This week it was big news apparently. A small Christian youth club called Exxpose managed to get 40.000 signatures to try and get the Swedish prostitution model implemented in the Netherlands. It took them 6 years to get all of the 40.000 signatures, which already points out how little support they got, as they’ve been desperately trying to hide the fact that they're a Christian club, because they know this will work against them.

Some media however where smart enough to uncover they are a club of Christian people, which for most Dutch people already tells them enough. But even without mentioning that, most people simply don't support this idea in the Netherlands, because they are smart enough to figure out that if something is out of sight doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but is simply less easy to help victims and forces sex workers underground which creates more violence towards sex workers. Two separate polls pointed towards 75% and 87% of the population being against the Swedish prostitution model. 

What many people don't know however is that this club is heavily supported by several people with a lot of influence. People like Christian party leader Gert-Jan Segers, who tried to be very casual about it but failed in that. He tried to casually say that if the evidence supports it he is in favor of this idea, as if he’s basing himself on evidence and as if he’s being unbiased about it. Yeah…. Maybe you shouldn't say that if your face was on their website prominently in support for years, that might have worked better, Gert-Jan! And guess who the petition was offered to? Not so very subtle Gert-Jan!

Other people they get support from are for example public prosecutor Jolanda de Boer, writer and feminist Renate van der Zee, christian savior Frits Rouvoet and former national Rapporteur on Human Trafficking Corinne Dettmeijer among many others. If some of those names sounds familiar to you, that's because I've mentioned all of these people before on my blog. All these people have tried in the past to influence the debate regarding prostitution towards the Swedish prostitution model.

Jolanda de Boer was not so subtle in her role as public prosecutor on human trafficking cases, about exaggerating how many victims there where. Renate van der Zee is basically the mother of the Swedish model support group in the Netherlands. Frits Rouvoet is talking with sex workers to gain intel from them, to try and figure out a way how they can manipulate it. And Gert-Jan Segers is the grandmaster behind all of this, as this is his second attempt at the Swedish model in the Netherlands, after his last one failed a couple of years ago.

And for those that are still doubting about for example Corinne Dettmeijer as being biased in this case. The new Rapporteur on Human Trafficking, Herman Bolhaar, is not biased for example. You may also notice how last year I haven't wrote anything last years about the new numbers on human trafficking like I did other years before when Corinne Dettmeijer was still the Rapporteur. That's because his focus is on human trafficking, whereas Dettmeijer was heavily trying to make it about prostitution in itself. Every year Dettmeijer claimed human trafficking numbers went up, even when they didn’t, always blaming it on how many victims in prostitution would be invisible and a new and better policy was needed. Look back on Gert-Jan Segers his twitter timeline through the years to see how many times he was the first and one of the biggest tweeters of her reports on human trafficking, and how little Gert-Jan Segers has retweeted for example Herman Bolhaar, That’s because Bolhaar is not focusing on getting rid of prostitution, but on fighting human trafficking, like he should.

And for those that are thinking that those young girls from Exxpose are just being young and naive. They might be young, but they're definitely not naive. They have talked with sex workers, i’ve seen many people claiming they haven’t, but that’s not true. But they just don't want to listen to sex workers because they ‘believe’ their opinion is better than those of sex workers.. They're not naive, they're just very much against prostitution, and therefore get a lot of support from the people mentioned above to get this info the mainstream media. They’re not looking for evidence, they’re not looking for reasoning, they’re basing themselves solely on their own christian moral judgement.

But yeah, it took them 6 years to get these amount of signatures. And getting 40.000 isn't really that extremely hard, because most of their signatures come from strict Christians, the more evangelical type that also want gay marriage to be banned and are against abortion. You'll always be able to find a small portion of the population to be in support of extreme ideas. I'm actually quite surprised it took them this long to get this many signatures. I thought there would be more people supporting them. Maybe they would have gained more support if they wouldn't have used such obvious lies. Lies about sex work that might work in other countries like Sweden, but for which the Dutch are way too much down to earth for.

