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49 UCLA L. Rev. 1139 (2001-2002)
Sex and the City: Zoning Pornography Peddlers and Live Nude Shows

handle is hein.journals/uclalr49 and id is 1153 raw text is: SEX AND THE CITY: ZONING PORNOGRAPHY PEDDLERS AND LIVE NUDE SHOWS Stephanie Lasker Zoning, which has long been used as a tool to keep out undesirables, has also contributed to the gendering and sexualization of urban space. Zoning protects good women with family values from adult entertainment land uses by zoning such uses as far away from single-family, detached home neighborhoods as possible, and into or close to neighborhoods that lower income women call home. In this Comment, Stephanie Lasker argues that the theory and practice of zoning adult entertainment land uses physically and conceptually separates women from pornographic sexual discourses, thereby denying women meaningful access to a powerful source of the construction of female sexuality. Protected from pornography, middle- and upper- middle-class women can easily push smut from their minds. Women living in the economically depressed neighborhoods, forced to acknowledge the business of sex on a daily basis, see the economic depression and crime associated with the area sur- rounding the adult business in which they must live. In either situation, pornography becomes associated with degeneracy, as well as with male-gendered space. The con- struction of urban space, then, communicates to women that these spaces, including the products consumed inside, are not for them and are to be avoided. Although the zoning ordinances and their supporters purport to restrict adult entertainment land uses, which they indeed do to a certain extent, the ordinances and associated ideology simultaneously insulate and protect these uses. Thus, Stephanie Lasker argues, the logic of the cityscape keeps women from these spaces, both by keeping them from confronting the pornography consumed in these spaces and by protecting the spaces and the pornography for those who have traditionally enjoyed them. Ultimately, for women to change the gender stereotypes and biases with which they live, they must be able to confront the discourses, such as pornography, that construct their sexualities, and address what needs to be changed in these discourses. In order for women to do so, the way people think about * Managing Editor, UCLA Law Review, Volume 49. J.D. candidate, UCLA School of Law, 2002; B.A., UCLA, 1998. I would like to thank Professor Stephen Munzer for his advice during the writing of this Comment. I would also like to thank Professor Chris Mott of the UCLA English Department for always being ready to provide advice, despite my disorganization and inability to ever actually accept his help. Thanks to all of those on the UCLA Law Review who contributed to making my comment readable: Aaron Beard, George Chiu, Shelley Cobos, Jessica Radisich, Stephanie Tinsley, Sarah Armstrong, Lisa Stimmell, Christine Trinh, Marlo Miura (for putting up with my last minute changes), Nicole Gordon, Todd Foreman, Jen Blair, Katherine Ku, and Ted Maya. I would also like to thank Ted for not only being a patient editor-in-chief, but also for providing much-needed intellectual and emotional support for which I am truly grateful. Last but certainly not least, thanks to my wonderful family for giving me the chance to explore who I am and discover my interests. I would like to dedicate this piece to the most intelligent and creative girl in the world, my sister Tina. 1139

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