Abstract
Edited by Paul J. Maginn and Christine Steinmetz, (Sub)urban Sexscapes brings together a set of case studies exploring how culture, policy, and the economy of the commercialized sex industry interact to shape the cosmopolitan nature of a city. The editors argue that commercialized sexuality—that is, the production and consumption of sexual services (prostitution and bondage, discipline, submission, and sadomasochism [BDSM]) and adult entertainment (stripping and pornography), and the availability of other commercial sexual products purchased via adult retail outlets—elevates the character of a city toward global status. According to Maginn and Steinmetz, a “truly” global and cosmopolitan city is “cosmo-sexual” in that the planning and regulatory practices of a city exude a sociopolitical recognition and acceptance of diverse sexualities, sexual practices, and commercialized sex as a normative form of labor (25). Sydney, Australia, serves as an example of a cosmo-sexual city where heteronormative, diverse, and commercialized sexualities coexist in a thriving nighttime economy, making it Australia’s “sexiest city” (27). Pointing to land use restrictions, the legalization of prostitution in 1979, and the regulation of brothels ostensibly to improve and protect the health and safety of prostituted women, Maginn and Steinmetz argue that Sydney serves as a best practices model for how commercialized sexuality should be incorporated into the character and planning practices of a globalized city.
Subsequent chapters in the book survey the planning and regulatory approaches to commercialized sexuality of various cities around the world, with each chapter highlighting ways in which the tension between sociocultural heteronormative morality and economic pressures shapes specific policies and practices. Martin’s work on sex shops in England outlines how upscale marketing and the feminization of sex shops (i.e., targeting women and using the color pink in the store) can ameliorate public concerns, allowing sex shops to more easily gain licensure to operate in high-end retail spaces. McGrath’s work on Portland, Oregon, in the United States illustrates how libertarian cultural attitudes intersect with regional economic pressures to create an environment conducive to the growth of strip clubs. McGrath argues that the key is to treat strip clubs like regular businesses as opposed to “noxious neighbors” (76), thus allowing them to more fully integrate into the community.
The emphasis on the normalization of commercialized sexuality through policy is a theme running through many chapters. Pointing once again at Sydney, Prior and Gorman-Murray look at the ways in which the public versus private location of legally selling sex creates enforcement tensions for police and local governments concerned about the visibility of prostitution, particularly with regard to children. Critiquing typical regulatory resolutions emphasizing the concealment of prostitution to minimize “offensiveness” (112), Prior and Gorman-Murray highlight the ways in which Sydney has chosen instead to challenge the moral order of “domestic respectability” (113) by expanding the permissible areas where sex can be sold. Steinmetz and Maginn make the same argument for the regulation of BDSM venues in Sydney, as do Hubbard and Lister for strip clubs in Britain. They argue that transparency and normative assumptions about the value of diverse sexualities should be embedded in a city’s planning system. They state that cities should not resist but embrace the sex industry.
The central claim made in these case studies is that embracing commercialized sexuality signals a cultural appreciation for and a welcoming of diverse sexualities, because embracing commercialized sexuality is to challenge “heteronormativity,” defined throughout the book as the reification of traditional, suburban, moralistic/religious, monogamous, opposite-sex domesticity. For a city to embrace the sex industry is to open up its sociopolitical culture to diverse sexual experiences beyond the repressive “family space” (153). Technology, according to Scott, MacPhail, and Minichiello, pushes cities to develop strategies to cope with the growth of diverse sexualities such as male sex workers. The rise of the “pornosphere,” a world where pornography and sexual material circulate both digitally and materially, prompts a discussion of community standards according to McKee, McNair, and Watson (160). The scope of the pornosphere is so large as to make such a discussion inevitable, and it is so diverse that the discussion must include sexualities beyond the gender binary.
Several chapters provide cautionary notes. Staszak takes a historical look at colonial Morocco and the city of Bousbir, a walled space built in 1923 for the explicit purpose of managing the selling of sex through extreme measures of social control as well as the physical and social marginalization of women. Staszak documents how Bousbir devolved into a “sex prison” (191) designed to fulfill the Orientalized fantasies of Western men. Crofts and Brents take a contemporary look at ways in which prostitution and brothels are regulated in Las Vegas, Nevada, as compared to New South Wales. Crofts and Brents’ description of the subtle differences in the legal environment surrounding prostitution creates distinct variations in the visibility of commercialized sexuality, which in turn varies the challenges each city presents to the power of heteronormative sexual scripts. Doan’s work in Atlanta illustrates how a city’s obsession with heteronormative concerns about traditional family values and property values created policies that damaged the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered) community by minimizing queer space in the city by relegating LGBT activities to the outskirts. Lastly, Kelly and Cooper illustrate how policies can be effective in reducing and/or minimizing the negative community effects of commercialized sexuality, such as diminished property values and/or increased crime surrounding the sites where sex is sold.