But I'm not worried about them. Even though they get much support from some powerful friends, in parliament there simply isn't enough support for this. So why should I worry about something that's such a long stretch? I don't. It's good that other organisations spoke out against them, just to give off a clear signal, but they'll never pass this anyway. I'm therefore working on more important matters at the moment, and hopefully soon I'll be able to tell you more about that.

I just have one message to those girls from Exxpose: Go get a life! There are so many important things you could be focusing on that could actually improve the world, instead of wasting your time trying to achieve something just because you don't like it. I also think something should be done about the sexual abuse of children in the church, but you don't see me starring a petition to get churches or religion banned. Maybe you should go help those children, who really do need help and leave us alone!

In december the city of Amsterdam announced to be banning tours in the Red Light District of Amsterdam after 7PM, and last week alderman Udo Kock announced plans to ban all tours completely in the Red Light District from 2020. The ban came to everybody as a complete surprise, mostly to us as sex workers.

Is this really busy?!

Recently the political parties who are in the city government of Amsterdam announced a plan to reduce the business in the Red Light District. They want to open alternative locations, by giving out new licenses in other parts of the cities, for prostitution in hopes that it will reduce the business in the Red Light District, theorizing that sex workers in the Red Light District are fed up with the tourists.

First of all I completely don't understand this nonsense that people are complaining about the Red Light District being too busy. I've been working here for 9 years, and when I started out here it was much busier than it is these days. Before every day was like a Saturday in terms of how busy it was on the streets. In fact, it was busy until the early morning in the Red Light District, but nowadays after 2 or 3 in the morning the streets are almost empty. And I work in the busiest part of the Red Light District!

This isn't just my opinion, we started asking around colleagues and the majority of the sex workers in the Red Light District seem to agree with this. Almost 75% of the sex workers in the Red Light District don't think it's too busy in the street, but are saying it's become less busy. The sex workers that did think it was too busy turned out to be sex workers that haven't worked here for very long, so for them it's all new and they've never seen it how it was before. But even those who thought it was too busy said this wasn't much of a problem for them, as long as they are people with money who come inside with us. Sadly enough however these days there are more people just looking rather then coming in. Partially because they only come to look, partially because they simply don't have any money to come in.

So the claim that these political parties make about sex workers feeling it's too busy, and thus would prefer to work elsewhere is simply not true, but an opinion they projected onto us. But this isn't just the opinion of sex workers in the Red Light District, I've also asked people who work at the sex shops and at the sex shows, who've been working here for years already, and they say exactly the same thing. It's not busy, it's become more quiet in the Red Light District.

So the plan that the political parties have to open other locations for prostitution elsewhere in the city, serves no goal. We don't it's too busy, you've been pressured into thinking that because there's a group of residents that keep shouting this out in the media. And this group their voice is very big in the media. But that doesn't make it true!

It looks like an excuse they can use to kick is out. We've seen the same thing happening in 2013 in Utrecht, another Dutch city, which before also had window prostitution, in total 165 windows. They closed down all the windows over there for a different reason (also a lie), but with the same claim that they would offer the sex workers a new location. That never happened, but the windows where closed down nonetheless. The same thing applied to Arnhem in 2006 already, over there they also closed down 240 windows, claiming they'd open up a new location. Also there it never happened.

The way that Project 1012, a gentrification project in the Red Light District, was sold to the media as a project to fight crimes like human trafficking was used as an excuse to close down windows, they're now simply using a new frame to get us out, which is over tourism. It's just a new excuse to reach the same goal.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. In other words, I don't believe any of this crap. The city government got betrayed by their own mayor this week, who stated that the windows in the Red Light District that where scheduled to close down as part of Project 1012, are still going to close down. These are 37 windows with windows that are especially popular with sex workers because they're located in narrow alleys which offer more discretion to customers.

And also when we're talking about this supposed business, closing down more windows in the Red Light District doesn't make any sense, because that means the rest of the Red Light District will just because busier due to the fact that it's getting further reduced in size. In short, this is such a bullshit story. You're so adamant on fighting this business, yet you're still reducing the size of the Red Light District, making it even busier.

