A sex shop in Walker's Court, Soho, London.A sex shop on the corner of Otavalankatu and Rautatienkatu in Kyttälä, Tampere, Finland.Sex shops on Boulevard de Clichy, Paris, France.
A sex shop is a retailer that sells products related to adult sexual or erotic entertainment, such as sex toys, lingerie, pornography, and other related products.
An early precursor of the modern sex shop was a chain of stores set up in Paris in the 1920s by Léon Vidal, the founder of the lingerie manufacturing company Diana Slip. His shops sold erotic books and photographs as well as lingerie.[1]
Beate Uhse AG opened a sex shop in 1962 in Flensburg, West Germany, and it has been described as the world's first "official" sex shop. Sex shops can now be found in many countries and online. Sex shops are part of the sex industry. In most jurisdictions, sex shops are regulated by law, with access not legally permitted to minors, the age depending on local law. Some jurisdictions prohibit sex shops and the merchandise they sell. In some jurisdictions that permit it, they may also show pornographic movies in private video booths, or have private striptease or peep shows. An adult movie theater may be attached. There are also many online sex shops selling a variety of adult content such as sex toys, pornographic magazines, pornographic films and fetish wear etc. These types of shop are often favoured by the consumer as they have less overheads and can be perused within the comfort of the home. Their discreetness is also appealing to some.[2]
Terminology
Sex shops may also be called adult shop, erotic shop, adult entertainment store, or adult book store. In some jurisdictions, polite euphemisms are used such as "marital aid store" or "adult novelties store".
History
Australia
Sex shops have operated in Australia since the 1960s, first in the urban areas of Sydney, notably Kings Cross.[citation needed] The development of sex shops in the country was assisted by the legalisation of the import of pornographic magazines in 1971, the appearance of mass-produced battery-powered vibrators in the 1970s and the arrival of X-rated videos in the 1980s. The popularity of Internet pornography in the 2000s resulted in a drop in sex shop sales, some store closures and diversification into non-sex-related adult goods.[3]
Sex shops in Australia are regulated by state laws and are subject to local planning controls. While laws differ between states, licensees must abide by strict conditions that commonly require premises to be at least 200 metres from schools and churches. Windows are often required to be blacked out and admission restricted to over 18s, with offences prosecuted by police under section 578E of the Crimes Act.[4]
In the state of New South Wales (NSW), sex shops cannot trade at street level and are required to trade either above or below ground.[citation needed] Under NSW law, non-contraceptive sex products can be sold only in shops that have been granted a restricted premise licence by local councils. Nevertheless, by 2013 a number of NSW lingerie stores had begun selling adult toys and books in shopping malls without being granted a licence.[4]
Mainland China's first sex shop opened in Beijing in 1993[5] and by 2013 there were over 2,000 sex shops in the city. Most of their products were made in China.[6]
Canada
The first sex shop in North America was called The Garden. It was opened in October 1971 by Ivor Sargent on Crescent Street in downtown Montreal, Quebec. The Garden combined the concepts used by Beate Uhse in Germany and Ann Summers in the UK.[7] The store's opening attracted long lines of shoppers. The Palm Beach Post commented: "Like the chicken or the egg controversy, no one is really sure which came first-the sex boutique or the so-called sexual revolution".[8]
There are no specific laws against using or buying sex toys at any particular age, but there are laws restricting the purchase of pornography. Although the age of consent is 16 in Canada, an age of 18+ is required to purchase or view pornography. Most sex shops sell adult videos, which means that most sex toys are on sale only to adults.[citation needed]
Beate Uhse-Rotermund started selling contraception information by mail order in 1946, and she opened her first shop in 1962. Legal restrictions in West Germany dating back to 1872 were tightened in 1968. Pornography was legalized in West Germany in 1975, although this never happened in East Germany.
