About 20 years ago I lived in the Netherlands. Amsterdam to be precise. I don’t know if it is still the same but finding decent affordable accommodation in Amsterdam is an onerous task – especially when you are on a budget, as I was. After some difficulty, I did find a fairly decent flat, but I left it, in the middle of the night, with my rucksack and all my possessions, because my landlord did not understand, nor did he want to accept, that I wasn’t interested in a sexual relationship with him.
Fast forward eight months or so, and I am living in a new flat with a female friend of mine. Late one night, while my friend and I were sitting talking in her room, someone let himself in. He immediately decided to take his trousers off and walk in to the bedroom with a stupid “entitled” grin on his face. We left the flat, there and then, with our rucksacks and all our possessions. So, twice within a year I had to leave the place I lived because of nasty little men who thought they had every right to treat women as if we owe them sex.
In both cases, the landlords were Moroccan immigrants who had not long been living in Holland. On a separate occasion, a taxi driver drove past several times while I was walking with a friend in central Amsterdam. He threw a rather grim present out the window at us. It didn’t hit us.
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