WOW. Ok so I haven’t posted
in a while, BUTICANEXPLAIN! Here’s the thing, last Tuesday evening I left for Amsterdam, and since then I have
been on a magically dysfunctional euro-adventure. You see, when I signed up to
study abroad back in the springtime, I was under the impression that the
dorm-less conservatory would help me find a place to stay, AND that they had
somewhere I could live until I found a room. Why did I think this? Well,
because it’s what the people in the study abroad office told me. #HUHinteresting…
BUT ANYWAYS. Long story
short, I have (unsuccessfully) been trying to find a room for rent in Amsterdam all summer.
At this point you may be
wondering “Are you currently
homeless?” Thankfully, no. My only friend in
Amsterdam very graciously let me stay in his apartment in the middle of the Red
Light District so that I would not have to sleep on a park bench. Although, the
park is lovely this time of year.
But I digress… My trip in
Amsterdam has just hardly begun, but allow me to tell you about my first time
travelling as a boy and the gendered experiences I have had thus far.
So first off, I will being
going “stealth” in Amsterdam as they say. Not that I’m trying to hide, but I am
just going to intro myself as “Miles” and not “Miles
the transguy” to the people I meet
while studying at school. So it is going to be very interesting to see what it
is like to interact with people who know me as Miles from the start, instead of
re-introducing myself to people I have know for some time, which is what I have
been doing at home. Of course, there are some people who I will have to come
out to right away. Already I have told the school that I am transgender, and
they agreed to change my name in the system to Miles without any trouble.
#thatwaseasy. Also, the receptionist at the hostel that I moved into this afternoon
knew that I wasn’t biologically male as soon as I handed her my ID. Luckily
there was a bed available in a co-ed room so that I wouldn’t have to stay in a
room with nineteen girls for a week.
I have been using public
bathrooms without any problem as well since I got through security in the
airport in Boston. Thus far, it seems as though men’s rooms in Amsterdam have a
lot more stalls than those in the US, which is a huge relief. Passing 100% of
the time is also a relief, although I haven’t really been able to enjoy that
feeling yet because of the ocean of stress I have been drowning in fed by the
rains of sleep deprivation and the nagging need to find a room to stay in for
four months.
Anyway, the interesting part of my journey began upon my arrival to
Centraal Station, Amsterdam….
We got off the metro in
what appeared to be right in the middle of everything. As my friend showed me
the way to his apartment, we entered the Red Light District. And let me just
say, I had heard about this part of the city before, but it
was nothing like what I had pictured in my mind on the plane ride over. As we
turned the corner onto his street I could not even believe what I was seeing:
Prostitutes. Everywhere. Real live women, standing in big glass window-doors, posing
seductively under florescent red lights in an attempt to attract customers,
interspersed with various sex shops and live-porn establishments.
I was not prepared for
this.
how you doin?
As I walk further down the
street, the rows of women in windows went on and on, some high up on the second
floors of buildings, some down low in basements. Some women posed
enthusiastically, waving and winking at men that walked by, while others looked
bored or forlorn, sitting back in chairs and staring dully at the passerby on
the street.
Was I, a young man arriving
in the city, supposed to find this appealing? It was like a human meat-market: women
displayed like fresh (or not-so-fresh) cuts of beef, available for the picking
to men who walked by to judge which leg, thigh, breast etc. they would like to
purchase. Honestly, it mostly just made me uncomfortable. But it wasn’t the women
themselves that made me uneasy; it was the thought of the practice.
Now, I grew up in a place very different than Amsterdam, and having spent my
formative years as a girl in the smallest town in the smallest state in the US,
I grew up learning that prostitution was illegal, scandalous, dirty, sad, and
potentially dangerous.
My friend took me to an old
church in the area, and even the narrow streets that circled the building were
lined with red-lit windows. THE
CHURCH! As we got close to his apartment my friend
informed that he lived on the corner where the transvestite prostitutes worked.
Their windows were lit with a blue-ish purple light rather than a red, to
indicate that they had penises. My friend smiled and waved politely to the
girls as we walked by, so I gathered that I should do the same instead of just
staring in disbelief.
As I got settled in the
little third-floor room, I looked out the window and noticed the glaring sign
across the street that read “SEX
PALACE,” flanked by subtitles reading “Peep Show,” “Live
Couples,” and “Bondage, Homo, and Teen-Sex.”
AH!
Gross!
that doesn't look good
Again I thought, am
I supposed to find this appealing? Does being disgusted and a little frightened
make me less of a man? Do all men have sex with hookers and enjoy lap dances
and peep shows??? #calmdown
No, of course not. You
can’t say that ALL MEN are like this or ALL
MEN like these things or act this way. Any
sort of very broad generalization like that is just false. But still, I felt
weird about it, because these windows and these sex shows were obviously
advertised towards men, but I just couldn’t see the appeal.
First off, I couldn’t
really understand the concept of live porn as a whole. I mean, what do you do? You
watch people have sex, but you’re not just gonna masturbate to it right there
in a room full of people, right? And I kept on seeing guys walking in in
groups, I mean, it’s not like being part of a film club, where you go out and
see a movie together and then discuss it over coffee afterwards, right…?
Later, as I did a bit of
exploring on my own, I kept on getting startled as prostitutes would knock on
their glass doors as I walked by, trying to grab my attention. They certainly
grabbed my attention, but my returned expression of awe/confusion/surprise was
probably not what they were going for. Although I personally couldn’t imagine
having sex with someone I didn’t like and trust a whole lot, or, you know,
didn’t even know at all, I was flattered in a small way when the women would
look at me and smile and try to beckon me inside. I even looked up once to see
a transvestite licking her lips at me as she curled her index finger in towards
her palm, motioning to me to come here.
HEY THURRR
Did they think I was cute?
Or did I just look like a dumb tourist with lots of money to lose? Did they
pick and choose who they smiled at or did they just try and attract every man
that walked by?
Over all, the Red Light
District just makes me sad, especially after today when I learned that the
majority of the women working in the windows are trafficked, and that pimps own
the buildings they work in, and that these men are actually the ones making
most of the money off the exchange. It would be different if these women were
working as prostitutes by choice; choosing to make money using their bodies and
not being forced to have sex with sixty men or more each night, but
unfortunately the fact that prostitution is legal here does not mean any of these
things are true.
Living in Amsterdam is
obviously different than what I’m used to, and it’s going to take more than
four or five days to understand a completely different culture. I’m looking
forward to seeing how masculinity is constructed somewhere outside of the US,
and I think it will help me gain a lot of perspective on American culture and
masculinity as well.