Hungary
The first Hungarian sex shop opened on 15 November 1989, before the end of communism in Hungary, at 14 Károly Boulevard in Budapest, under the name Intim Center, which still exists today.[9] At that time, the three T-categories were so suddenly moved from the forbidden to the tolerated that even the press of the time reported the administrative uncertainties surrounding the sex shop in this way.[10]
Italy
The first sex shop in Italy was opened in 1972 in Milan by Angela Masia and her husband Ercole Sabbatini.[citation needed] This was the first "official" sex shop. Since then more sex shops have opened, mostly in Rome.[citation needed] In 2018 the city of Pistoia in Tuscany banned the opening of new sex shops in the city's history centre.[11]
The first sex shops in the Netherlands were opened in the early 1970s, by entrepreneurs like Beate Uhse and Lasse Braun. The world's first Muslim-aimed online sex shop called El Asira opened in the Netherlands in 2010. It had 70,000 hits to the website in the first four days of operation.[12]
Russia
In Russia, sex shops are often criticized by public and political figures, often of a conservative nature.
In May 2017, State Duma Deputy from United RussiaVitaly Milonov addressed the head of the Ministry of Health, Veronika Skvortsova, with the initiative to equate intimate products with medicinal products.[13] According to Milonov, it is necessary to introduce control over the distribution of intimate goods: "The use and application of such products will occur exclusively as prescribed by a doctor."[14]
In 2018, Milonov proposed closing all sex shops in Russia. In his opinion, all sex shops in Russia should disappear along with advertising since only "sick people" shop there.[15] This is in contrast to his position in 2013 when he only called for reducing the number of sex shops in St. Petersburg.[16]
Singapore
Sex shops are extremely rare in Singapore. A few had been opened by 2005,[17] but only about 1–2 currently exist. These shops mainly sell lingerie, condoms, BDSM tools, genuine enhancement pills, tenga items and various sex toys. Their goods can be seen through a store window.[citation needed]
South Africa
After Nelson Mandela backed the anti-discrimination law that legalised sex toys,[18] "Adult World" was established in 1994 as South Africa's first sex shop. Adult World came to operate a total of 52 shops within South Africa and 15 shops in Australia.[19] Many religious Christian communities believed that the use of these adult lifestyle centres would lead to higher crime rates and attempted to organise mass demonstrations at their opening to force the closure of Adult World.[20]
In July 1998, Adult World opened their largest adult lifestyle shop in Parow, Cape Town which they named "Adult World Warehouse". The adult movie star Christi Lake attended the opening of the shop, where a protest march of over 500 people brought traffic to a standstill. During the next couple of days the protesters held placards which proclaimed "Real men don't need pornography" and "Protect our people from banned pornography". When the shop was opened, it was found that 70% of the customer base were women who wished to learn more about adult lifestyle products.[21]
As Adult World grew more popular, a focus on the development of adult shops within Australia took place.[19]
Spain
Sex shops in Spain did not appear until after the end of the Francoist dictatorship in 1975. The first sex shop opened in Spain was Kitsch in Madrid in 1978. Many subsequently opened across the country.[22]
United Kingdom
A sex shop in Bedford with blacked-out windows. It is illegal for sex shops in the United Kingdom to show goods in the window.
Almost all licensed adult stores in the UK are forbidden from having their wares in open shop windows under the Indecent Displays Act 1981, which means often the shop fronts are boarded up or covered in posters. A warning sign must be clearly shown at the entrance to the store, and no sex articles (for example, pornography or sex toys) should be visible from the street. However, lingerie, non-offensive covers of adult material, etc. may be shown depending on the licence conditions of the local authority. The Video Recordings Act 1984 introduced the R18-rated classification for videos that are only available in licensed sex shops. No customer can be under 18 years old.
In London, few boroughs that have licensed sex shops. In the district of Soho within the City of Westminster a handful of sex shops were opened by Carl Slack in the early 1960s, and by the mid-1970s the number had grown to 59.[23] Some had nominally "secret" backrooms selling hardcore photographs and novels, including Olympia Press editions.
