A few years ago I wrote a paper about the sexualization of public space in Switzerland. The paper will be published next year as “Sex in the City: On Making Space and Identity in Travel Spaces” in a book about Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space edited by Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow (Continuum). A preprint is available from our Resources Section (click on “Multilingualism in Tourism”). The paper developed out of the observation that prostitution and the sex industry more generally enjoy high visibility in Swiss cities, and, indeed, throughout Europe. My data included billboards such as the one in the picture but also shop fronts, newspaper ads, graffiti and websites – all of which are an integral part of the semiotic landscape of Switzerland. In the paper I was quoting the 2005 National Security Report for Switzerland as follows:
Everywhere in Switzerland the number of prostitutes and relevant establishments increased in 2005. In Zurich, for example, the number of prostitutes has risen by almost 20% since 2003; in Basel a new brothel opened on average every two weeks in 2005. For the whole of Switzerland, the profits of the sex industry are estimated to be around CHF 3.2 billion per annum. (Bundesamt für Polizei, 2006; my translation)
These numbers are provided by the Federal Police and they just confirm the pervasiveness of the sex industry. Outlets of the sex industry enjoy a higher visibility in Swiss cities than churches, and they are immensely more frequent than mosques with minarets, of which there are only four in the whole of Switzerland.
In the referendum last week 57% of Swiss citizens voted for a ban on building minarets because they apparently don’t fit with the traditional Christian character of the country. Seeing that no one is even considering a ban on building brothels, sex shops and other such establishments, I can only conclude that these fit just fine with the traditional cityscapes of European Christianity … as does intolerance, discrimination and bigotry.
This work is licensed under a
It appears that the sex-scape’s visibility is more desired and less likely to offend people than religious buildings. People’s perceptions in Switzerland favor nude pictures on display to minarets – this makes me think of another double standard happening in some parts of Europe (i.e. France) where a woman exhibiting half of her posterior harboring a g-string would be ‘publicly admired’ but stigmatized if she were to wear a veil…
Soopulando (ソープランド: soap lands), cabaree (キャバレー: cabarets), no-pan kissa (ノーパン喫茶: no-panties cafes) were some but major erotic establishments for Japanese men which I grew up hearing so much about (and also seeing) in my hometown of Tsurumi, Yokohama, Japan. There were/are many of those businesses near Tsurumi station and even on the way to my primary and junior high school. These businesses were not shy about advertising their services in public – many colorful ads were posted inside the public phone booths, and fliers (often together with a packet of tissue) were handed out on the streets, many of which ended up in the homes of unsuspecting family members, including young children (like myself). As an adolescent girl (in the 1970-80s), I often wondered what these places were all about, including the ‘love hotels’, but, in hindsight, their (rather ‘creative’) English names functioned to soften the seedy image of the sex industry….
Eye-opening paper, Ingrid. I grew up near the red light district in Antwerp, Belgium and am perhaps a bit jaded by (the omnipresence of) the sex industry. When I was an exchange student in the US, I learned that strip clubs were sanitized erotic establishments that marketed themselves as high-class and, above all, ‘honest’ erotic entertainment businesses. Patronage of these clubs was socially acceptable behavior, both for men and women (perhaps even a bit more so for women).
What is the situation like in the Emirates? I’m assuming that the sex industry there is invisible? How is sex advertised in say, Abu Dhabi?