Prostitution in The Netherlands

The Netherlands, the country I live in, is famous - or depending how you look at things - or notorious for it open mindedness. It's only a small country with 17,000,000 inhabitants, so we as a country do not have a great impact on the rest of the world. All this open mindedness... Is that a good thing?

Red Light District Amsterdam

The majority of prostitution is concentrated in and around the four big cities in The Netherlands. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht are well known for the industry. An 'industry' is not the nicest way to describe it, maybe, but estimates range from $ 500,000,000 to $ 800,000,000 a year in revenues and that justifies it calling an industry.

Amsterdam is famous for it's "Red light District". It is a relatively small portion of the city, where sex is for sale. As - with almost anything in The Netherlands - it's well organized. Of course there are cases of abuse and violence. And - that could be an important issue: It's legal.

But because the fact that it is all concentrated in a more or less confined area it's more controllable. The woman working there have their own union, receive medical care, have their own council representative in the city of Amsterdam's, and they pay taxes. Just like you and me. Many of them own their own business.

Street Prostitution

It makes one wonder. Maybe it's just the best option to legalize a once forbidden way of earning money, in order to have better control over it.

The way I see it is kinda like this. Tell a kid to not smoke and it will start smoking. Say nothing or even say it's ok to smoke then the kid might not start smoking at all.

Maybe a serious subject this time. But trust me, if you ever have the chance to go see for yourself you will have a ball there... It's not degrading in any way and the whole atmosphere is fun and good times.

If you get tired of watching (window shopping, literally) the girls you can always get a kick out of the groups of Japanese tourists that swarm across the small streets, clicking their brand new Canon's to an orgasm of pictures. Take them back home and show them to mamma-san.

Happy P'tu'ing
// Jan