In 1978 the businessman David Sullivan opened the "Private Shop", the first of his chain of sex shops which went on to expand across the UK. The Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 required sex shops to apply for a sex establishment licence from their local authority. As a result hundreds of sex shops were closed.[24] There followed purges of corrupt police officers, along with new and tighter licensing controls by the City of Westminster, led to a crackdown on illegal premises in Soho. In the early 1990s, London's Hackney council sought to shut down Sh! Women's Erotic Emporium, because they did not have a licence. Sh! took the council to court and consequently won the right to remain open, as there were no sufficient reasons for the closure. In 2003, the Ann Summers chain of lingerie and sex toy shops won the right to advertise for shop assistants in Job Centres, which was originally banned under restrictions on what advertising could be carried out by the sex industry.[25] In 2007, a Northern Ireland sex shop was denied a licence by the Belfast City Council. The shop appealed and won, but this was overturned by the House of Lords.[26]
The licensing or closing of unlicensed sex shops, along with cultural changes such as the substantial relaxation of general censorship and the ready availability of non-commercial sex, and the availability of sexual material online, have reduced the red-light district of Soho to just a small area. The borough has 15 licensed sex shops and several remaining unlicensed ones. Islington and Camden each have multiple sex shops; the former also has three pornographic cinemas.[citation needed]
In the United States, a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s (based on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution) generally legalized sex shops, while still allowing states and local jurisdictions to limit them through zoning.[citation needed] Zoning regulations often caused shops to be located either on the outskirts of town, or clumped into a single area, creating a type of red light district of adult stores and businesses. Into the 1980s, nearly all American sex shops were oriented to an almost entirely male clientele.[citation needed] Many included adult video arcades, and nearly all were designed so that their customers could not be seen from the street: they lacked windows, and the doors often involved an L-shaped turn so that people on the street could not see in.[citation needed] In addition, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, stores that also had theaters or arcades were sometimes closed by government order, citing the spread of AIDS as the motive.[27]
On the one hand, there are stores resembling the UK's Ann Summers, tending toward "softer" product lines.[citation needed] On the other hand, there are stores that evolved specifically out of a sex-positive culture, such as San Francisco's Good Vibrations and Xandria. The latter class of stores tend to be very consciously community-oriented businesses, sponsoring lecture series and being actively involved in sex-related health issues, etc.
In Japan, pornography has unique characteristics that readily distinguish it from western pornography. Pornographic films are known as "adult videos" (AV) in Japan, so Japanese adult videos (JAV) refers to the Japanese pornographic film industry. Animated films are referred to as hentai in English, but in Japan the terms "adult anime" and "erotic animation" are used. In addition to pornographic videos and magazines featuring live actors, there are now categories of pornographic manga and anime, and pornographic computer games.
Ann Summers is a British multinational retailer company specialising in sex toys and lingerie, with 80 high street stores in the UK, Ireland, and the Channel Islands. In 2000, Ann Summers acquired the Knickerbox brand, a label with an emphasis on more comfortable and feminine underwear, while the Ann Summers-labelled products tend to be more erotic in style. The chain had an annual turnover of £117.3 million in 2007–2008.
Beate Uhse-Rotermund was a German pilot, entrepreneur and sex pioneer. She was one of the very few female stunt pilots in Germany in the 1930s. During World War II she ferried planes for the German Luftwaffe and after World War II she started a sex shop. The company she started, Beate Uhse AG, is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Agent Provocateur is a British lingerie retailer founded in 1994 by Joseph Corré and Serena Rees. The company has stores in 13 countries.
Beate Uhse Group BV is a German industry group which focuses on selling adult entertainment in the form of sex toys, lingerie, clothing and pornography. It is the most successful company in the German sex industry, and the country's leading pornography retailer.
Pornography has been dominated by a few pan-European producers and distributors, the most notable of which is the Private Media Group that successfully claimed the position previously held by Color Climax Corporation in the early 1990s. Most European countries also have local pornography producers, from Portugal to Serbia, who face varying levels of competition with international producers. The legal status of pornography varies widely in Europe; its production and distribution are illegal in countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and Bulgaria, while Hungary has liberal pornography laws.
Good Vibrations is a sex-positive San Francisco-based corporation selling sex toys and other erotic products. It operates nine retail stores: seven in the San Francisco Bay Area, one in Brookline, Massachusetts, and one in Harvard Square; a mail-order business; an e-commerce website; a wholesale arm; and an erotic-video production company, Good Releasing. Formerly, it operated three publishing companies: Down There Press, Passion Press and Sexpositive Productions.
