Do Red lights really spell danger?

The infamous Red light district - a debrief of what it's really like

Laura Kasongo
17th February 2023
Image Credit: Pixabay
Last September, my friends and I braved the 15-hour ferry from Newcastle to visit the wondrous city of Amsterdam. My eyes lit up at the first sight of a bike and canal; suddenly the sea-sickness was worth it. We embarked on the usual student itinerary, if you catch my drift, but also felt obliged to visit the infamous Red Light District on our first night.

Historically, the district is intrinsic to the city, situated in the oldest part, with the first prostitutes allegedly arriving circa 15th century and moving there from the city harbour. A sense of this can be felt walking through it even still today. In the darkness, their night-time economy illuminated in full rouge and I suddenly sobered as our taxi dropped us in its centre.

Windows high and low of the apartments along the canals pulsed red, making the streets appear more vein-like and less as a colour for warning. The side streets fully immersed us as substances within a bloodstream, strolling in line formation up and down. The row upon row of closed curtains formed a claustrophobia from realisation, feeling an odd combination of intrusiveness and innate understanding. As uncomfortable as it felt initially watching fathers and sons walk into one, I began to question this heteronormative discomfort. Whilst you may think it another example of female objectification, I invite you to look at it as a reclamation through the modern feminist lens. Albeit not the regular ‘bring your daughter to work’ day, it’s an ownership of sexuality in our capitalist environment and physical labour.

Image credit: Laura Kasongo

The district embodies human sexual desire in a way that is clinically dissected in the rest of the world and it's something we can all learn from. One might say visiting museums is a way to enrich your education so, as students who go above and beyond, we visited a sex museum. Amongst sexual artefacts, such as dick-chairs and tongue wheels, it displayed artworks like the titillating version of the Mona Lisa (I think Da Vinci would’ve loved that). Whilst we did find it amusing, there’s certainly a lot of unlearning to be had surrounding the body and sex as a thing to be shamefully hidden. I’d encourage you to take up some Dutch courage and embrace the red side.

AUTHOR: Laura Kasongo
Arts Sub-editor, Poet and Photographer.

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