A Dutch prostitute reveals how legalizing the profession can open doors for women
“Carrera,” a 22-year-old Dutch-Aruban woman, sits at the bar in Societe Anonyme, an Amsterdam brothel. She takes a drag on a Marlboro red, and talks openly about her life as a legal, tax- paying prostitute.
“I can work when I want, I can refuse any client.I can leave now if I want,” she says. An engineering student by day, she says “financial issues” forced her to seek a night job, and legalized prostitution gave her the freedom to set her own hours. As a self- described “feminist,” she sees prostitution as a solution tobeing an impoverished student, and is proud that she regularly refuses to have sex with people she finds unappealing or potentially dangerous.
At Societe Anonyme, she is an independent contractor. The club charges customers to rent a room upstairs and then she charges her clients a negotiablefee for services. Carrera says she earns anywhere from $120 to more than $750 a night, on which she pays 19 per cent income tax.
“Why the fuck am I going to work in McDonald’s when I can do this?” she asks with a Dutch lilt.
Carrera’s example shows how legalizing and regulating prostitution can reduce some of the risks usually involved in the sex trade: rape, physical violence, abusive pimps and even homicide.
As a parliamentary committee in Ottawa sets off this week to write a report on reforming Canada’s prostitution laws, many observers will turn their eyes to the Netherlands, one of the world’s most famous examples of how prostitution can be transformed into an institutionalized business.
But the Netherlands can also serve as a cautionary tale, warning that legalization and taxation will not eliminate some of the problems associated with the sex trade. Authorities in Amsterdam estimate that 70 per cent of working prostitutes are in the Netherlands illegally, many of them sex slaves from impoverished countries who were duped into paying to get transit to Holland where a job would be waiting, only to find that their “employer” is a pimp. Oftentimes, her passport is taken away, making it impossible for her to leave or she quietly accepts her fate when her employers threaten her family back home.
The problem is by no means limited to the Netherlands. Last week, 19 sex slaves were freed froma massage parlour named Cuddles in Birmingham, England. Not all were from poor countries: Japanese and Italian women were among those rescued.
The U.S. State Department says about 800,000 slaves are trafficked across international borders each year, the largest category being sex slaves.
Despite the problems that still linger in countries with liberalized sex trade laws — Germany may be the highest-profile country to run legal brothels — little evidence exists that taking a hard-line stance gets better results.
In Finland, a foreigner can be deported simply on suspicion of prostitution — making it impossible for a sex slave to turn to police for help.
Dose
Thursday, October 6, 2005