The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum was a sex museum in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany.
Babeland, until 2005 known as Toys in Babeland, is a sex toy boutique offering erotic toys, books and pornographic films. Babeland has an online store and four retail stores.
The Venus Award is a film award in the adult film industry presented yearly in Berlin since 1997 as part of the Venus Berlin trade fair, an international erotic trade festival, on the exhibition grounds at the Funkturm.
The Erotixxx Award is a film award in the adult film industry presented by German magazine eLine. Between 2005 and 2009, the award was presented yearly as part of the Venus Berlin trade fair, an international trade festival of the erotic. The Erotixxx Award was the successor to the Venus Award, which had been presented until 2004 and then resumed in 2010. Starting in 2010, the Erotixxx Award became a part of the erotic fair eroFame in Hannover and, since 2011, it has only awarded innovative products, toys, and companies. During the Venus Berlin years, prizewinners were chosen by a jury and by a ballot of webmasters or registered users of several German erotic websites. Since that time, they have been chosen by the editorial staff of eLine and EAN.
An adult movie theater is a euphemistic term for a movie theater dedicated to the exhibition of pornographic films.
Xandria was one of the largest distributors of sex toys and adult videos, books and novelty items in the United States. It began as a catalog of sexual aids for people with disabilities at a time when the disability rights movement was in its infancy. Xandria was also one of the first companies to sell sex-related items online. The business closed in 2016 when Lawrence Research Group, Inc., which operated the business, filed for dissolution with the Nevada Secretary of State.
Pulse and Cocktails is a chain of sex shops in England, specialising in lingerie, bondage, sex toys and other items. They also have an eCommerce website offering Click + Collect in-store and Delivery. They claim to have the largest stores of any sex shop chain in Europe, with the main branch in Rotherham having a floor area of 7,000 square feet (650 m2).
Lovehoney is a British business that sells sex toys, lingerie and erotic gifts on the Internet. Their tagline is "the sexual happiness people". In addition to retailing, Lovehoney has over 400 own brand products and does development and publicity. In 2014 the company was the focus of a television show entitled Frisky Business, which looked at their day-to-day operations.
In the United Kingdom, pornography is regulated by a variety of laws, regulations, judicial processes, and voluntary schemes. Pornographic material generally has to be assessed by regulators or courts to determine its legality. British censorship laws with regard to pornography have often been some of the most restrictive in Western Europe.
Pornography in Germany is legal, with the exceptions of zoophilic and child pornography. Akin to many other countries, child pornography in Germany is illegal. German prosecution authorities and legal bodies of Germany's 16 states handle the definition of child pornography very differently, but all 16 states ban child and zoophilic pornography, and it is illegal to watch or access any pornography for minors under 18 in Germany. The German Edathy affair of 2013/14 following the neglected cooperation of BKA within the Canadian child pornography uncoverings gave way for new legislation procedures in parliament to define the status of either posing or exhibitive pictures of minors. New laws were still in parliamentary debating as lately as 19 December 2014.
Beate-Uhse.TV is a private television station in Germany belonging to the Beate Uhse sex shop franchise, dedicated to softcore pornography. It is operated by tmc Content Group GmbH based in Berlin. Beate-Uhse.TV broadcasts daily from 20:15 to 5:45.
Romantic Depot is a brand of lingerie stores that sells sexual health and wellness products. It was founded in 2000 by Glen Buzzetti.
↑ "Dunántúli Napló, 1989. November (46. évfolyam, 302-331. Szám) | Könyvtár | Hungaricana". A sex shop called Intim Center opened in Budapest, at 14 Tanács Boulevard. You can buy everything from videotapes to dildo. And it's legal! Or so we were led to believe, as the opening of the shop was reported with great acclaim in the main newspapers. But now, according to the Esti Hírlap, it turns out that there are no licences involved. A staff member of the newspaper called the Ministry of Culture and was told that the shop does not have the right to sell the malachagas that are on the shelves. The matter is being investigated, but the shop will not be closed for the time being.
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