Amsterdam residents, sex workers speak out against erotic center

Around 250 people gathered in the RAI in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening to discuss the city’s plans for a new “erotic center” to relieve pressure on the Red Light District. Locals and sex workers alike spoke out against the idea. If there were any supporters of the plans at the gathering, they decided to hold their tongues, AT5 and Parool reported.

The municipality designated three possible locations for the erotic center - two near the RAI in Amsterdam Zuid and one at the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam Noord. The center will offer about 100 workplaces for a variety of sex workers and room for “care and safety, catering, entertainment, culture, and education,” the municipality said.

But local residents are not enamored with the idea. “Just the concept of an erotic center,” said an angry mother, one of the many speakers. “Let's just say what it really is. It will be a huge brothel with a hundred brothel rooms. It would be the largest brothel in Europe. And that will come here in our neighborhood full of schools. My daughter goes to primary school here. It’s really unbelievable.”

Locals worry about nuisance and crime, not from the sex workers but from the people who come to them. “You’re just moving the problem,” one speaker said.

“Mayor [Femke] Halsema cleverly frames the protest by describing us as ‘not in my backyard types.’ We are, of course, a bunch of cockroaches here in Zuid who shouldn’t whine like that. But we don’t want to move this center at all. This plan should not go ahead at all. Not in our backyard, but also not in someone else’s,” another local said.

Many sex workers in the Red Light District would also prefer that their window brothels remain where they are, sex worker Lucy said at the gathering. “A number of stories that are spread from the municipality and in the media are simply not correct. Sex workers are happy with their workplaces in the Red Light District. They do not want to leave at all. They don’t want an erotic center anywhere,” she said. “You hear that we are all vulnerable women. But we are just self-employed entrepreneurs with a service profession. For us, the windows in the Red Light District are a safe place to work.”

On Tuesday, Felicia Anna of the sex workers’ interest group Red Light United told ANP she would “continue to resist this project tooth and nail.” The organization is vehemently opposed to moving to an erotic center and called on the municipality to improve enforcement in the Red Light District instead. The entire discussion around the erotic center is also painful to the sex workers involved. “It feels like everyone wants to get rid of us. While we have legal jobs and pay taxes. One wants you gone, and the other doesn’t want to let you in. We should be treated like other people,” Anna said.

Tuesday’s gathering was organized by opposition parties within Amsterdam-Zuid. Claudia van Zanten, the VVD faction leader in Zuid, took the initiative. “It was initially the idea to do it all together with the entire district committee. But the coalition parties thought it was too soon.”

D66 district leader Bart Vink told AT5 that the gathering was premature because many questions about the possible arrival of the erotic center cannot yet be answered. He called last night’s gathering a “party meeting” rather than a “neighborhood meeting.”

Van Zanten was annoyed by that remark. “I think that is completely out of place. Because initially, the idea was to do it with all parties. It is up to them that the coalition parties withdrew. We are talking about the opposition parties BIJ1, 50Plus, CDA, and the VVD. I wouldn’t call that a party meeting.”