Prostitution is virtually the only part of the personal services industry in the Netherlands that works. One can’t get a manicure in Amsterdam without booking an appointment two weeks in advance, but men can buy sex anytime — and at an attractive price. The legalization of prostitution in October 2000 merely codified a long-standing Dutch tradition of tolerance towards buying and selling sex. But is legalization the right approach?
Even in the Netherlands, women and girls who sell their bodies are routinely threatened, beaten, raped and terrorized by pimps and customers. In a recent criminal trial, two German-Turkish brothers stood accused of forcing more than 100 women to work in Amsterdam’s red-light district.
The attorney who represented one of the victims said that most of the women came from families marred by incest, alcohol abuse and parental suicide. Or they come from countries in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia and have fallen victim to human trafficking, lured by decent job offers or simply sold by their parents.
These women are Amsterdam’s leading tourist attraction (followed by the coffee shops that sell marijuana). But an estimated 50 percent to 90 percent of them are actually sex slaves, raped on a daily basis with police idly standing by. It is incomprehensible that their clients are not prosecuted for rape, but Dutch politicians argue that it cannot be established whether or not a prostitute works voluntarily.
Appalled by their daily routine, police officers from the Amsterdam vice squad have asked to be transferred to other departments. Only this year, the city administration has started to close down some brothels because of their ties to criminal organizations.
A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that the average age of death of prostitutes is 34. In the US, the rate at which prostitutes are killed in the workplace is 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women, working in a liquor store. Other studies show that nine out of 10 prostitutes urgently want to escape the job. Almost half have attempted suicide at least once.
In 1999, the Swedish government decriminalized the sale of sex, but made it an offense to pimp or to buy sex. Under Sweden’s so-called “Sex Purchase Law,” paying for sex is punishable by fines or up to six months in prison, plus the humiliation of public exposure.
Swedish authorities say the number of prostitutes in Sweden has dropped 40 percent as a result. Human trafficking rings tend to avoid Sweden, because business has gone sour.
Norway, a country that has a reputation to lose when it comes to women’s rights, carefully compared the Swedish and Dutch models and concluded that Sweden’s was the one to follow. It has now changed its legislation accordingly.
The success of the Swedish approach is not so surprising. A study in California found that most men who bought sex would be deterred by the risk of public exposure. For example, 79 percent said that they would be deterred if there was a chance that their families would be notified. And a whopping 87 percent said that they would be deterred by the threat that the police might publish their photographs or names in the local newspaper.
Most of these men showed pathological behavior towards women. One in five admitted to having raped a woman, while four out of five said that going to prostitutes was an addiction.
Prostitution is often dubbed “the oldest profession.” But this is merely a way of justifying the exploitation of mostly vulnerable women (there is also a much smaller number of male prostitutes in the Netherlands, but they are not pimped out like female prostitutes). It takes leadership and a vision of true gender equality to put an end to prostitution.
The Swedish practice of naming and shaming is quite un-Dutch. But, for some men, part of the pleasure of buying sex may be the humiliation conferred on the woman involved.
For others, like former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, the promise of discretion and anonymity may be the most appealing aspect of buying sex. In any case, pillorying the clients is both a just punishment and an effective deterrent.
Heleen Mees is a Dutch economist and lawyer.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017