ABSTRACT
The revealed geography, it has been contended, is one that is palpably uneven, with processes of exclusion and inclusion bequeathing a veritable patchwork of ephemeral sites of sex work, from the alleyways and thoroughfares of inner-city red-light zones, the flats and houses often described as ‘brothels’ to the legitimised and commercialised sex clubs found in areas of erotic entertainment. Ideas of moral geography are deceptively simple. As outlined in the work of Philo, Matless and Cresswell, moral geographies concern assumptions about what is right or wrong, just or unjust, good or bad. Arguably, debates are beginning to challenge dominant assumptions about the naturalness and desirability of domesticated heterosexuality. In turn, the state and the law is reacting by seeking to (re)assert which forms of sex are moral or immoral. Recent geographic work has gone a long way in demonstrating that the city is inevitably, inherently and thoroughly sexualised, implicated in the construction of sexual identities on a number of levels.