But even the plan itself, to open other locations elsewhere, isn't going to solve their problems. First of all because of the fact that there's simply no other place for it close by. Secondly because the logic of these political parties contradict themselves. After all, if this new plan is to reduce the business in the Red Light District, and at the same time offer sex workers a new place without tourists, then where did all those tourists go to? Either this new location is supposed to attract new tourist, this making it less interesting for sex workers to work there, according to the logic of these parties. Or sex workers would go to this new location because it's tourist free, in which case it doesn't do anything to reduce tourism in the Red Light District. It's one or the other, but this plan can't do both, it's contradicting itself.

Above all, we already have alternative locations. The Singel area is just a 10 minute walk away from the Red Light District, and there are no tourist there whatsoever. In fact, it's pretty much empty. So why would we need another location, of we already have one, or even in fact two alternative locations, because there's another area with window prostitution on the Ruysdaelkade. In short there are two alternatives to the Red Light District, yet still most sex workers prefer to work in the Red Light District. That doesn't seem to support the idea that sex workers want to move out of the Red Light District, nor does it support the idea that other areas will reduce the business in the Red Light District, otherwise it would've been a lot busier in those other areas as well.

What I see very much in this plan is that they claim to have listened to us, while in fact they've not listened to us at all. In fact, they're doing exactly the opposite of what we wanted. They're still closing down windows in the Red Light District, which we protested against, and which would only further increase the pressure of tourism in what remains of the Red Light District. Plus they think we're stupid enough to believe that they're going to open up alternative workplaces so in the end they can close down completely the Red Light District, using the new excuse of tourism in stead of trafficking.

If you really care so much about us, open up those new locations in the Red Light District itself, stop closing down windows in the area, and tourism will spread over more streets in the Red Light District. It's very simple. But they don't want that, they're just trying to deceive us with the promise of a new location, which is never going to work out, we've heard this promise before already in other cities.

In a recent article published by newspaper Trouw, several Christian organisations talk about how girls in the Red Light District of Amsterdam would have debts of thousands of Euros with brothel operators, due to the fact that the income for us had dropped enormously in recent years.

And while it is true that the income has gone down a lot, the story that girls would be in debt with brothel operators is largely bullshit. Of course there can always be exceptions, but generally speaking there are no debts with brothel operators for a number of reasons.

The first and most important reason why girls don't have debts with brothel operators, is that you have to pay your room upfront per day. In short, if you don't have money to pay for the room, you don't get a room, and therefore also can't built up any debts. Brothel operators are not in the habit of giving away rooms for free, with the ‘pay me back later’ attitude, simply because you never know if you'll ever get paid back later. If a girl decides to quit and go back home, she can just leave, leaving the brothel operator with no money for the room.

In short, no money, no room. If you can't afford to pay the rent, you don't get the room. It’s just like with any other business, if you don’t have the money, you don’t get the place. So this whole story is largely bullshit. And brothel operators certainly won't let any debts run up to thousands of Euros, since that would cost them their income if a girl decides to make a run for it.

Than this whole story of the prices being so incredibly high for the windows. An average price for a room in the night time is about 165 Euro. The most expensive ones being 190 for the evening shift, the cheapest one being 130 Euro. For the daytime the average rent is about 90 Euro, ranging from 80 to 110 Euro. One brothel operator in the Red Light District works based on a one shift per day system, with a higher price of currently I believe 245 Euro.

But let's compare the price of these rooms with a hotel room for example, to see if it's really that expensive. A cheap hotel room in the Red Light District is about 220 Euro per night. That's a lot more expensive than the average of 165 we pay for the rooms. And it's basically the same thing, you rent one room with a bed of about the same size our perhaps a little smaller.

If you'd compare it to other businesses, we're also much cheaper of with our brothel operators. Try and find a business space for less than 165 Euro per day, that you don't have to pay for on the days your business is closed and even allows you not having to pay rent for your business space when you go on holiday.

Annemarie van Gaal recently complained in another article that the prices of the rent for rooms in brothels in the Red Light District of Amsterdam where extremely high. Interesting that she should claim this, since miss Van Gaal herself is in the board of directors of Start Foundation, the investor in the My Red Light brothel in the Red Light District. And My Red Light charges 165 Euro per night for their rooms. In other words, if Van Gaal complains about the rent for rooms being too high, and accuses the owners of brothels of 'exploitative behavior’, perhaps she should take a look in the mirror, since My Red Light does exactly the same thing!

In the opinion of most of the girls the rent is not too high, it's much cheaper than a hotel room or business space that other businesses pay for. Plus with the additional security measures of the brothel operators they offer, I'd say it's a fair price. Of course cheaper would always be better, but we don't blame the brothel operators of being exploitative for the prices they charge for their rooms, because in all honesty it's a fair price for us. Real estate in the city center of Amsterdam, where the Red Light District is located, is simply very high. That has nothing to do with the brothel operators, but does have something to do with a gentrification project called Project 1012.

The whole point of the article in Trouw was a clear example of how Christian organisations try to victimize sex workers every chance they get. Using the frame of how our income has dropped versus the rent we pay for our workplaces, they try to frame the brothel operators (again) as the bad guys. Sadly enough Annemarie van Gaal, who has good intentions I presume, but clearly lacks any knowledge of the Red Light District, follows the frame, not knowing she's riding the bandwagon of sex work abolitionists posing as heroes.

If the problems were really as big as those Christian organisations claim, then why would we still come to work here? After all, we're not making any money according to them, and are only making losses. So then why show up every day to make the loss even bigger? You don't have to go to work there. But of course that's the whole frame they're trying to use. They're trying to make it look like we're forced to work there, without explicitly stating it.

The funniest thing about the whole article in Trouw is that they still try to hint at large numbers of sex workers in the Red Light District being forced to work for pimps. But if that'd be the case, and so many of us wouldn't be able to even break even from our rent, that'd mean that the pimps also wouldn't be making any money. In short, there's a huge flaw in their narrative. No money for us, would mean no money for the pimps. And if those pimps wouldn't be making any money, than what would be the point for them to be here?

The flaws in this narrative are so hilarious, they even completely contradict each other. Either the story is that we're independent, but we're not making any money and even would be making losses on the rent. But that can't happen in reality, since the brothel operators wouldn't be making anymore profits, thus everything would die out pretty quickly. Or the story is that we're all forced by pimps, thus the income must still be profitable enough, otherwise there wouldn't be a point for a pimp to exploit us, since there would be no profit.

The only reason these organisations claim these things, is so they can profit from it themselves financially. After all, these christian organisations their whole reason of existence is based upon the idea that they have to save us. But if there’s nothing to save us from, there’s no reason for them to exist, and thus no reason for people to finance their schemes. So the only reason they claim these lies is so they can profit from it themselves.

For a while now The Netherlands has a new government, a coalition between right winged liberal party VVD, D66 and Christians from CDA and ChristenUnie. And apparently while negotiating about the new Dutch policies, the Christians where able to trade out their opinion in exchange for other things. Thus this new Dutch government came up with a plan for a 'pimp ban'.

Now a pimp ban might sound like a good idea, but the name is deceiving. Because in reality this pimp ban aims to criminalize anyone that aids and financially benefits from illegal working prostitutes. And just to clarify, illegal working prostitutes are not victims of trafficking, but simply sex workers that don't have a license to do sex work. Those licences are also almost impossible to obtain, since cities in recent years have basically only reduced the number of licenses, in an attempt to clean their cities of prostitution, with the excuse of fighting human trafficking.

The best example of this is in the Red Light District, where they closed down 128 windows. But also other cities have followed Amsterdam's example. In total 800 windows have closed down alone, leaving now 1200 windows in the Netherlands, in stead of the 2000 windows they had back in the year 2000. And in total there are now 46% less licensed prostitution businesses in The Netherlands since the brothel ban was lifted in 2000.

