July 22, The Netherlands' biggest city is almost synonymous with the sexshops, brothels and prostitutes huddled in the narrow streets close to the main train station, drawing perhaps even more tourists than they do clientele. Some of the city's quaint narrow houses serve as brothels with their characteristic bay windows on the ground floor, where the sexworkers sit under red neon lights awaiting the next customer.
It is no coincidence that the organisers of this year's International AIDS Conference, which starts on Monday, chose to hold it in Europe's city of sin. The sexworkers did not expect some of the world's leading scientists and doctors to traipse through the carpeted corridors and gloomily lit bedrooms of the brothels to see for themselves the risks faced by those who ply "the oldest profession in the world".
After more than 30 years of research, no cure or vaccine has been found for HIV, which has infected around 80 million people worldwide since the start of the epidemic in the s. Among those infected are colleagues of Foxxy Angel and Elsa, the young sexworker in the next window. It's been a long time since HIV was taboo here. Some of my friends are HIV-positive and still carry on working. It's possible nowadays," says the year-old American, referring to the progress medicine has made in treating those infected with the virus.
Prostitution was legalised in the Netherlands in and sexworkers can register with the local chamber of commerce and pay income tax. Around 7, people work in the paid-sex sector in Amsterdam, with around 75 percent of them coming from low-income countries, particularly eastern Europe, according to official figures. Describing herself as "married and polyandrous," Elsa says she has been a sexworker since the age of The window where she sits looks out onto one of Amsterdam's many canals and is opposite the brothel where she first worked when she arrived in the Netherlands, having fled the many restrictions on her trade in the United States.
But the tests are free, so I take advantage of them," says the young woman, dressed in a pink top and black leggings. If mores have changed since the arrival of AIDS, and the condom has been "democratised", the sexworkers insist they must remain vigilant to the risk of infection. If that happens, it's the end of the session, immediately," says Foxxy Angel, who worked as a fashion saleswoman before becoming a prostitute 15 years ago. This summary was automatically generated using LLM.
