 isn’t working. Back then the city (and government) decided to legalize prostitution. They hoped that this would improve the conditions under which prostitutes worked and that criminals would make less money off these women.
Sadly, the plan didn’t quite work out so well.
Cohen himself explains: “We want in part to reverse it, especially with regard to the exploitation of women in the sex industry.” He added that “[w]e have seen in the last years that women trafficking has been becoming more [prevalent], so in this respect the legalizing of the prostitution didn’t work out.”
The city hopes that the new approach, which “involves reselling buildings in the area to large commercial developers and cracking down on pimps and petty crime” will reduce crime and result in Amsterdam being a cleaner, richer, and more peaceful city.
“The city will force escort services and ’security’ firms for prostitutes, which usually are not registered businesses, to obtain a license, a fixed address and telephone line, and subject them to financial auditing,” Cohen told reporters.
Such a move would result in a decrease in sex tourism, however, which means that the city will earn less money, at least in the short run. As a result, some citizens oppose the plans. Prostitute unions (yes, they’ve got their own unions down here) are especially unhappy.
Red Thread (one such union) spokeswoman, Metje Blaak, told the AFP, that “[s]ome 200 jobs are threatened.” She went on to say: “The situation will not get better for the women.”
Sadly for Mrs. Blaak, cracking down on prostitution won’t make life as such more difficult for the prostitutes themselves, but for their pimps and other criminals who get rich by exploiting these women.
What’s more, most sex tourists are – in the words of city councilman Lodewijk Asscher – “rowdy Britons.” Obviously these Britons aren’t “always the tourists that you’d like to have in the city,” as Mr. Asscher quite accurately put it.
One wonders how much we lose by losing Britons who can’t zip their own pants – because they’re drunk – after they visit one of Amsterdam’s prostitutes.
As such, the plan makes sense. A lot of sense even.
On the other hand, red is my second favorite color. I’ll miss those red lights.
And the women.
But other cities aren’t following in Amsterdam’s footsteps. This means that sex tourists can come to one of the other cities mentioned in this article if their wives aren’t enough for them and if they are willing to spend money to have sex with a woman who had sex with approximately 500 other men.
In the end, no matter what the government does, the oldest profession will never disappear. We can push it back into the shadows, and we can limit the damage it does – directly and indirectly – to society, but we will never succeed in completely erasing it from our cities.
Michael van der Galiën is the founder and editor-in-chief of PoliGazette and Chief Political Reviewer at Monsters and Critics.He can be contacted at mpfvandergalien@gmail.com
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7 Comments
1. Tony Ryan:Who’s going to be the first person to tie in the growth of Amsterdams muslim population with the gradual clamping down on the cities traditionally relaxed view on sex and drugs?
Oh look, I did!
Dec 21, 2007 - 7:55 am 2. DoktorNo:I look forward for further developments in Netherlands. The experiences from there about permissive policies on drugs etc. can give good arguments for arguing in my country about implementing (or not-implementing) this sort of things there.
Dec 21, 2007 - 10:13 am 3. pch1013:Tony: If you’d ever ventured outside the Grachtengordel, you’d know that there are plenty of “coffeeshops” in neighborhoods with large Muslim populations.
As for the sex aspect, Muslims (tourists and otherwise) are well-represented among the punters in the Red-Light District.
The Muslim population of the Netherlands grew exponentially between 1960 and 2000, a time period that coincided with the blossoming of the sex and drugs trade.
The new crackdowns on both are, as van der Galiën suggests, mostly at the behest of non-Muslim Amsterdammers (Muslims are generally too poor to live in the city center, where the Red Light District is) who are fed up with having to step through urine and vomit left by British yobs.
Nice try though.
Dec 21, 2007 - 11:09 am 4. Little Much:the point here is that amsterdam itself has exploited women, amsterdam pimps (claims taxes) off of eastern european women. why is it that not one amsterdam citizen would work at one of those little closets they call sex bedrooms? according to a recent article on the amsterdam prostitutes, they forego receiving tax refunds or benefits due them simply that they are ashamed to put “sex worker” on the line where “state occupation” is.
For the many misguided who think that there are all these girls who actually want to be prostitutes, they should ask themselves why it is that only trafficked, impoverished, undereducated, disadvantaged non-dutch women will take “advantage” of this wonderful opportunity of “sex worker” in their own country?
will prostitution go away if these places are closed down? not likely. prostition will always be available as long as there are poor, undereducated, drug/alcohol addicted, abused, mentally/emotionally ill, disenfranchised people for us as well as the gov’ts of countries to exploit in the guise of “tourism.”
Dec 21, 2007 - 8:50 pm 5. BMoon:If the economy of Amsterdam depends on sexually exploiting women aand acting with the morals of a dog, i say it’s time to pack up the entire city, move to America, and get a real job.
Dec 22, 2007 - 10:43 am 6. Paul:In the red light district of Amsterdam women sell sex and are not prosecuted for it, unlike most other places in the world. Selling sex is as old as the world and happens everywhere. Making it unlawful doesn’t change that. But when it is illegal, women have to operate secretive and are vulnerable to exploitation. I salute Amsterdam for making an effort to provide women (who want this) with a save place to work.
Dec 24, 2007 - 7:03 am 7. samuel welsh:This kind of work is evil we should fully discourage it and get these ladys real work.
Jul 30, 2009 - 7:22 am