NCJ Number
130345
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 15 Issue: 3 Dated: (May 1991) Pages: 201-211
Date Published
1991
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The debate on prostitution in the Netherlands is reviewed from the end of the 19th century to the emergence of the second feminist movement in the 1970s and includes a comment about the new Dutch policy on prostitution and postmodern morality.
Abstract
Article 250b of the penal code, a new public morality act enacted in 1911, states that it is forbidden to give opportunity for prostitution. This article on brothelkeeping was the result of increasing pressure between Christian puritans, socialists, and feminists at the end of the 19th century. In the 1980s, the government proposed eliminating this general prohibition on brothelkeeping. This proposal is the result of a coalition between feminists and bureaucratic powers. The feminist movement can be credited for contributing to a new train of moral thought which is more concentrated on the issue of subjectivity in terms of suffering and humiliation than a clash of familiar ideologies defining good and evil as in the 1911 law. The prostitution issue is no longer so much an issue of ideologically defined morality as an issue about the subjective experiences of the individuals involved and the bureaucratic necessity of regulations. 25 notes and 29 references (Author abstract modified)