Let’s talk about sex.
No, really, let’s. And what better place to do this than the home of legalised prostitution; Amsterdam. A meer stumble from the city’s Centraal Station train station on the main drag, Damrak, is the Sex Museum. Housed in one of Amsterdam’s iconic narrow terraced buildings it is a small museum, but size isn’t important, is it?
I should confess that my recent visit was not my first. Over ten years ago in my first year of University myself and 15 other friends boarded the overnight ferry from Hull for a cheap weekend in Amsterdam. To the best of my recollection it was cheap in all senses of the word as we explored the Red Light District and spent far too many hours in dark and dingy, smoke filled coffee shops; this was back in the day when you could drink in coffee shops, so of course I was only having a few glasses of wine… honest, Mum.
Why Can’t We Have A Museum About Sex?
But back to the matter in hand (excuse the pun). When you think about it sex is more than a matter of life, it’s the giver of life. If we can have museums about canals, the Bible and handbags (all of which are to be found in Amsterdam) then why can’t we have a museum about sex? My recent visit was during my weekend of live blogging for TravMonkey. For the 4 Euro entry fee you can explore exhibitions which range from the tacky and terrible to the fascinatingly interesting and shocking. Peruse photos of people who are now frighteningly old doing naughties from the early 20th century onwards and you’ll see that though clothes, cameras and certain intimate grooming preferences change, sex does not. There are only so many ways to have sex and you’ll find most of them covered in the sex museum.
“French Letters”
Though the museum could go deeper (not like that!) to explore the issues that surrounded the sexual revolution or the changing attitudes to sex in society, there are interesting pieces about the history of pornography and of Amsterdam adopting its liberal approach to sex though this is mainly manifested in photos of eccentrically dressed people getting drunk in the 1970s. There is also an interesting, err, display about the history of condoms and why they’re known as “french letters”.
Leave The Museum Crying?
It’s not going to knock Rijksmuseum or the Van Gogh Museum of its perch as the best museum in Amsterdam, but it is an excellent way to kill an hour or so and to indulge in some of Amsterdam’s more unusual culture without going to a sex show or getting lost in a shop full of glass dildos, which does happen only too easily and quickly. Just be warned that the museum’s pièce de résistance towards the end of your walk around the museum is the only room that comes with a warning as it contains some extremely hard pornography. It was interesting for me to go in the room a second time around nearly ten years since my first visit as I noticed that it has actually be edited considerably meaning I didn’t leave it crying my second time around, just a little wide eyed.
Giant Plastic Penis
I will forever be curious why it was made a little softer (last innuendo, I promise!) but that’s not to say there is nothing in there to shock, because there is. As you walk or run out of the museum depending how sensitive you are, be sure to look at the photos of other tourists visiting other sex museums in the world and you’ll see that there is more than one giant plastic penis in the world and I seem to recall that it’s pretty funny getting your photo taken with the one in Amsterdam.
