Sex Industry - Encyclopedia of Urban Studies

Sex Industry - Encyclopedia of Urban Studies
Phil Hubbard
http://knowledge.sagepub.com.ezproxy-library.ocad.ca/view/urbanstudies/n249.xml

- most visible in towns / cities
- female prostitution, off-street work: adult orientated businesses, sex clubs, cinemas, sex shops, peep shows.
- migrant women poorly served by social security systems
- zone in transition -- high numbers of immigrants, houses in multiple occupation

HISTORICALLY
- medieval cities: forbade prostitutes from living/working within city walls. religious authorities argued female prostitutes fulfill service by providing outlet for male sexual energy + help maintain sancity of family life. officially sanctioned brothers, bawds, stews.  regulation / legal control.

- modern period (1800’s): wedge between feminized suburbs + masculine city centre. concern that sight of prostitutes on street would corrupt women + children.  undermine moral values of heterosexual family unit.  subject to surveillence + containment, restrict visibility of sex work. anxieties about disease = demeaning medical inspections.

REGULATION

- changing geographies reveal distinctive spatial formations of control + policing (confinement, surveillance, exlusion).  pushing of prostitution to twilight areas where citizens lack motivation or power to resist their presence.  areas also associated with drug dealing, deprivation, criminality, media representation of sex work w/ sexual immorality, violence, disease, poverty.  moral geography, “streets of shame”.  some sexual behaviours only acceptable in certain places.

- regulating diverse sites of sexual exchange (bars, restaurants, cabarets, clubs, brothels, discotheques, saunas, massage parlors, sex shops w/ private booths, hotels, flats, dungeons, internet sites, cinemas, etc) = legal + logistical challenges.
- most nations laws + policies attempt to confine nudity to specific private spaces.

- most important consideration in the regulation of sexual goods + services is to protect those deemed vulnerable to corruption

- mid-victorian period, 1857 Obscene Publications Act (England + Wales) - potential “deadly” impact of pornography on working classes + working class women.

- now: protection of children = justification

- limit sale / display of pornographic material to spaces not part of the public realm but accessible to the public

- command+control techniques, obscentiy laws, licensing, zoning + planning powers.  zoning laws prevent sexually orientated businesses from operating close to residences, schools, religious facilities = push adult businesses to fringes of the city + away from middle class.  prevent sexually orientated businesses from operating close to one another (basis = such businesses associated with nuisance + criminality… evidence??)

- separation between “family friendly” spaces + spaces of commercial sex help construct divid between “good” + “bad” feminity.

- protecting women from danger … “conceptually + semiologically separates women from experiencing parts of the city that remain open to exploration by men” (Stephanie Lasker)

- reproduces gendered assuptioms, containment + isolation of spaces enhances commercial value of erotic goods (scarcity). restricted economy = capitalist values.

- association of commercial sex w/ immorality + neighbourhood nuisance = effective strategy for asserting sexual values + displacing sex work from city centre sites

- possible to interpret ongoing attempts to regulate commercial sex as strategies of capital accumulation (enhancing value of specific tracts of land) + social reproduction (normalizing assumptions that porn should not be consumed by minors / visible in public).

- zero tolerance approaches to commercial sex = lucrative in real estate locations.  zoning laws + police power used to displace sex work to “protect local communities” … but really for gentrication

- “upmarket” lapdancing + gentalmen’s clubs = totally okay?