ABSTRACT
In this chapter I offer a general introduction to the issues of regulating and negotiating gender and sexuality through the opposition of the public and the private. I argue that the binary distinction between private and public spaces and the relation of this to private and public spheres is highly problematic. Although it is a distinction encoded in law and deeply rooted in North American and British cultures, it is nevertheless unstable and often problematically conflated with related distinctions such as that between domestic or familial autonomy and public spheres. Increasing privatization, commercialization and aestheticization of public space has tended to depoliticize space and shrink public spheres. However, I will discuss various ways that the spatial and political practices of marginalized groups such as abused women and sexual minorities (lesbians, gays and sex workers) work to undermine the (always already unstable) coherence of this binary and related binaries. The destabilizing of this boundary is a countervailing force working to open up not only private space but to reopen public space to public debate and contestation.