The argument that mainstreaming and normalizing the selling of sex and other forms of commercialized sexuality provide a sociopolitical pathway for protecting and improving the lives of people expressing diverse sexualities is an important empirical question. Through these case studies, Maginn and Steinmetz present compelling accounts of the ways in which commercialized sex functions in the socioeconomic life of a city. They conclude with suggestions on how planners can maximize the potential contributions of commercialized sexuality through the “pragmatic regulation of the sex industry” (261). The solutions presented in the final chapter focus on using social science data to facilitate increasing awareness of and appreciation for diverse sexualities, and to resist making policies based on “moral panics that rely on conjecture, crude stereotypes and essentialist arguments” (265). Throughout the book, however, the editors as well as various authors use conjecture, stereotypes, and morality to dismiss counterarguments made by those who challenge the notion that commercialized sexuality is good for the public and healthy for all people. In other words, the authors use the same problematic arguments as those of which they are most critical.
The thread that ties all the chapters together is a critique of the role of heteronormativity, as a moral code in city planning and the regulation of commercialized sex. The editors claim that a more nuanced, empirically driven, and less moralistic approach to planning would produce better outcomes for the lives of those who live, work, and love in the city, particularly for those who experience the world through diverse sexualities. This claim raises important empirical questions comparing various human health outcomes across different regulatory environments, including public, personal, mental, and interpersonal health outcomes as well as rates of poverty, homelessness, or violence among LGBT people. The editors are correct in asserting that the incredible rise of the sex industry through global capitalism and rapid technological change demands that planners, politicians, and academics pay attention to these questions. The contribution to the literature would be significant if the editors had simply asked these questions. However, through the use of selective case studies, a less critical and purely celebratory approach to analyzing the impact of the commercialized sex industry, and subtle sexist language, the editors avoid a full accounting of the questions surrounding commercialized sex.
Opening with the statement that the book will not address any of the damaging effects associated with the sex industry, including “human trafficking, child pornography, sex with a minor, sexual assault/rape and bestiality” (1), the editors self-select a frame that ignores the very serious negative consequences of commercialized sex. What follows throughout the book is a rosy and positivistic view of the sex industry coupled with an interspersing of typical coded sexist language used to marginalize and stigmatize those who call attention to the damaging effects of commercialized sex and the exploitive labor practices of the sex industry. An example of this coded language is the use of the label “anti-sex radical feminists” (3, 22, 7, 271, for example) to describe scholars who are critical of the sex industry and challenge the idea that pornography and prostitution are beneficial, particularly to the lives of women. For urban studies scholars unfamiliar with the intense and fractious debate among feminist scholars about the role of pornography in lives of women, the term “anti-sex radical feminist,” usually positioned against the term “pro-sex” feminist, is a loaded term drawing on a sexist trope of female prudishness used to silence women and dismiss the critique. The radical feminist critique is of the sex industry itself, not the morality surrounding the act of sex. It is clear that Maginn and Steinmetz understand this distinction; on page 7, they clearly delineate between the religious moral concerns of Christian groups and the political and economic concerns of radical feminists. Yet, throughout the book, the label of the “anti-sex radical feminist” on a moral crusade is repeated with the purpose of avoiding the specifics of the critique (i.e., the damaging effects of the sex industry on public, personal, and interpersonal health).
This is not to say that the radical feminist critique should remain unquestioned. It is, however, to point out that the claim made about the distortive role of morality, specifically heteronormative morality, in making planning decisions is weakened by simply inserting a different morality into the critique. If the contributors are correct in their assertion that setting policy standards to normalize and embrace commercial sex will produce a healthier, safer environment for all people, then empirical data should be presented to bear out these claims. Neither the editors nor the contributors, however, provide an in-depth look at the lives of those who produce, consume, and live with the implications of commercial sexuality. What research demonstrates that the health and quality of life of either heterosexual or LGBT individuals are improved through prostitution, pornography, and other commercialized sexual spaces and artifacts? And with the exception of the last chapter by Kelly and Cooper, in which data show that commercialized sex does produce negative externalities on local communities, this book does not adequately engage with the significant amount of research outlining the negative impact of commercialized sexuality on sexual health, sexual satisfaction, and interpersonal relationships (Peter and Valkenburg, 2016; Wright, Tokunaga, and Kraus, 2016; Wright, Tokunaga, Kraus, and Klann, 2017). By ignoring the more difficult or contentious questions surrounding commercialized sexuality, and by presenting the moral question in a narrow frame of protecting and advancing LGBT rights, the book may mislead urban planners and political decision makers into believing that the solutions are simply about sexual diversity training and decriminalization. Given the lack of empirical data presented to bolster the foundation of their claim that commercialized sexuality improves the health and relationships of LBGT people, coupled with a self-selected set of case studies with a clear moral purpose, the recommendations for policy implementation should be treated with caution.