Day 3 in Amsterdam

Wheew! Big day… for school we had a visit to the Prostitution Info Center in the Red Light District. A trans man named Bear, who was from the United States (moved here in like 2000) gave us a talk. It actually got pretty heated when some students asked about trafficking—which is a legit huge problem in Portland. Bear didn’t seem to see things the same way. For example, “a girl might work and just give all of her money to her boyfriend to deal with” isn’t seen as trafficking. In fact, according to Bear, calling these girls victims infantilizes them because ultimately it’s their choice. So that gave a lot in the cohort some feelings and we had a debrief meeting about it. After that I really needed some alone time so I went to the Medieval Torture Museum which was kind of dumb and walked around a bit. Went back with friends to to Kop van Jut, and then got my lip pierced. THEN we went to a “goth night” that turned out to be really lame but I had the perfect dress for it!Read more