Permits for brothels
Amsterdam is trying to “manage” the rental of women.
In their latest effort to rein in carousing visitors, Amsterdam officials announced plans this week to tamp down disruptive behavior in the city’s Red Light District, including barring pot-smoking on the streets, reducing hours for restaurants and brothels, and tightening some alcohol restrictions.
What is a “red light district”? It’s a euphemism for an area where women are rented.
The city issues permits for brothels and sex clubs to operate. Under rules that had already been decided, brothels will only be able to stay open until 3 a.m., not the 6 a.m. closing time in place now.
So get your cash on the counter by 2:59 boys or you’ll have to wait until the next night.
Amsterdam has tried for years to address overtourism concerns, restricting some tours of the historic Red Light District before the pandemic and voting to move sex workers to an erotic center outside of the district in 2021.
An “erotic center” – that’s hilarious in a poisonous kind of way.
I’m reminded of Sean Spicer’s line that Assad was worse than Hitler, because Assad used biological warfare on his own people in town, whereas Hitler “brought [the Jews] into the Holocaust centers”.
My comment was here in response to the thing about “erotic center”. Sorry for not quoting it in my comment.
We all know the consequences that flow from legal bans on prostitution: 1. corruption of the police; 2. creation of business opportunities galore for organised crime and criminal gangs; 3. creation of opportunities for blackmail of prostitutes’ clients, particularly those with prominent identities given to trading as pillars of society, and with illusions and images to protect. Etc.
As far as I am aware, prostitution for the above reasons has been legalised in all Australian states and territories.
Legal brothels can give ‘sex-workers’ a certain amount of protection from clients who delight in violent encounters and in bashing women up for kicks. (NB: For a fee, deductible from the said ‘sex-worker’s’ pay.)
My sources tell me that both the police and organised crime figures lobbied AGAINST legalisation, but without success.
(NB: I have never, ever, felt the need to pay for sex. So the above is based on strictly second and third-hand information.)
There’s some elements of eroticism missing from the red light scene, the main one being the excitement of the anticipation of pleasure on the part of both the party of the first part and the party of the second part.
I’m only guessing since I’ve never been to a red light district.
@Omar:
I claim no expertise on the subject, but my understanding is that legalizing prostitution increases trafficking of women. Once would-be johns no longer fear the legal consequences of paying for sex, demand for prostitutes soars. For some reason, however, not too many women are eager to sign up for a highly stigmatized job that will require them to have sex with an endless line of strange men who may or may not have STDs.¹ And so women are brought in from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to fill the gap between supply and demand.
I’ve also read that even legal prostitution—or perhaps especially legal prostitution—generates a sort of social blast zone wherever it is carried out. Women and girls who have the misfortune of living in the area are harassed and solicited for sex. This is why many localities that legalize prostitution at the same time attempt to restrict it to clearly delineated red light districts removed from residential areas and shopping districts. But if the men who are out buying sex behave like feral hogs towards even the “normal” and “good” women who happen to be walking on the street with them, then how exactly are they treating the “bad” and “dirty” women—the acceptable victims—when they’re alone together in a brothel room?
(1) Some brothels take steps to protect their “employees” (read: merchandise) from STDs, but based on what I’ve read, these measures are often very perfunctory—wouldn’t want to drive away customers, after all—and even more rigorous screening practices aren’t going to be failproof.
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@Mike: I’ve walked through a few when in the Netherlands, and mostly the women in the windows just look incredibly bored. It seems remarkably unappealing to me, but I’m not a heterosexual male.
@#5: I am no expert on the prostitution scene, but I clearly remember all the arguments for and against in the pre-HIV/AIDS period, which brought to a close the ‘free love’ era of the 1960s. HIV/AIDS reportedly caused prostitutes and brothels to insist on clients’ wearing of condoms, which in turn caused much game-playing on the part of the more myopic clients to get their rides ‘bareback,’ as it were; in the vernacular.
I did joke with a medico friend who offered to perform minor surgery on me when a skiing accident in a remote location resulted in my having a deep splinter embedded in my hand. Before making her cut (without any anaesthetic) she asked “Is there any chance of you having AIDS.? To which I replied: “No. I haven’t got AIDS. It’s my boyfriend who’s got the AIDS;” and laughed heartily. To which she replied: “Don’t even joke about it.!” And then proceeded with the procedure I found excruciatingly painful, despite her efforts to make it otherwise.
Doctors and medical staff took on the resigned air of front-line troops.
There is still no vaccine against AIDS. Result: a serious boost to the practices of monogamy, abstinence, and protected sex. And condom sales, I dare guess. For prostitutes, it had to be, and still has to be, only a matter of time before turning AIDS-positive.
When I was in the Australian Army as a conscript, we had a lecture on the subject (attendance compulsory) from the Medical Officer, who warned us: “Don’t visit prostitutes when on leave.! They ALWAYS have VD.!” Still a fair assumption today.
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https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/hiv-prevention/potential-future-options/hiv-vaccines