Amsterdam moves to ban bachelor parties
An Amsterdam politician is aiming to combat ‘drunk, puking’ bachelor parties by banning them.
The first female mayor of Amsterdam has pitched a slew of proposals to revamp the historic city’s infamous red-light district in a bid to better protect sex workers. The politician’s most drastic ideas include banning prostitutes from window displays or, alternatively, relocating the center city brothels altogether.
On Wednesday, Mayor Femke Halsema unveiled her pitches for an overhaul of the Dutch capital’s red-light district, citing increasing numbers of tourists and rising rates of human trafficking, Reuters reports.
“We’re forced by circumstances because Amsterdam changes,” Halsema told local media. “I think a lot of the women who work there feel humiliated, laughed at -- and that’s one of the reasons we are thinking about changing.”
The first female mayor of Amsterdam has pitched a slew of proposals to revamp the historic city’s infamous red-light district in a bid to better protect sex workers. (iStock)
The mayor said she has no intentions of moving to outlaw prostitution, which was legalized by the Dutch government in 2000.
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“We legalized prostitution because we thought and still think that legal prostitution give a woman a chance to be autonomous, independent,” Halsema said. “Criminalizing prostitution has been done in the United States, which I think makes women extra vulnerable.”
According to the outlet, the four main motions include the shuttering of street window displays as a whole, better licensing for sex workers who display themselves in windows, a reduction of the amount of brothers in center city or, most dramatically, shutting them down altogether for a total larger relocation.
Halsema’s pitches will be presented at town hall meetings through July before one is selected and voted on by city council later this year, Reuters reports.
“We legalized prostitution because we thought and still think that legal prostitution give a woman a chance to be autonomous, independent,” Mayor Femke Halsema said. “Criminalizing prostitution has been done in the United States, which I think makes women extra vulnerable.” (iStock)
Some opponents, meanwhile, are quite critical of the mayor’s perspective.
"If they close the windows, then all the sex workers will go underground and they’ll need much more people to regulate that, and check that," a sex worker identified by Reuters as Foxxy Angel argued. "So, no I don’t think that’s going to work."
Cor van Dijk, chairman of a group that represents red-light district businesses, said that a previous closure of 100 windows exacerbated overtourism problems, The Guardian reports.
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“Those were precisely the windows in the alleys, where customers still had a certain anonymity,” van Dijk claimed of the change. “We don’t think there have been more tourists in recent years, but we’ve compressed the same number of people into a smaller area.”
Back in March, Amsterdam’s city officials moved to end both free and paid tours of the historic area as increasing droves of visitors are reportedly “not respectful” to sex workers on the clock. The new policy takes effect January 1 of next year.
“We are banning tours that take visitors along sex workers’ windows, not only because we want to prevent overcrowding in the red-light district, but also because it is not respectful to sex workers,” deputy mayor Udo Kock, said at the time. “It is outdated to treat sex workers as a tourist attraction.”
A whopping 19 million tourists visited Amsterdam in 2018, overwhelming the city’s population of 850,000, The Guardian reports.
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Affordable flights and lodging plus an international reputation as something of a “naughty Disneyland" have made the medieval city a dream destination for partiers from all over the globe.
At present, over 1,000 tour groups are said to traipse through the city square Oudekerksplein every week, with visitors enticed by excursions with names like “Red light tours with Mistress Lola,” as per the outlet.
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