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Away from prying eyes? The urban geographies of `adult entertainment'

Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK, p.j.hubbard{at}lboro.ac.uk

Roger Matthews

Criminology, London South Bank University, London SE1 6LN, UK

Jane Scoular

Department of Law, Strathclyde University, Stenhouse Building, 173 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G4 ORQ, UK

Laura Agustín

School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK

Most towns and cities in the UK and USA possess a number of venues offering sexually orientated entertainment in the form of exotic dance, striptease or lap dancing. Traditionally subject to moral and legal censure, the majority of these sex-related businesses have tended to be situated in marginal urban spaces. As such, their increasing visibility in more mainstream spaces of urban nightlife raises important questions about the sexual and gender geographies that characterize the contemporary city. In this paper we accordingly locate the phenomena of adult entertainment at the convergence of geographic debates concerning the evening economy, urban gentrification and the gendered consumption of urban space. We conclude that these sites are worthy of investigation not only in and of themselves, but also because their shifting location reveals much about the forms of heterosexuality and homosociality normalized in the contemporary city.

Key Words: consumption • exceptionalism • gender • sexuality • sex work.

Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 32, No. 3, 363-381 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0309132508089095


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