If you’re broke, sexy, and really need to learn how to drive in Amsterdam, things are looking up for you. Same goes if you’re Dutch, a driving instructor, and really horny, because the government in the Netherlands has decided that it’s legal but “undesirable” for driving instructors to be paid in boinkings.
According to USA Today, the issue came up when Transport minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen and Justice minister Ard van der Steur revisited a question from an official about whether a driving instructor paid in sexual acts amounted to prostitution. Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, but it’s tightly regulated and taxed, which seems to be the reason why the issue was brought up at all.
While the two government ministers did determine the boning/driving exchange was legal, there are some pretty significant caveats:
• All parties must be over 18 (duh)
• The sex may only be requested as payment by the instructor; the student may not offer the sex as payment, which would make the transaction prostitution. This is a tricky distinction, but the thinking is, if the sex act is offered by the student, then the transaction is the sex act is the product and the driving lesson is the payment. If the driving instructor requests a sexual compensation, the product is the driving lessons, and the finger-blasting or whatever is just the form of payment. See?
The ministers summed this up in a letter to Parliament:
“It’s not about offering sexual activities for remuneration, but offering a driving lesson. It is important that the initiative lies with the driving instructor, and focuses on offering a driving lesson, with the payment provided in sexual acts. When a sexual act offered in lieu of financial payment, that is prostitution.”
It’s expected that other independent service-industry jobs may also soon seek out this sort of erotic compensation: plumbers, computer repair people, pool guys, all of the old porn staples, finally making the magic happen in reality.
I’m sure the sex-for-services barter system is already happening unofficially all over the world for a dizzying array of services (I’m pretty sure my old ornithologist once obliquely asked me for a squeezer in exchange for re-hinging my kestrel’s beak) but the Netherlands seem to be at the vanguard of legal services-for-nookie.
I wonder if this will help get all those broke millennials driving after all?