The Sexual Politics of Antiurbanism
My dissertation project will examine how antiurbanist ideology and culture shaped the sexual politics of the Philadelphia metropolitan area in the wake of suburbanization and the sexual revolution from the 1970s into the 1990s. Central to this is the question of what strategies suburbanites developed to deal with what they believed to be sexual threats inside and emanating from the city. The political struggle over the construction of urban places into either sexualized or desexualized spaces will be investigated, analyzing which approaches were deployed by urban and suburban actors. On the one hand, strategies of eradication, containment, or flight apply for those against the sexualization of spaces. On the other, strategies of resistance, acquiescence, or tolerance for those affected. A central hypothesis of this project is that residents deserted the city for suburbia as a reaction to sexual liberalization in public spaces and Philadelphia’s city government spent the subsequent decades trying to convince these people to return.
Sexual liberalization in the 1970s was particularly pronounced in urban areas. The growing acceptance of pre- and non-marital sex led to more visible forms of courtship, queer and women’s rights groups publicly championed their causes, and sexualized commerce became a major part of the urban landscape. This, I will argue, reinforced the association of cities with nonnormative, minority, or deviant sexualities in the minds of many, strengthening antiurbanism. However, because previous strategies of brazen repression of these sexualities became less palatable or even illegal due to the Civil Rights movement, the primary antiurban strategy to deal with their public appearance in cities was for white people to flee to the suburbs. Rather than share public space with sexual expressions they were at the least uncomfortable with and often viewed as threatening to their own norms, mores, or lifestyle, Americans subscribing to heteronormativity left and worked to keep non-conforming sexualities out of their neighborhoods, contained in the city. Yet, fleeing the city did not abate their anxieties. A risk of exposure remained for those who travelled into the city, whether commuting to work, shopping, or seeking city thrills. Thus, efforts of suppression continued. Particularly by the 1980s, with the advent of the New Right and the AIDS epidemic, previously unpopular efforts at eradicating public sex became politically feasible strategies once more. The boisterous mood of the 1990s allowed for growing tolerance of some forms of urban sexuality, while at the same time the repression particularly of racial minorities in relation to sexuality was intensified. I aim to investigate suburbanites’ role in the appearance of this oppressive regime of sexual politics.