Cities

Abstract

It’s rare that historians find themselves writing about a hot cultural issue, but for those exploring the relationship between sex and the city that’s been the case over the past ten years. At present, indeed, it’s difficult to escape popular representations of the ways in which sexual practices and identities are shaped by contemporary urban life. On our television screens, for example, Sex and the City suggests how experiences of place — Manhattan — are inexorably connected to distinct sexual practices, problems, and personalities — embodied in the ubiquitous figure of Carrie Bradshaw. Whether in its Pittsburgh or Manchester settings, Queer as Folk locates a specific queer lifestyle in a particular urban locale. The visual and print media generates a constant stream of reports about urban redlight districts, urban prostitution, ‘gay ghettos’ or the sexual dangers of Amsterdam or London after dark. Little surprise that, as Pat Califia suggests, ‘the city has become a sign of desire: promiscuity, perversity, prostitution, sex’.¹