Impressions of the Red Light District

So I am in Amsterdam sitting in Blom, a restaurant that has the best fresh-squeezed orange juice I have ever tasted. It’s a hot, damp day interrupted by the occasional sun shower. Yet it’s as good a day as any to win the war against writer’s block and update you on my travels, thoughts and happenings.

So on to my visit to the Prostitution Information Center (PIC) & Red Light District.

I have long been a proponent of accepting the choices of sex workers, and any woman’s decision regarding her body. But I must admit that I was drawn into a twinge of squeamishness and discomfort. It wasn’t necessarily the scantily clad women. After all, in college I was a full-fledged member of a sorority. Suffice it to say the pajama parties aren’t entirely a myth.

What made me retreat was the entire scenery around sex that accompanies the red light district. Particularly, I am referring to the sexual paraphernalia, the swarms of men and the state sponsorship of it all.

Starting at the end, to fully grasp the state sponsorship piece you must be in the know of the main orders of operation regarding sex work in Amsterdam courtesy of the PIC.

1. You must be 18 or older.
2. You must be a citizen of the EU.
3. Men who approach the door full with neon lights and a scantily clad woman inquiring about a service initiate transactions. If the woman agrees she permits him entrance. If she refuses she closes the door.
4. In your “transaction,” you have the right to refuse breast touching and kissing. (The main services provided are penile/vaginal penetration and felatio.)
5. Payment rates start at 35+ euros for every 15 minutes. (Women of color and Eastern European women generally make less money.)
6. To rent a room/doorway in the Red Light District you must pay 90-120 euros each evening.
7. Each room has a hidden panic button if something should go wrong. (The police response time is approximately a minute and a half.)
8. Each sex worker must be tested for STIs monthly. (This would also technically mean that if a woman contracted something, she would have a strong case to receive disability. However, to my knowledge this has not been tested.)

Also, while the Red Light District appears to be segregated, the state mandates no particular arrangement. It is the women who choose to work beside their friends. And because of the larger de-facto segregation of Western society, their friends tend to be of the same racial or ethnic makeup.

Additionally, while the patrons of the Red Light District are disproportionately men, a select few of the women who work there entertain women and couples. However, I have been told it is unlikely.

My grievances?

My main issue begins with article 2. Over the past two weeks I have been studying Black Europeans and by extension the intersection of race, immigration status, ethnicity and religion. In this course we reviewed much of the scholarship around the oppression of people of color in Europe. One of the distinct differences between the struggle for justice for African Americans and Afro-Europeans—along with that little thing we had decades ago called the civil rights movement—is that citizenship is not always a likelihood in Europe. Bringing sex work back into the fold, one can only wonder how many women of color are instantly relegated to the underground sex work industry and as a result the carnivorous nature of prostitution’s accoutrements because they lack documentation. Citizenship should not be a prerequisite for employment if the state is serious about protecting all women.

Another problem that I have with the state’s sponsorship of sex work is the discrimination against would-be woman patrons and people of different sexual orientations. Currently, the institution of The Red Light District disproportionately privileges heterosexual men with the opportunity to purchase sex. Now, I should disclose that when I talk to folks in my growing Dutch network about my beliefs, they say that places exist within nooks and crannies of Holland that service other sexual demographics. When I requested information about the location of such places, it is lost on them. I should also note that the PIC did not have any information on these places. Bottom line, even if these places exist a service must be provided for people of all sexual persuasions of **equal comparison.** By that I mean it should have all the bells and whistles that accompany The Red Light District i.e. location, diversity, quantity and sexual paraphernalia etc.

And that leads me to the entire sexual environment that Amsterdam reeks of: white, heterosexual, male fantasy. It’s in the postcards of women’s vaginas; The J. Lo sculpture that sits in the main window of Madame Tussauds Museum with two man-hand prints on her derriere; the lingeriesque costumes of every profession that adorn the windows of sex shops. On the occasional instance that women of color are included their representations are often racialized. Subtle references are made to her “spiciness,” “sassiness” or “jungle-like” tendencies.

And what offerings, you ask, do they have for heterosexual women? Well, save the ubiquitous phallic symbols, in a major sex museum on Damrak street, one of their main attractions is a white, bald, hairy, overweight mannequin that snatches open his trench coat to expose himself.

And how can one even begin to speak to the swarms of men from all over the world that are permanent fixtures of the district? Some men approach these doors unashamed of the fact that they wear wedding rings, catcalling at these women, and treating them as if they are sub-human. I witnessed this up close during a recent encounter with a Red Light District patron that did more than ruffle my feathers.

Because of the adjacency of the district to everything in Amsterdam (it’s a 15 minute walk from my house) it’s not unlikely that I’ll be in the neighborhood on my way to make a Chinese food run. On my way to drop off my dry-cleaning late one afternoon, I witnessed two men soliciting a ménage a trios from a worker. She refused and chose not to open her door. The men went on to curse this woman out in Spanish reserving the little English they knew to call her a “skank bitch.” Disturbed, I proceeded to the cleaners with the woman’s powerless expression in my periphery.

Something about it just singed me. There’s no police force with a minute and a half response time for the likes of men who deploy verbal violence. It just seemed so wrong that anyone’s child regardless of her self-identified profession would be deserving of such a derogatory label.

And while this is my longest blog entry to date, it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface on the issues I must reconcile as a feminist about sex work—state sponsored or otherwise. Over the next few weeks I hope to learn more about the district that Amsterdam is known for. But this time I am not going to rely on the scholarship of a second hand source. I will go to the women in the work. Stay tuned.

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