ABSTRACT
This book presents a series of insights into the complex and dynamic spatial and regulatory contours surrounding the sex industry. It illustrates through a mix of case studies drawn from the UK, US, Australia and North Africa. This chapter focuses on legal or compliant sex industry activities such as adult retailing, strip clubs, queer spaces, pornography and BDSM (bondage/domination, sadism and masochism) venues. The sub-urban refers to a range of spaces and practices that may be deemed underground and exclusive wherein sub-cultural groups such as fetishists and kinksters engage in BDSM practices. The chapter begins with the most common form of commercialized sex, pornography. The mainstreaming of pornography is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of anti-women attitudes and behaviours and contributing to the sexualisation of children. Relatedly, policy-makers need to acknowledge that efforts to regulate the sex industry into extinction are a policy and political fantasy.
