LeliaThomas.Com

Red-Light District: It’s all about proper marketing.

Amsterdam’s sex workers came to work early on Saturday to offer a free look at the city’s famed red-light district….Organizers staged the open day to counter bad publicity surrounding the 800-year-old district after harrowing reports of forced prostitution, human trafficking and organized crime.

“This day is to help break down taboos around prostitution and to create more understanding and respect,” [organizer Jacco Wanders] said.

….”People who work in the sex industry don’t get enough respect,” said Mariska Majoor, a former prostitute who now runs the red-light district’s information center. “There are millions of them and many are in trouble. Some are abused by clients or pimps and it is important for them to know that they deserve respect.” –From “Visitors flood Amsterdam’s red-light district” (Reuters)

An open day like this is not about the women; it’s about the business, as noted in “staged the open day to counter bad publicity.” If this were about treating women with respect, perhaps it would cross the mind to not avidly promote them as pieces of meat to be used and carelessly thrown away after you’ve given them $50.

I don’t know. It’s just a thought.

I cannot blame most of the women, I don’t think. I don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, or their level of comfort in doing it, but I most certainly can blame the people who think profiting from another’s flesh is all right or who think it is all right to pay for another’s flesh. You pay to use a phone. In my belief, paying to use a vagina is a little different. It’s not just any other service, as pro-prostitution areas and people try to tell you. If that were the case, murder would just be another crime; death would just be another event; yet, we all know there are vast differences in things, depending on the situation at hand. Prostitution is no different. It is not just another service.

The sad thing is that, on a level of need and/or greed, who can blame these women? They make more money than most women ever will, and it’s not because people respect them so much that they give them money, either. It’s that, for a point in time, they are mere objects.

I think it is a regressive “career” that has largely survived by [mostly] men’s uncaring desires. Yet somehow I imagine many of the men who buy into the “services” of the red-light district of Amsterdam and elsewhere probably wouldn’t be too keen on their daughters doing the same thing–providing the same “respectable service.”

Imagine that.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Paal

I’m sorry, but I think you’re a bit off… Massaging is “just” another service, and if you think about it, it’s not that different from sex. It makes you feel good, and it’s usually overpriced.
And the purpose of this was to bring the “service” more respect, so that people who enjoy doing this, won’t be looked down upon. So that parents wouldn’t mind if their son/daughter decided to do choose this career…
As for comparing sex to death…wtf? sorry, just think that was a cheap one…

Lelia

So if Ina wanted to do this it’d be a-okay with you? It’d be just another paying job? I mean, that’s the reality of your statement and those in support of it–that it’s just like any other job, and people under completely normal circumstances should feel fine doing it, as it is a respectable thing to do.

And for the record, I did not compare sex to death (that would be absurd). (It’s not just any other service, as pro-prostitution areas and people try to tell you. If that were the case, murder would just be another crime; death would just be another event; yet, we all know there are vast differences in things, depending on the situation at hand.) I made a correlation. If you consider murder to be on the same level as all other crimes, or death on the same level of all other events, then it can be assumed that you do not prioritize or apply levels/degrees of differential meaning between, say, murder vs. burglary; it’s all the same to you. Crime is crime. Events are events. Jobs are jobs. I argue that that is an untrue thought. We do apply degrees of meaning to different crimes, different events and different jobs, both consciously and subconsciously. Therefore, prostitution is not “just another job,” I argue.

And the respect of women in prostitution surely does not stop at what their parents think of them. It goes beyond that, like the fact that they have to have emergency buttons in the event of violent clients (”wonderful thought” that I doubt many masseurs have to deal with). Or how ’bout the fact that, even despite health measures, around seven percent of Dutch prostitutes have HIV/AIDS. It is a risk to their entire lives, because complete strangers–even if they’re regulars, still strangers–are using them for self-satisfaction. How can that be self-respect? How can that be respect from these strangers in their lives? None of this even includes the issues of human trafficking or unpaid prostitution (all the money goes to a pimp) that is known to occur (else the red-light district wouldn’t be doing something to counter the reports).

