Introduction

Consider three aspects of gender and sexuality in cities: first, the transnational and domestic trafficking of over four million prostituted women worth in excess of $99 billion; second, the collective and universalising images of 470,000 protesters on Constitution Avenue for the Women’s March on 21 January 2012; and third, the increasing number of pride celebrations in ‘response to the marginalization of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and other sexual minorities’. Meagan Tyler and Maddy Coy examine the mainstreaming of pornography in the public sphere in their chapter ‘Pornographication and heterosexualization in public space.’ Arguing that objectifying imagery and practices create public spaces that are hostile to women, Tyler and Coy outline how pornographication, and the ways pornography and pornographic imagery are visible and linked in the materiality of the public sphere, require feminist analysis.