In this post you’ll find links to interesting reading matter.

A placemat that can be bought at a souvenir shop in Amsterdam

On January 26 2014 Hendrik Wagenaar sent another link: (click here)

It is remarkable that a quality paper like The Guardian has such a narrow, populist and incorrect view on Dutch law on prostitution. In 2013 the paper described  (click) the policy as legalization of pimping. A pimp does not exist in Dutch legislation, but in popular language it means someone who as a partner, in a personal relation with a sex worker uses force, coercion or violence to bring or keep a person into prostitution.That is not legal in the Netherlands.

The law is about brothel- operating or running a prostitution business. As long as he/she has a licence and does not use force, that is legal. Brothel owners may be bad employers, but you can’t equate it with pimping.

On March 21 2014 Hendrik Wagenaar sent a link to another useful article. (click here)

The Dutch historian Han van der Horst sent me the link to citations on sex work by Samuel Johnson. ‘Dr. Johnson’  (1709-1784) was an important intellectual of the period. In 1755 his Dictionary of the English Language saw the light.