I’m sorry, but if you think that’s a healthy self-image and idea of self-worth, a safe job for women, one that carries so much risk, then we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Paal

I’m not saying it’s a healthy job, but that’s something they are working on. That’s the reason they need to up the respect for the prostitutes…So they won’t be treated like dirt. And I’m not saying that street prostitution is a good thing, when I think of “good” prostitution, I think of brothels. They are safe. They (should) do HIV/AIDS tests every second week. Do you think porn actors have a “job”, or are they pieces of meat as well? Basically they’re doing the same thing, only they’re being videotaped. And yes, they are safe, but that’s how I mean prostitution should be as well. It should be a safe career.
I don’t think the “levels” you are talking about applies to careers. In that case, you’re saying a garbage man is less worth than a doctor..? I mean, when was the last time a garbage man saved someone else’s life?
I just believe that if prostitution was taken to a professional level, we wouldn’t have that pity look at it. We would see it as a real job.

Lelia

I was waiting for you to bring up the pornography industry. :P

Perhaps it is my own personal perception, but I cannot fathom how there is much self-respect to be had in allowing the mass usage and mass production (in the case of the porn industry) of your body. It’s not all just physical; these women are thinking human beings, like all of us. And when you study the pornography industry, you find that a lot of women are doing drugs to cope with what they’re doing, what they’ve gotten themselves involved in. You should check out some of the books written by former porn stars. I think we can both agree that women in porn are already given more respect than women in prostitution; however, if they do not have self-respect, our respect (or at the very least, neutrality) means very little.

And I argue that to perpetuate the theory that your body is an object to be bought and sold (and perhaps mass produced) leads to a whole plethora of problems. I think it’s hard to be safe with some of the people who are only interested in using you for self-satisfaction; the keyword there being self-satisfaction. In that regard, I think selfishness will always overrule respect, simply because of what the job services entail–satisfying someone else.

Paal

Yes, I totally agree. It is a nasty business, but what i’ve been trying to say all along is that there are people who choose this as a career, just because it’s something they want to do. It’s something they’re good at.
And I think that self-respect will come along, as soon as the idea of selling your body is respected… But, yes, there are still a lot of problems.
To respond to your comment about people using drugs to cope with what they’re doing, there are also people quitting their day jobs to become pornstars at the age of 30-40++

“…these women are thinking human beings…” really..? sure..?

and btw. did you know they have brothels in melbourne? Prostitution is legal. They have a lot of strict rules, for both “user” and “provider”. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I think. But. I don’t know enough about this to say if it’s good or not, I’m just thinking how I think it should be, and how I think it would work…

I don’t think I’d want anyone I know to do it, just because there are dangers with it. But what isn’t bad for you?

Lelia

Yes, prostitution is legal here, and I’m like you…if it’s going to be legal, I’m glad they’re going to try to put forth the efforts needed to make it safe. But as more and more studies are going on in the sex industry, we’re finding it’s not safe, even when we think it is. There was an article back in, I think, 2005, about how, despite the porn industries’ strict rules and efforts against it all, STDs and AIDS are on the rise, especially in countries where filming and such is preferred without a condom; and then there’s the less thought about transmittal of STDs via oral sex. There’s a risk no matter what, and I don’t think it will go away.

I think a lot of it comes down to a discussion that went on in my uni lecture on pornography (how cool is my degree? :P): just how many people go into prostitution or the sex industry because they want to just for the job? There are so many known cases of women doing it for money, or doing it for an ego boost from the very ones that they feel insecure around, doing it to pay for a habit (mostly illegal, that), getting stuck in the lifestyle, being trafficked. That part will always be a debate, because we can never know for sure how many men and women get involved completely willingly and don’t hate themselves for it or at the very least don’t believe that is the only thing they’re good at in life.

Yet, I can speak as a female, just as you can speak as a male, and I have to say I would feel terrible as a woman in this industry, as I would wonder how many of my clients had wives or girlfriends who didn’t know they were there; I would wonder if “this time” was going to be riskier than others; I would be probably highly disturbed that someone I didn’t know well enough to have coffee with was having sex with me; and I think I would feel I wasn’t meeting my full potential.

Paal

I think we’re finally on the same page (: