Hubbard Sex Zones Intimacy, Citizenships and Public Spaces

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DOI: 10.1177/136346001004001003
2001 4: 51 Sexualities
Phil Hubbard
Sex Zones: Intimacy, Citizenship and Public Space
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Abstract Recent studies of sexuality and space have demonstrated
that public spaces are constructed around particular notions of
appropriate sexual comportment which exclude those whose lives
do not centre on monogamous, heterosexual, procreative sex. I n
a wider sense, such studies have noted that this spatial exclusion
of sexual dissidents reects (and reproduces) notions of citizen-
ship based on heteronormality. Elaborating these ideas, this
article proceeds to explore the way in which dissidents have
transgressed public and civic spaces in their attempt to under-
mine this dominant notion of citizenship. I n so doing, the article
questions the idealization of public space as a site where new
notions of sexual citizenship can be forged, arguing that the
relationship between intimacy, citizenship and space is less
straightforward than some commentators suggest.
Keywords citizenship, uidity, space, transgression, visibility
Phil Hubbard
Loughborough University
Sex Zones:Intimacy, Citizenship and
Public Space
Introduction
Space, as many geographers are currently at pains to point out, does not
simply exist as a given but affects (and is affected by) things which are
always becoming. Or, to put it another way, space is not just a passive back-
drop to human behaviour and social action, but is constantly produced
and remade within complex relations of culture, power and difference (see,
for example, Hetherington, 1999; McDowell, 1999; Sibley, 1995). I t is
this rejection of an empiricalphysical model of spatiality in favour of a
more critical, constructionist notion of space that informs this article,
wherein an attempt is made to elucidate the importance of space in the
creation of (new) sexual identities. More specically, the concern of this
article is to explore how the transgression of sexual dissidents into public
spaces can challenge the naturalization of heterosexual norms. I will seek
Article
Sexualities Copyright 2001 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 4(1):5171[1363-4607(200102)4:1;5171;015816]
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to explain that it is because sexual minorities have been excluded from
public view in a variety of different ways throughout history that the idea
of bringing private sexual fantasies into public view has often been written
about as representing a powerful political statement, a way that dissident
groups can challenge the tyranny of oppressive heterosexuality (Calia,
1994; Geltmaker, 1992). While this argument is widespread, I will argue
that it is only a partial reading, suggesting that a more uid and topolog-
ically complex interpretation of public and private space is necessary to
understand the changing geographies of sexuality.
Yet this article is not solely about the geography of sexuality; it is also
about citizenship. As has been evident in the pages of this journal, dis-
cussions about citizenship are never far away in debates about sexual poli-
tics (e.g. Humphrey, 1999; Seidman et al., 1999). I ndeed, a widely noted
phenomena in democratic societies is for judgements about whether
groups and individuals are participating in the life of the nation in a
responsible and desirable manner to centre on questions of sexuality (Arm-
strong, 1994; Evans, 1993). Accordingly, those whose sexual proclivities
are adjudged suspect, dangerous or undesirable may nd their civil and
welfare rights curtailed as politicians and policymakers seek to redene the
moral boundaries of the nation. For example, discussing the shifting
parameters of social policy in the United Kingdom, Carabine (1996) high-
lights the importance of pregnancy, AI DS/HI V, child sex abuse, promis-
cuity, birth control and pornography as issues used to exclude certain
individuals from the rights and entitlements associated with full citizen-
ship. More widely, debates about surrogacy, embryology and the age of
consent continue to raise key questions about what is natural as western
politicians fall back on ideas of biological essentialism to resolve the
tension between individual freedoms and collective obligations. Plummer
(1999) illustrates this point by referring to current debates about the
morality and ethics of (eu)gen(et)ics the parentheses presumably indi-
cating the ambiguous status of a practice that involves the intervention of
science into what has traditionally been imagined as a biological process.
At the time of writing, the possibility that scientists are engineering a
cyborg society is sending media commentators into paroxysms of rage;
is it appropriate that a sixty-year-old, unmarried woman is receiving I VF
treatment, they wonder? Or, at the other end of the age spectrum, is it
right that the Roman Catholic church pays a twelve-year-old not to have
an abortion? And should hopeful parents be able to buy eggs from
models auctioned over the internet? These are not just rhetorical ques-
tions; they demand a response (both from politicians and the public). As
such, debates about sexual morality potentially inform and change the way
we all live, simultaneously forcing us to interrogate and monitor our
behaviour in line with expectations of what constitutes a good citizen.
Sexualities 4(1)
52
Sexuality, as Weeks (1995: 4) eloquently argues, may therefore be con-
sidered as the magnetic core that lies at the heart of the national political
and cultural agenda. I ndeed, conicts between different sexualities,
moralities and identities are often orchestrated by the press in a lurid and
sensationalist manner to create national moral panics about particular
individuals and groups (McRobbie and Thornton, 1995). Frequently, as
with the moral panic surrounding the transmission of HI V/AI DS, this
process is based on the discursive deployment of fear as the press plays on
anxieties concerning the danger of sexuality cut loose from its traditional
moorings in marriage and the family (Armstrong, 1994). As such, gures
as diverse as the single mother, the prostitute, the cyber-stalker, the errant
father, the spinster, the pervert and the pornographer (not to mention
lesbians, bisexuals and gays) have been demonized as bad citizens in
different ways at different times to dene what is considered normal and
desirable behaviour (Knopp, 1995). The idea that the state requiresthese
periodic moral panics to reassert its right to power (see Evans, 1993) sup-
ports the view that questions of sexual morality are prominent in de-
nitions of citizenship. I n the urban West, where all individuals are
apparently equal in the eyes of the law and the state (McDowell, 1999),
the failure to match up to these dominant denitions of sexual morality
has resulted in sexual others being denied full citizenship in terms of state
benets and political recognition (Smith, 1989). At the same time, such
individuals may experience social stigmatization for failing to match ideas
of how a good citizen should act; they become regarded as second-class
citizens not only by the state but also by decent, respectable sexual
subjects.
Hence, the term citizenship is used in this article in its widest sense to
refer to the political and social recognition that is granted to those whose
behaviour accords with the moral values underpinning the construction of
the nation-state (Plummer, 1999). Such broad notions of citizenship are
particularly useful for explaining how the state is able to exercise control
over people without recourse to physical violence. After all, ideas of
citizenship are ostensibly constructed through the bureaucratic and benev-
olent rituals of modern political debate, rather than being imposed upon
an unknowing and oppressed mass through coercive means. This means
that citizenship is a central concept in studies of governmentality, which,
drawing on Foucault, focus on how the human subject is constituted in
relationship to itself and constellations of power (see Donzelot, 1979).
Essentially then, it can be argued that ideas of citizenship are crucial in the
process of nation-building via governance (rather than government), with
notions of sexual comportment and behaviour being central to the negoti-
ation of citizenship. I n the remainder of this article, I want to elaborate
this contention by focusing on the importance of space in debates about
Hubbard Sex Zones:Intimacy, Citizenship and Public Space
53
sexual citizenship. Following Susan Smith (1989), I consider it essential
that such issues of citizenship are examined in relation to geographic ideas
and concepts, given that ideas of citizenship concern what is appropriate
within particular spheres (and spaces) of civil life. Working from the
premise that a basic right of citizenship is the right to access and use
specic kinds of space within a given territory, I particularly want to
explore how ideas of sexual citizenship are institutionalized and contested
in a variety of different spaces including private spaces of home, work
and leisure as well as those spaces which have become synonymous with
the concept of public or civic space (streets, parks, squares, precincts, etc.).
To illustrate this, the aricle begins by describing how dissident sexual
behaviours and identities have been made less welcome in public space
before exploring the effects (and effectiveness) of sexual transgression into
these civic sites. As will be seen, while equal access to public space has been
a key rallying call for many sexual dissidents, the extent to which public
space can be used for forging new models of citizenship based on intimacy
and respect is highly questionable.
Sexualising citizenship:geographies of exclusion
and inclusion
Although the notion that it is possible to document a geography of sexu-
ality was not widely shared until the 1990s, there is now a substantial body
of work demonstrating that space is sexed in a variety of complex ways (for
a review, see Binnie and Valentine, 1999). While such research has noted
that there may be signicant variations in the way that sex is represented,
perceived and understood in different national contexts, collectively it has
suggested that the organization of space in western societies serves to nat-
uralize heterosexuality. For instance, Nast (1998) has written that western
forms of state-capitalism and social reproduction make heterosexuality
seem unremarkable, benign and normal, arguing that the worlds of work,
leisure and consumption are saturated with images and behaviours that
encourage people to adopt heterosexual identities and perfomances. Simi-
larly, Elder (1998) has argued that the ostensible normality of hetero-
sexuality is maintained through regulatory regimes which control peoples
use and manipulation of space. Here, he writes particularly of the social
and legal codes of conduct that discipline those who transgress sexual and
spatial order, highlighting how assumptions about the right of different
groups to occupy space serve to reinforce hegemonic heterosexuality. This
is illustrated in his study of apartheid-era housing policy in South Africa,
where he contends that the exclusion of black and coloured nationals from
white areas was underpinned by anxieties about the forms of sexual
Sexualities 4(1)
54
relationship that might occur across the colour divide (Elder, 1998:
1567).
When considered in relation to arguments about sexual citizenship, such
writing serves to support the idea that national citizenships in the urban
West have overwhelmingly been (and continue to be) based around
socially-constructed visions of liberty and equality which (paradoxically)
reinforce heterosexual identities (see also Van Every, 1993; Weeks, 1995).
Of course, the way such assumptions have been codied in constitutional
laws or practices varies internationally. Developing this point, Susan Smith
(1989: 151) refers specically to the example of Australia, where notions
of citizenship appear to have been constructed around notions of mate-
ship and fraternity, which are simultaneously racialized, gendered and
sexualized. This, she argues, results in political and civil rights for Aus-
tralians that are not liberatory per se but instead represent an insti-
tutionalization of sexual (and gender and racial) inequality. Here Smith
draws on the theories of sexual and social contract developed by Carole
Pateman which suggest that civil society is, in effect, a patriarchal construct
that serves to limit womens participation and rights in the public sphere.
For Pateman (1989: 20), the idea that the social state of nature is inhab-
ited not by isolated individuals but families appears to be particularly
important in determining the importance of heterosexuality as the
natural basis of civil life. Consequently, she asserts that the historic
development of civic society has revolved around specic associations
between private space, sexuality and love, invoking contractual and demo-
cratic theories of the state to suggest that individuals are only entitled to
leave this space and enter a civic space of rights, property ownership and
citizenship if their interests are subordinate to the wider interests of the
(heterosexual) state.
As such, it appears that civil society can be conceptualized as a hetero-
sexual (as well as patriarchal and racist) construction that serves to make
entry into the public realm very difcult for those whose sexual lives are
judged immoral. These arguments have perhaps been most forcibly made
in geographic research which has described how everyday urban spaces
are experienced by gay men and women as aggressively heterosexual (e.g.
Adler and Brenner, 1992; Namaste, 1996; Valentine, 1993). Noting that
displays of heterosexual affection, friendship and desire are regarded as
acceptable or normal in most of these spaces, such research has conse-
quently highlighted that many homosexuals deny or disguise their sexual
orientation when in public because of fears of homophobic abuse and
intolerance (coupled with a concern that such intimidation is not taken
seriously by the state and law). Valentine (1993), for example, explored
how lesbian women in one British city deployed a range of coping strat-
egies in their day-to-day use of public space; avoiding certain areas at
55
certain times, dressing in ways that brand their bodies as heterosexual and
not holding hands or kissing partners in places where they were in the
public gaze. I n other studies, it has been shown that gays, lesbians and
bisexuals may avoid using public transport, carry personal attack alarms
and only walk on the streets when accompanied by others so as to avoid
homophobic violence (Comstock, 1991; Moran, 1996). Even in cities
where the authorities are seemingly tolerant and even encouraging of gay
tourism and nightlife (e.g. Manchester, UK), it is evident that most gay
men and women face routine prejudice, discrimination and violence on
the streets (Whittle, 1994).
Unsurprisingly then, the metaphor of the closet can be seen as an appro-
priate description of the schizophrenic spatial lives of many gays, lesbians
and bisexuals who are not out in public spaces for fear that they will be
the victims of verbal or visual intimidation, and, at worst, gay-bashing
(see Seidman et al., 1999). Accordingly, specic private spaces (such as gay
nightclubs, cafes or galleries) may be the only spaces where they feel com-
fortable expressing their sexuality or adopting dress codes that signify their
membership as members of particular sexual communities. As Johnston
and Valentine (1995) suggest, the (non-parental) home has become a key
site for the celebration of gay identity a space where sexual dissidents can
come together in an environment that is (relatively) secure, comfortable
and free from surveillance. Of course, the fact that much housing in the
urban West is designed around the assumption that it will be occupied by
a nuclear, heterosexual family means that gays and lesbians may be rela-
tively limited in their place of residence in the rst place (a factor that has
been identied as signicant in the phenomena of gay gentrication see
Knopp, 1995). Simultaneously, it is evident that many gay and lesbian
individuals continue to live in a state of continuous anxiety because of the
way that their lives divide into an outwardly straight persona and a pri-
vately gay existence. There is always the threat that someone aware of their
sexuality might expose them in public, shattering the boundary between
their neatly compartmentalized private and public lives. I n Johnston and
Valentines (1995: 106) account, this is demonstrated by reference to the
elaborate charade which one lesbian couple enacted to maintain the illu-
sion of normality when visited by their parents (preventing them from
using rooms adorned with lesbian posters).
The idea that homosexually-identied individuals lead something of a
dual existence that they can be gay only in certain spaces at certain
times, and rarely in public space is an idea that features prominently in
the campaigning rhetoric of gay rights groups. Consequently, a common
tactic has been the practice of outing seeking to identify certain
high-prole individuals as gay in an attempt to force them to publicly
acknowledge this dual existence. While controversial, the motive here is
Sexualities 4(1)
56
undoubtedly well-founded; that gay men and women should be able to
be identied as such in the public realm without feeling stigmatized. I n
this sense, questions of sexual identity can be seen to intertwine with
those of citizenship in a number of profound ways for gay and lesbian
groups; they are, in Richardsons (1998) parlance, only partial citizens,
in that they are excluded from certain entitlements in the eyes of the state
but do have a number of obligations. For example, while all lesbians and
gay men are expected to pay taxes, respect the laws of the land, partici-
pate in the labour force, etc., they are often denied certain rights, such
as ability to marry, serve in the armed forces, act as foster parents and so
on. Even when they are granted formal political recognition and rights,
their branding as citizen-perverts by other individuals may prevent them
from participating in civic society (Bell, 1995). Fundamental here,
perhaps, is that they feel free to express their sexuality only in certain (and
principally private) spaces, with the streets being experienced as exclu-
sionary spaces where heterosexuality is aggressively asserted as the norm.
While dominant notions of citizenship undoubtedly serve to spatially
exclude gay men and women on a variety of different scales, there is an
important sense in which this interpretation needs to be extended to con-
sider the way that a particular notion of heterosexuality is implicated in
this process. Specically, it needs to be stressed that dominant notions of
sexual citizenship are based on the normalization (and encouragement) of
the idealized nuclear family (Donzelot, 1979). This in turn relies on the
perpetuation of the idea that mothering and fathering are the only appro-
priate modes for sexual activity, with procreation represented as the ulti-
mate (and emotionally fullling) product of the sexual relation. As Rubin
(1989: 14) contends, while good sex acts are imbued with emotional
complexity and reciprocity, sex acts on the bad side of the line are con-
sidered utterly repulsive and devoid of all emotional nuance. Of course,
this is a notion that excludes a number of other (hetero)sexual subjects
from enjoying full citizenship, particularly bad women (see Hubbard,
2000; McDowell, 1999). The states moral condemnation (and exclusion)
of scary heterosexualities and practices such as fetishism, prostitution,
pornography, masturbation, voyeurism and sado-masochism accordingly
indicates the complex way in which heterosexuality and patriarchy inter-
twine to create non-citizens. For instance, women who have sex outside
monogamous, procreative relationships are often condemned as bad
sexual subjects, while male promiscuity is widely tolerated, or even cele-
brated, as the natural outcome of male sexual urges (Jackson, 1991;
Seidler, 1995). Equally, women who live alone may be portrayed as sexual
failures, with the spinster having been a particularly important gure in
histories of sexual morality (see Jeffreys, 1986).
As such, several geographers have begun to point out that the spatial
57
mobility and freedom of female sex workers, lone mothers and single
women is emaciated when compared to the mobility of those heterosexual
women who full the role of the good wife and mother (see, for example,
Bondi, 1997; Watson, 1986; Winchester, 1990). The female prostitute, in
particular, represents a paradigmatic gure whose legal and social regu-
lation symbolises the contradictions inherent in notions of equal citizen-
ship; in many cities prostitutes are forced to work out of sight, off-street
in brothels, massage parlours or private ats where their sexuality can be
commodied with apparent impunity. The ability of these prostitutes to
leave these spaces of connement and enter the public realm as sex workers
remains highly restricted, with the sight of the sexed body of the prosti-
tute in the city disturbing assumptions that feminine sexuality should be
domesticized; cocooned in a monogamous, procreative relationship
(Duncan, 1996; McDowell, 1999). Consequently, the state and law often
conspire (along with other good sexual citizens) to police the limits of
these spaces, preventing prostitution from leaking out into the public
realm (see Hubbard, 1999). I n post-war Britain, for example, vice squads
have principally aimed to control sex work so that it does not interfere
with the right of the normal, decent citizen to go about the streets
without affront to their sense of decency (Wolfenden Report, 1957: 23).
The isolation and connement of prostitutes to the dark and dangerous
spaces of British inner cities appears a potent means by which the author-
ities have sought to minimize the public visibility of sex work in a hetero-
sexually-ordered city.
The way that notions of (hetero)sexual citizenship underpin the mutual
constitution of society and space have therefore been explored by geogra-
phers primarily at the scale of the city. While the city clearly provides the
context and coordinates for most Western subjects, it should not be over-
looked that similar processes of heterosexualization are played out at
different spatial scales. As Elder (1998) testies, these processes are evident
in spaces ranging from the bedroom to the nation, with monogamous
heterosexual relationships made to appear natural on a variety of inter-
dependent scales. Many of these spatial inscriptions are only obvious to
those who do not conform to these norms; for example, the constant
barrage of images of heteronormal bodies in glossy magazines, in lm and
on television (where the idealized male/female form has been used to sell
everything from healthcare insurance to stock cubes); the design of hetero-
sexual family housing; the planning of suburbia; the notion of the mother-
land or fatherland, and so on. No matter where one looks, it seems, one
can see heterosexual socio-spatial patternings at work (Nast, 1998). I n sum,
we could argue that notions of morality what is right or wrong in the eyes
of the state and its citizens create sexual geographies at a variety of spatial
scales. Notions of morality are thus branded onto the spaces of the body,
Sexualities 4(1)
58
the city, the region and the nation in constantly shifting and complex ways
that, nonetheless, serve to order ows of desire. Referred to by Donzelot
(1979: 21) as the pure little lines of mutation, these ows act collectively
to reify the heterosexual family as normal and desirable, marginalizing
sexual others in the process. By channelling and damning these potentially
polymorphous ows of desire, it is these geographies that dene the bound-
aries of sexual citizenship (Weeks, 1995).
Between the sheets, on the streets:challenging
heteronormality
Far from being natural, then, heterosexuality is something that is pro-
duced (and made to appear natural) through repeated spatial perform-
ances and ows of desire. These occur within different contexts of legal
and moral regulation which serve to dene what sexual identities and prac-
tices are permissible or acceptable in public or private spaces. I n this
regard, most Western governments persist in their discrimination against
non-heterosexual and non-nuclear sexual families despite the efforts of
protest groups. For example, the identication of lone mothers as a
problem group a prominent feature of much right-wing rhetoric in the
UK has survived the political transition to New Labour (a party osten-
sibly committed to tackling social exclusion). I ndeed, the publication of a
Green Paper on The Future of the Family reiterated that marriage is the
best way for two people to bring up their children (The I ndependent, 5
November 1998), simultaneously alienating gay couples who are raising
(or wanting to raise) children. At the time of writing, therefore, it is
perhaps difcult to be optimistic about the possibilities for marginal sexual
subjects to assert their claims to full citizenship. This point has been par-
ticularly powerfully made by Davina Cooper in her critique of New
Labours attempts to redene the public around an imagined (and nor-
mative) notion of the public citizen dened with reference to a cultural
majority whose security is threatened by the behaviours of a dispossessed
other:
New Labours creation of a universal class . . . with its emphasis on discipline,
traditional morality and religious norms has generated a community politics in
which communities are intended to police themselves and turn a suspicious, or,
at most, faintly tolerant, eye upon outsiders. Despite New Labours attempts to
tackle social exclusion and to focus on generic rather than group interests, its
paradigm of community has reproduced the normative assumptions endemic
within a conventional conception of the general public. (Cooper, 1998: 471)
Here, Labours cosy notion of social egalitarianism based on equal citizen-
ship appears to be based around the dubious idea that we are all prepared
59
to accept certain values as desirable, and, simultaneously, that we are pre-
pared to expel those who do not conform. I n essence, it is a vision of social
inclusion which rests on a set of (unstated) exclusions primarily of those
sexual perverts, criminals, workshy social security scroungers, anarchists
and travellers who threaten this imagined idyll. I ndeed, as Fraser (1992)
argues, it is important to realize that any notion of community is inevitably
based around the anthropophagic erasure or anthropoemic exclusion of
difference, rather than its celebration.
I n consequence, it is apparent that good heterosexual citizens continue
to be rewarded by the state in terms of medical, welfare and housing pro-
vision, whereas sexual dissidents remain largely invisible in terms of rights
(though not obligations). This visibility and invisibility is apparently mir-
rored in the presence (or absence) of particular sexual identities in public
space. The geography of sexual citizenship thus organizes and natural-
izes heterosexuality in so much as it divides and connes sexual identities
across public and private spaces, restricting certain dissident groups to
sequestered spaces (e.g. a sex dungeon, a cottage, a brothel or a private
sex club). For some though, this geography is the logical outcome of what
sexual subjects want, the product of what Lyotard termed a libidinal
economy driven by lack and desire:
The city is a map of the hierarchy of desire, from the valorised to the stigma-
tised. I t is divided into zones dictated by the way its citizens value or denigrate
their needs. Separating the city into areas of specialism makes it possible to meet
some needs more efciently; it is also an attempt to reduce conict between
opposing sets of desires and the roles people adapt to try and full those desires.
(Calia, 1994: 205)
Perhaps then we need to balance a wholly negative interpretation of the
geographies of sexual citizenship with a more positive assessment of how
these geographies provide spaces for sexual experimentation among
counter-public groups (McDowell, 1999). I f cities contain sites of sexual
connement, these spaces are also potentially sites of sexual liberation.
This argument is particularly evident in the writings of those who suggest
that the spaces in the city which are used to marginalize sexual dissidents
may be appropriated (or reterritorialized) by these same dissidents to stake
their claim for citizenship (Binnie, 2000; Castells, 1983). After all, cities
are characterized by a dense concentration of human beings and offer
innumerable moments for the urban citizen to seize opportunities of ini-
tiating, deviating or interrupting various ows of desire. Elizabeth Wilson
(1991) provided a notable development of these ideas in her feminist
reading of urban life, The Sphinx in the City. Therein, she offered an
intriguing account of the way that women have been represented as other
in the city, yet simultaneously drew out the advantages inherent in this.
Sexualities 4(1)
60
Specically, she suggested that (heterosexual) women have always been
able to use their place in the margins of the city to explore and celebrate
their identities, asserting new sexual freedoms in the process. Duncan
(1996: 141) expands on this argument, stressing that many women freely
choose marginal or eccentric locations to challenge the structures of
patriarchy. I n her view, these locations may act as sites where subversive
discourses rst articulated in private can be made public, in effect chal-
lenging the relationship between cities and identities.
However, it has been in writing on the lives of gay men and women that
this idea has been subject to closest scrutiny, with many commentators
highlighting how city spaces have been used as a basis for the promotion
of homosexual values and a more widespread acceptance of gay lifestyles
(Geltmaker, 1992; Knopp, 1995). I n particular, it has been recognized
that the transgression of public spaces may be a potent means for lesbians,
gays and bisexuals to destabilize and undermine processes of homophobic
oppression. Examples of such political tactics include marches, perform-
ance art, Gay Pride parades and the numerous kiss-ins organized to draw
attention to gay rights (see Duncan, 1996; McDowell, 1999). While these
acts aim to queer public space, paradoxically some gay parades (like
Sydneys Mardi Gras) have become spectacles for heterosexual consump-
tion. Less spectacular, but more signicant perhaps, is the way that gay
men and women perform particular queer identities (like the gay skin-
head and the lipstick lesbian) which parody and destabilize the hetero-
sexual construction and coding of public space (Butler, 1993). More
permanently, the establishment of queer spaces, frequently referred to as
gay or lesbian villages, is recognized to play a fundamental role in this
process, with such sites often acting as bases for the social, economic and
cultural reproduction of gay male and lesbian communities (Castells,
1983). While some appear cynical about the way gay culture has been
commodied and represented in places like West Hollywood, Castro in
San Francisco or Canal Street in Manchester (see Binnie, 2000; Skeggs,
1999), for many others these are spaces which play an important role in
staking a visibleclaim to full sexual citizenship (Forrest, 1995; Whittle,
1994). After all, until about 30 years ago homosexuality was rendered vir-
tually invisible to those in the putative mainstream, restricted to marginal
sites of the city and the night. Today, however, a profusion of clubs, shops
and cafes catering for gays and lesbians play an important public role in
asserting a claim to sexual citizenship. As Binnie (2000) stresses, these
often centre on an upper-class, white notion of cosmopolitanism and
sexual openness, but even if some gays and lesbians themselves feel
excluded from these spaces, they have been politically and symbolically
important in the struggle for gay rights (see also Berlant, 1997; Calia,
1994). For example, Forrest (1995: 149) argues that the visibility of gay
61
lifestyles in West Hollywood was vitally important in lending gay identity
a legal legitimation, encouraging its incorporation into mainstream
notions of Californian civic culture. Therefore, it is by considering the way
in which gay and lesbian individuals have made their presence felt in (and
through) such spaces that some have begun to think about how public
space can be used to act as a locus for new sexual and moral orders.
Seeking publicity, craving privacy?
Theoretically then, it appears that sexual dissidents should be able to use
public space as a space of presence, forcing their existence to be recog-
nized and demanding a reconceptualization of non-procreative or
monogamous sex as a legitimate and healthy expression of sexual desire.
I ndeed, it has been widely argued that if sexual minorities like gays, les-
bians, prostitutes and so on manage to successfully reterritorialize public
space as sites of sexual diversity and respect between strangers, they would
succeed in changing their rights as citizens (Duncan, 1996). By making
dissident sexualities visible, the queering of public space reminds people
that sexual others have claims to citizenship alongside good hetero-
sexual subjects. After all, if a group does not exist in public, it is effec-
tively invisible in the eyes of the state and decent citizens, apparently
having no rights and no needs. Accordingly, many proponents of sexual
rights for minority groups have emphasized the potentiality of seizing
the street, using public space to ght homophobia and misogyny. I n his
seminal analysis of gay rights, for example, Castells (1983) argued it was
crucial that gay groups were out that is to say, visible in the public
realm on their own terms, able to move between sequestered spaces of
private intimacy and the public sphere of rights, property ownership and
political representation. I n a somewhat similar sense, Jeffrey Weeks
(1998) claims that new sexual movements have always had two charac-
teristic elements; a moment of transgression followed by a moment of
citizenship. I n proposing this, he contends that moments of carnivalesque
transgression in the public gaze challenge the status quo, conveying a
claim to inclusion which ultimately allows equal access. These moments,
therefore, go hand-in-hand; without the transgressive moment there can
apparently be no inclusion, no notion of equality. For Weeks (1998: 37),
the sexual citizen makes a claim to transcend the limits of the personal
sphere by going public.
The idea that sexual dissidents can dene themselves as sexual citizens
by occupying public space on their own terms thus offers a tantalizing
vision of a situation where a wide range of individuals are granted rights,
recognition and respect, irrespective of their sexuality. I n effect, they
would have no need to hide their sexuality and to conne its expression
Sexualities 4(1)
62
to sites that are out of the public gaze (and the prying eyes of the state
and law). This ideal geography would be one of what Duncan (1996:
143) calls radical openness, a geography that discourages the reication,
marginalization and privitization of sexual otherness. As sexual citizens,
sexual dissidents would at least be able to live their lives as other (hetero-
normal) urban dwellers do in the midst of cities that facilitate, and
occasionally celebrate, the coming together of different cultures and iden-
tities. Adopting terms invoked by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Duncan
suggests this presents a very different vision of sexual geography; a smooth
geography where polymorphous ows of desire can be pursued rather than
being curtailed, diverted and bogged down in the striated spaces of the
heterosexually-ordered city.
Such visions of a sexually-open and democratic public sphere thus drive
many to resist the heteronormality of public space and to use the streets
as spaces from which to make claims for sexual rights (again see Calia,
1994). While not wishing to denigrate their actions, or to downplay the
very important efforts that have been made to publicize the rights of
sexual minority groups, here I want to offer an alternative reading of the
importance of space in debates about sexual citizenship. I n effect, I wish
to reject this (rather straightforward) conceptualization of public space as
representing a democratic space where marginalized groups can seek to
oppose oppressive aspects of heteronormality. Moreover, I think that it
has been too easy for those advocating equal sexual rights to imagine that
having free access to public space represents the achievement of full
citizenship. I ndeed, this appears to be based on the (implicit) utopian
notion that the public sphere can be used as a site where denitions of
community can be broadened to encompass a wide range of sexual iden-
tities and differences. As Coopers interpretation of New Labours notion
of citizenship began to suggest, such utopian thinking is somewhat naive
given that the construction of community of relies on the effacement of
difference and the suspension of selfhood in the interests of an imagined
norm. So while minority groups may occupy and use the streets that
exclude them in order to represent themselves as part of some wider
public, they usually do so in public spaces which do not match their needs
and requirements. Even in so-called gay and lesbian villages, the trans-
gressive moment which publicizes certain needs and wants is followed by
a moment of citizenship which serves to bring dissidents into a public
sphere not only of rights but also of obligations. This might make it
acceptable for certain acts to become visible in public (e.g. gay couples
kissing or sex workers soliciting) but inevitably means that these dissi-
dents must surender a certain level of control over their bodies, feelings
and identities to the wider community of which they are claiming to be
a part.
63
Beverley Skeggs has therefore written of public visibility constituting a
trap for sexual dissidents:
I t summons surveillance and the law, it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the
colonist/imperial appetite for possession . . . it reduces the body to the sign of
identity. . . . Only some groups can positively and resourcefully spatialise the
claim for recognition via visibility . . . and only some groups can legitimate
and/or symbolically convert their visible claims. (Skeggs, 1999: 228)
I n a somewhat similar manner to those commentators who suggest that
the public acceptance of gay villages is, more correctly, a strategic appro-
priation and commodication of the pink pound (e.g. Knopp, 1995),
Skeggs argues that public acceptance and recognition of dissidents
inevitably relies on them accepting certain compromises. Not least of these
is the fact that the acceptance of difference depends upon the marking of
certain bodies as belonging to particular sexual identities. For example, to
assert their claims to equal citizenship, lesbians and gay men must (para-
doxically) continue to mark off their bodies as different from the hetero-
sexual norm. For many sexual dissidents, this type of visibility is exactly
what they would wish to avoid at present given the homophobic intoler-
ance which persists in many western cities. Even in a society that grants
them full citizenship, they would remain all too visible, vulnerable to any
backlash that the putative mainstream might later unleash on minority
sexual groups (a point alluded to by Comstock, 1991). I n a similar sense,
for sex shops to become acceptable features throughout the urban land-
scape, they would presumably have to advertise their wares very publicly.
This too would presumably render these shops obvious to the majority,
potentially making them visible to any group who might subsequently seek
to exclude them. Such tendencies are certainly evident in the public spaces
of the worldwide web, where the policing of cyber-porn indicates the
limits of apparently democratic space (see Hubbard, 2000).
Accordingly, we should perhaps remain sceptical of the potential for
sexual dissidents to use public space to act as a site for the assertion of claims
to citizenship and full rights (c.f. Goheen, 1998). I nstead, we can perhaps
turn these arguments around by stating that the problem for most sexual
dissidents is not a lack of publicity but a lack of privacy. This seemingly
paradoxical statement is supported by reference to the arguments of Kilian
(1998: 124) who suggests that publicity needs to be dened as the power
to accesswhereas privacy needs to be dened as the power to exclude. Adopt-
ing these denitions, it can be suggested that many sexual minorities have
too much publicity (in that they can access a number of different spaces)
but not enough privacy (because they lack the ability to exercise control
over those spaces by not being able to exclude others from them). Kilian
quotes from Judith Squires to emphasize this line of argument:
Sexualities 4(1)
64
Privacy is viewed as the means of achieving individualism by providing the bar-
riers necessary to enable the individual to make uncoerced choices in life. Privacy
could therefore be viewed as a mechanism for the realization of pluralism and
tolerance. (Squires, 1994: 390)
Or, to put it another way, privacy appears as the primary means by which
an intimate citizenship (Plummer, 1999) based on control over ones
body, feelings and relationships could be forged. When they challenge
dominant notions of citizenship, therefore, sexual dissidents should never
simply be seeking more publicity but rather increased public legitimacy for
their own privacy.
Ultimately, this rejection of the streets as the primary site where new
sexual citizenships can be forged indicates the difculties evident in dis-
tinguishing between public and private in matters of sexuality (see also
Brown, 1999). Upheld by the state as determining the limits of its inter-
vention into civil society, the public/private dichotomy has been fussed
over for centuries, made concrete in the city and subsequently used to
maintain divisions between good and bad sex (Duncan, 1996). Yet when
we examine the geographies of sexual citizenship, we nd that this dis-
tinction, though enshrined in law, is nothing more than a regulatory
ction. Seen as threatening national morals, sexual practices like prosti-
tution, sado-masochism and same-sex relationships are accordingly rep-
resented as crimes against public decency. I n this way, even though
these are crimes without victims, they become dened as public problems
even when they occur in a private context between two consenting adults.
As was discussed earlier, it may well be that sexual dissidents are
sequestered and conned in apparently private sites (e.g. the brothel, the
sex club, the home), but, as research demonstrates, these sites are rarely
out of the gaze of the state and the law. I n Bells (1995) reading of the
Operation Spanner case, for example, English law interpreted sado-
masochistic sex between consenting adults as interpersonal violence. I n
doing so, it served to bring privatized sexual activities into the public
realm, portraying them as a crime which was subsequently projected back
into a reduced private realm. As Bell asserts, this represented a highly con-
tradictory set of moves whereby a private sexual act was bought into the
public gaze only for it to be expelled back into a space which was not truly
private because it remained subject to monitoring by the state and law (in
the interests of public order, of course). Similarly, it is evident that the
police routinely raid public toilets identied as cottages (Knopp, 1995),
local authorities seek to close down brothels (Hubbard, 1999) and the
obscene publications squad may conscate pornographic materials pur-
chased for private consumption.
I n Bells (1995) summation, the fact that sexual dissidents enjoy
neither true publicity nor privacy indicates that they are denied full sexual
65
citizenship. For him, it appears that sexual dissidents are therefore
condemned to a life which oscillates wildly between pleasure/danger as
they move between public/private. Yet for some, this transgressive
neither/nor lifestyle is no doubt attractive, as accounts of the illicit thrills
experienced by some customers who solicit prostitutes on the streets
testify (see Hubbard, 1999). And if the public streets are sites of sexual
adventure for some, private spaces may be sites where others submit to
fantasies of submission, control and rapture (often all at the same time).
Following this logic, it might be argued that the transgressive existence
of sexual dissidents renders dominant heterosexual geographies trans-
parent in various ways, but that this cannot (and should not) act as a basis
for challenging existing models of citizenship. I ndeed, for some dissi-
dents, the experience of pushing against the boundaries of citizenship
may be sexually arousing in itself; remove the boundaries to full citizen-
ship and the thrill would be gone (c.f. Sennett, 1994, on the failure of
the Paris commune). However, this acceptance of exclusion is not one to
which most sexual dissidents would subscribe. I nstead then, it might be
suggested that they should ght to produce their own models of citizen-
ship by producing spaces where they have both the right to publicity and
the right to privacy. As Kilian (1998) writes, this relies on the wholesale
rejection of concepts of public and private space per se, with the geogra-
phies of heterosexual citizenship capable of being destabilized only by the
creation of spaces that sexual dissidents are able to control on their own
terms (i.e. by excluding those who threaten their rights to privacy and
welcoming those who do not). Unlike contemporary gay villages, red-
light districts and other public expositions of sexual dissidence, however,
these spaces would not be xed and permanent communities (something
that would only perpetuate the distance between mainstream and dissi-
dent sexual identities). I nstead, they would be ephemeral sites of freedom
and control which could be used to create eeting but transitory identi-
cations out of which new identities and citizenships could emerge (see
also Hetherington, 1999).
I n essence then, these zones of alternative citizenship might provide the
basis for new models of sexual citizenship in ways that, for example, con-
temporary gay villages do not by being critically exclusive rather than
radically inclusive (i.e. based on a set of norms which would not allow
full rights to those who threaten the privacy of those uniting around a
shared sexual identity). I n such ways, it is important to realize that these
spaces would be somewhat different to the permeable and open spaces of
empowerment proposed by some commentators (e.g. Duncan, 1996:
142). I nstead, the freedoms and intimacy possible in these spaces would
have to be policed, in effect rejecting one partial model of citizenship in
favour of a different though transitory model. This space would,
Sexualities 4(1)
66
therefore, not be public (in the sense that it would be open to all), but
would encompass a different sense of order than that existing elsewhere
an alternate order in which the views of sexual dissidents could be freely
articulated and in which their identities could be freely performed. The
idea that there can never be an ideal public sphere free from exclusions
may not be a utopian prognosis, as Kilian (1998) notes, but neither is it a
dystopian one. After all, Euclidean notions that spaces are either public or
private can be seen to be badly lacking if we consider that the world con-
sists of ows rather than bounded regions, of crumpled and heterogeneous
spaces rather than ones that are geometrically dened (Hetherington,
1999). I n this sense, publicity and privacy co-join differently in different
places, and it is in sites that are imagined as not solely public or solely
private that new identities will emerge.
Conclusion
Jeffrey Weeks (1995) has argued that the conditions for the forging of new
sexual identities and moralities are just right. The family is perhaps no
longer what it was (or ever claimed to be), divorce is higher than ever,
birth control is widespread and generally reliable, and new patterns of inti-
macy are disturbing ordered erotic categories. I n sum, issues of sexual
citizenship have (in themselves) moved from the margins to the centre and
the time seems right for sexual dissidents to stake their claims for full
citizenship. I n this article, I have briey considered some of the spatial
tactics that these groups and individuals have adopted for seeking recog-
nition and rights. As has been shown, these have chiey revolved around
attempts to queer public space, making the needs and wants of specic
sexual minorities visible through transgression onto the heteronormal
street. I n essence, such tactics seem driven by a concern that a lack of pub-
licity deprives sexual minorities of full rights in a society where citizenship
is focused on the maintenance of the procreative nuclear family. I n seeking
this recognition, however, sexual dissidents have often sacriced their own
rights to privacy; by equating privacy with political inaction and publicity
with political empowerment, they appear to have fallen into a trap whereby
they are left with neither.
Rejecting the reication of the streets as the ultimate site for political
action, I have therefore begun to draw on some of those geographers who
have argued for a reconceptualization of public and private, arguing that
claims for citizenship cannot be sought solely in the public or private
realm. I nstead, I have begun to explore the spatial construction of new
models of sexual citizenship which rely on the celebration and acceptance
of difference as well as the exclusion of those who threaten the ability of
people to control their own bodies, feelings and relationships with other
67
consenting adults. This alternative model of citizenship is one that cannot
be rooted in conventional understandings of public space or for that
matter, private space but in liminal spaces that disrupt dominant geogra-
phies of heterosexuality by creating transitory sites for sexual freedom and
pleasure where the immoral is moral and the perverse is normal. As has
been described, these spaces would inevitably need to exclude those whose
presence threatens the control and freedom which inhabitants exercise
over their own sexual performances, allowing them to articulate their
needs and desires in a safe and pleasurable environment. I t is from these
sex zones that new citizenships based on sexual respect, intimacy and
egalitarianism might ultimately emerge.
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Biographical Note
Phil Hubbard is an urban/social geographer with a particular interest in the
negotiation of sexuality in the city. His work on the policing and politics of sex
work culminated in the publication of Sex and the City: geographiesof prosti-
tution in theurban West (Ashgate, 1999), and he is currently seeking to develop
new theoretical understandings of the role of space in the creation of sexual
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Leicestershire, LE11 3TU. [ email: P.J.Hubbard@lboro.ac.uk]
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