[WeatheredWoman]

Quote: (Originally Posted by whitebird)

A question for WeatheredWoman. How does the Netherlands differ in regard to acceptance of others different then themselves? Many people on this thread are from the U.S.A., and I feel that often I am limited in learning about other cultures. I know that may seem like an huge question, but if you share just a little, I would appreciate it.

Ok I will try to tell a little bit... hope I spell everything correct and my grammar isn't sometimes all that!

The Netherlands was in my opinion a very tolerant land and still is in many ways...

According to gay people... Amsterdam is Gay City over here. We've got every year a Gay Parade and a Gay Pride through the waters of Amsterdam. Gay couples can get married over here, that's legal. I have some gay friends too just like some of you.

Prostitution is legalized. So prostitutes do pay taxes as well.
Abortion is legalized.
Marihuana/weed is legal at a certain level, therefore the many "coffeeshops" in Amsterdam... a user may have a little amount of drugs in his possession for own use. You may have a maximum of 5 marihuana plants in your own home. Alcohol is legalized for kids from 16 and up.
But according to driving a car we're allowed to drive a car on the age of 18 and that's 16 in your country.

So far what still is very tolerated in this small country with about 15 a 16 million people.

Most people over here like to compare the Netherlands today with the U.S. of A. 10 years ago. We were never familiar with safety at schools... like gun-control that sounded so crazy to us 2 years ago but now we have it too.

Holland is multi-cultural actually! Especially Amsterdam... we've got Turks, Marocs and people from the Netherland Antilles (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) livin' here. But we can feel right now in the community that there are many cultural and religious differences. It was a very relaxed country but by mixing with the people I've mentioned before... the problems began. Marocs and Turks have got some kind of revange-out-of-honor in their culture that gives them a certain right to commit a murder in case of "family-problems".

Now I must speak on behalf of myself mostly, but in my opinion their culture lies about a hundred years behind ours and that can't be mixed. They have so many problems integrating in our country. The men out of these countries are used to very humble women, so they keep their women in their houses and stuff. That's weird in a very emancipated country as Holland.

About two weeks ago a teacher was shot through the head by a turkish boy, marocs and turks stabbing people, shootings, slaughtering of goats, sheeps on their balcony or in their backyard etc.... Dutch people were not familiar with that sort of violence. So now we're dealing with these kind of problems... and I can feel that people are gettin' a certain hatred against those people. But that is a feeling that grows slowly but resistant. That's because our government has denied these problems at first and now it's getting a huge problem. They are actually breeding racism that way... I'm a bit concerned 'bout the future in that particular case. The people are beginning to refer to "future" city-names like Amsterdam is going to be Islamsterdam, Amersfoort is going to be named Imamersfoort... ok they're makin' fun about it right now but it's a serious problem.

We are gettin' also ghetto's over here... never had! The difference between poor and rich is getting bigger and bigger.

Further on Dutch people are very down to earth, not over-dramaticly... when someone acts a bit over the top we like to say : hey don't be so american LOL!! I think we're called greedy too... But hey this is all generalization! Every person is unique.

According to acceptance it's mostly in the big(ger) cities where everyone will be accepted the way he/she is... in the smaller cities it's lesser. But in my opinion that's equal in America or wherever you may go...

And we're living in a relative small country with so many people. The lesser space people get the more aggresive they get... things will get on your nerves much easier.

The acceptance is growing low, going downhill.

I hope that this answer your question a little bit whitebird. (I've copied it from the other thread and paste it over here)
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