ABSTRACT

Most cities, both large and small, house some form of a red-light district where street prostitution functions within a local, marginalized economy. In recent decades, urbanists have taken an interest beyond simply mapping the prostitution urban economy and focused more on the complex interrelationships of gender, sexuality, and urban public space. In this reading, Sirpa Tani examines how representations of life in the prostitution area of Helsinki are constructed and contested. As an ethnographer living in her area of study, Tani became interested in the range of interactions between official and media-based notions of the sex industry and the subjective experiences for those residents (especially women) who lived in the neighborhood. The major opposition to prostitution was a grassroots organization called “Prostitution Off The Streets” that formed to combat Helsinki neighborhoods from becoming sexualized spaces. The organization created a petition to bring an end to the prostitution and mounted tactics such as publishing license plate numbers of automobiles used in solicitation. Her study first examines the media representations of women in Helsinki’s prostitution zone, followed by a thick description of battles between “kerb-crawlers” (men seeking prostitutes) and women on the streets. Finally, Tani explains how policy and grassroots efforts to control prostitution reflect local or national norms over the tolerance of difference in urban public space.