New licences are rarely ever given out, simply because cities don't want to. In short, even if you wanted to get a license to work legal as a sex worker, it's virtually impossible to get one. So a lot of sex workers are stuck working illegal, under the radar. Not because they are forced by a pimp, but because the government forced them, by reducing legal workplaces and not creating any new legal alternative workplaces for them.

Now you might think it's still a good idea to criminalize people that financially benefit from sex workers, because most people often think about pimps when they hear this. But this is exactly where this new upcoming law is so deceiving. Because this law doesn't aim at pimps, but anyone that benefits from sex workers without a license. So also for example the driver of an escort girl, the bookkeeper and the security guy. Literally anyone that financially benefits from a sex worker that works without a license.

To mislead the public opinion, the ChristenUnie party leader Gert-Jan Segers claimed that the pimp ban aims to criminalize human traffickers, and anyone that benefits from human trafficking. But this is simply not true. Nowhere in the entire proposed law it is mentioned that this law would only apply in cases of human trafficking, but in stead criminalizes anyone that aids and financially benefits from sex workers that work without a license.

Some people have said that Gert-Jan Segers is not well enough informed about the new law to realize the negative effects of his laws, but the reality is completely the opposite of this. In fact, he designed this law, so he knows very well what he did, and he intentionally designed it this way, so he could mislead people into believing it was about fighting human trafficking, while in reality it serves a different goal: to fight prostitution any way he can. You see, in the end Gert-Jan Segers his goal is not to fight human trafficking, but to try and ban prostitution anyway he can, and this law is designed to do exactly that. So he knows very well what he's doing, and Segers is extremely well informed about the prostitution industry and how things work, for example by Christians saviors Frits Rouvoet.

And to hive you an idea of what would happen if Gert-Jan Segers would succeed. If this 'pimp ban' gets implemented, it would mean that people who do business with sex workers working without a license don't want to do business with them, out of fear of being caught as a pimp. So bookkeepers, accountant, landlords, security people, drivers and chauffeurs would not do business anymore with these sex workers, making the life and work of these sex workers extremely difficult. Of course these sex workers would love to work legal, but since the cities don't allow them to get a license, their stuck working illegal. Obviously they won't stop working as a sex worker, since that would mean a loss of income, so they would continue working illegal, but can no longer do business with safe people, leaving only criminals to take advantage of that.

Indeed, this law would lead to more extortion of sex workers by criminals, which is also called human trafficking. So in stead of fighting human trafficking with this law, it would increase it. Obviously Segers knows this, but he simply doesn't care, as long as he gets his way because of his Christian morals. He wants to make the work of sex workers as difficult as possible, in an attempt to reduce prostitution as much as possible.

For me personally, this law doesn't affect me. I work legal, so for me this law is not a problem. But unfortunately not everyone can work legal, because of the problems of obtaining a license. So there are a lot of other sex workers out there in The Netherlands, who are in danger of only being able to do business in the future with criminals who want to try and exploit them. Obviously this is very bad, and the whole reason why this misleading pimp ban is such a bad idea, and proof of why people should never believe politicians like Gert-Jan Segers about topics like human trafficking and prostitution.

Dutch version

We as prostitutes are getting so tired of all the lies that (mainly) christian political parties are spreading about the Red Light District. Ever since the new elections are coming up, they've been spreading so much bullshit, it's almost impossible to keep track of all of it. Let me first of all state that the christian parties such as CDA and ChristenUnie are not to be trusted in their information regarding prostitution and the Red Light District.

The problem with the statements of these christian political parties is that they attempt to get rid of prostitution. Not because in reality there's so much going wrong in the sex industry like how they claim, but simply because it's against their christian morals. They manipulate and often just lie as hard as they can about so many things, claiming to protect us, the women working as prostitutes, while in reality they are completely not protecting us at all!

