Things of Import

Today I bought a bike, finally. It is purple and yellow and the right size for me and has hand brakes. Sometimes I get flustered at intersections and get off and walk it across because the pedals are in the wrong place, but that will change. It's so nice to have one. I am going to try and figure out if there's a way to bring the lock home with me - it is so heavy duty. No one in America would ever steal a bike with a lock this extreme. It's a huge, thick chain more or less. Today was also the day of the first writing meeting of Tim and Nick and Bri and I, and it was super cool. I am always happy when I have writers in my life. And the fact that we have weekly deadlines means that I'll push myself to keep churning out work that I want to be working on. We met at Greenwoods which I still love with all my heart. The waiter was very concerned about us being cold. And he refilled our teapot free of charge.

Then there was Letje which is always a treat, and today was extra special because we took a walking tour of the Red Light District, led by Mariska Majoor, a former window girl who's been the head of the Prostitution Information Center for the last fourteen years. I have so many things to say about the hour and a half we spent together, but I'll try to keep it concise. Everyone should explore the PIC website - it gives a really comprehensive background of the project and a lot of the issues that sex workers face, in Amsterdam and the world over. It also addresses the particular ways in which sex tourism functions in Amsterdam. Don't be intimidated by the fact that it's in Dutch - just click on the little British flag and you'll get everything you need to know in English.

The PIC is located right in the heart of the Red Light District, on a square in the center of which sits a church, and a bunch of 14th century buildings. Mariska's organization erected a pretty little statue called "Bella" in front of the church sometime last year, inscribed with a message to respect sex workers all over the world. First of all, the shop is small and very gezellig, with a big group of women chatting and laughing around a table behind the counter, a lot of kitschy touristy things (e.g. shirts that say "Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go To Amsterdam") and local Red Light District based artwork and lots of literature on sex work. I got so happy when I noticed that it sells Global Sex Workers and Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered, both excellent books which Scott Morgensen introduced me to in the context of his Transnational Sexual Politics class, and both of which have been key literature in the Transnational Sex Worker's Rights Movement formulating over the past ten years. Mariska and her organization have their hands thoroughly entrenched in this movement. And it's no wonder - women from all over the world work in the RLD.

The legalization of prostitution here means that street prostitution is frowned upon in Amsterdam - window prostitution is much more common. The way it works is that women go to the office of a landlord who owns buildings with windows, register, and show their passports. They are given a window and can pay rent for an 8 or 12 hour shift - night shifts are generally a little more expensive than day shifts. Because you have to show your passport in order to register with a landlord, illegal immigrants can't work in the neighborhood. Because you pay rent for a window, the space is yours to use as you choose, for the time that you rent it. Pimping is illegal, and the system is set up for independent contract work, which is why Amsterdam is a very good and safe place for women to practice sex work, compared to most places in the world. Each window is attached to a working room, and each working room has an alarm system. In a dangerous situation, the woman working can press a button and the alarm will sound, and either her colleagues or the landlord or the police, or all three, will be able to quickly come to her aid. Another measure of control offered by this system is the fact that the women working behind the windows can pick and choose their clientele - you sit and watch the people walk past on the street, and make eye contact with people that seem safe or intriguing to you. Mariska described this as using the same instincts that anyone in a customer service position has about customers - you can tell from body language, from eye contact, who is aggressive or who is sweet or who is shy or who is reckless or who is scared or who has something to prove, and from these hints you can decide who you are willing to take a chance on.

That said, coercion does happen - the system is set up to prevent pimping or human trafficking, but some landlords turn a blind eye to these practices, and allow sex slavery organizations or pimps to install unwilling women in their windows for a few weeks at a time. Mariska estimated that about 10 to 15 percent of the women working in the RLD at any given time are in a coercive situation. If she hears a story like this, she tries to provide both comfort and legal counsel to the woman in question. Unfortunately 9 times out of 10 these women are too scared to press charges - and the problem with a system of legalization is that it's dependent on the law for recourse, so if they refuse to press charges there isn't much that can be done to actually nab the pimps or the crime organizations. Mariska's organization and others like it attempt to form safe spaces for coerced women to come to. That's just a brief sketch of the situation here. The website of The Red Thread is also a good source of information on prostitution in Nederland.

Right now, there's a huge debate going on about the "oversexualization of the Netherlands," which means that the government is buying up window brothels and trying to forcibly change the face of the Red Light District. This is both complicated and contentious, and Mariska got worked up about it several times during the course of the tour. You see former windows which have been bought by the government and offered up to young Amsterdam designers as display spaces, full of bejeweled hate couture manikins. They're sponsored by the tourist administration and say "Red Light Fashion" across the front, and they poke fun at the poses and working positions of the actual women they're in the midst of. There have been a lot of protests mounted against this. Mariska said that she told them that if they do that to the windows around the PIC, she'll be the first to smash in their displays. There are also antagonistic protest posters up all around the Red Light District.

So the most interesting part of the tour was when we got to go into a real window space and working room that the PIC has temporary access to while the landlord straightens out some licensing troubles. Every window has a red light (duh) and a blue light, to make the skin glow and emphasize white lingerie. The windows and rooms are surprisingly cozy, and Mariska had us sit on the stools for a minute to see how it felt. And I have to say, it was really interesting - I'm still processing it. Even though there were 6 of us, men and women of different generations, and we were all wearing coats and backpacks, people were still looking in the window curiously as they walked past. It's clear that you could discover a lot about human nature sitting in a window - some people were clearly cruising, some looked curious but inhibited, some walked fast with heads down as if scared to look, some walked aggressively with fists bunched up as if about to hit. It was so strange to watch.

Also, I was really fascinated because male prostitutes are so visibly absent from this world - it's a very different and much less accessible scene, mostly linked to gay bars and organizations. I'm going to go back to the PIC in the next few days and try to pick Mariska's brain about this disparity. It will be interesting to see what someone so embroiled in the politics of regulation and sex work advocacy will have to say about that. Hopefully she'll be able to give me some ideas for contacts, as well.