The biggest bullshit they're spreading is about forced prostitution. They falsely claim that none or very few women choose to do this work. This is downright a lie. They keep coming up with made up numbers of human trafficking, which are simply made up. They constantly spread the lie that 50 tot 80% of us are victims, which is not true. They also claim that 70% of us have PTSD, which is also downright a lie.

All of these lies are carefully prepared and coordinated in an attempt by these christian parties to ban prostitution in any way they can. Whether this is by closing down more windows, criminalizing customers or just banning prostitution completely, every step takes them closer to their ultimate goal: banning prostitution. And they use human trafficking as a false argument to justify their goals.

So here are the facts. No, it's not true what they're telling you. Not 50% of the girls working in the Red Light District are forced. This is pure bullshit stories. I've written in the past couple of years a lot about the realities of human trafficking and tried to give more people insight into the (possible) scale of this. But to put it very simply, the Dutch Rapporteur on Human trafficking has received only 2 reports of possible victims in window prostitution in Amsterdam in 5 years time. That's pretty much it. So unless you believe there are only 3 or 4 women working in the Red Light District, you know all the stories of hundreds or thousands of women being forced here are utter bullshit.

Now I know what some people will say. "But these are just the victims that pressed charges, there are many more victims, but they're scared to press charges because of their pimp." Well, let me first of all say to you, why do you think you know it better than the people like me who works here? Secondly, no, this is not the case. Those 2 possible victims are all the people the police had suspicions about that they could possibly be a victim. So no, these are not victims that pressed charges, they don't even require any bit of evidence, simply the gut feeling that 'something might be wrong' is enough to report a person as a possible victim. In short, there is no more!

Now another bullshit thing CDA and ChristenUnie keeps spreading is about PTSD. They falsely claim that 70% of the prostitutes suffer from PTSD. This is another downright lie. Their statistics come from an American anti-prostitution activist who did selective research. In short, the research is manipulated to give a bad representation. The researcher hand picked her subjects with the highest probable rate of having PTSD (mainly street workers), to falsely claim this would be representative for all people working in prostitution. But of course the point is that it doesn't.

Secondly the research wasn't even conducted in The Netherlands, so it says nothing about the Dutch situation, it rather says more about what happens if you criminalize prostitution, like in the US where this research was conducted. So it actually points out more what will happen if CDA and ChristenUnie will get their way.

But more importantly, there's been various other researches done among prostitutes in the Netherlands as well as the Red Light District which shows a vastly different image, namely that prostitutes are actually feeling quite well and rarely come across any violence or things that cause PTSD, as a result of the fact that prostitution is rather safe and organized in the Netherlands compared to countries like the US where it's criminalized and therefore quite dangerous.

So no, it's not true that most women in the Red Light District do this job against their will. In fact, many of us chose to do this job, not because it was our dream job, but simply because it pays good money. For us this job is a means to an end, a way to achieve our goal, not the goal itself. So if you ask us if we love doing this job, most of us will answer no. Of course not, but that doesn't mean we didn't willingly chose to do this. For us prostitution is a way to achieve something in life, to get ahead in life. To save up money for our future, for our families, for our children. Not because we do this out of poverty, but because it's the quickest way for us to get where we want to get.

Prostitution for many prostitutes isn't the dream job. It's the job we do that helps us get to where we want to get in life. It's the road we take to achieve our goals and our dreams. Prostitution helps us to make our dreams come true. Prostitution is our road we willingly chose, so we can achieve our goals in life quicker than most other people would in life. Not because we're forced into this job by some pimp or loverboy. Those things happen, but like the statistics show, these are the exceptions, and not the women willingly choosing to do this work.

So CDA, ChristenUnie and every other political party or organisation that claims that many of us are forced. You don't speak for us. You don't care about us. You're fakers. You're liars. You're manipulators. You're only interested in your own political agendas, and you don't give a fuck about us! If you want to hear the true story, listen to other political parties like D66, Bij1 and Piratenpartij. Those where the only political parties that actually listened to us. The others just pretend to care about us.

Dutch version