Public toilet cruising gay
Of the places gay people have transformed into sites to cruise for sex—from parks like the Central Park Ramble and Berlin’s Tiergarten, to sanctums prefer Provincetown’s Dick Dock and Fire Island’sMeat Rack—few have impacted the queer psyche like the widespread restroom.
“Mischief in universal toilets left more traces in vice squad logbooks than in high literature,” photographer Marc Martin writes in the introduction to his new exhibition at Berlin’s Schwules* Museum, Fenster Zum Klo [Window to the Toilet]: Universal Toilets, Private Affairs. (Full disclosure: I’m a Schwules* employee in the curation and exhibition department.) And while many modern queers would rather forget this chapter of their people’s sordid past, public restrooms are undeniably places where community and connection were kindled among us against unlikely odds. “These common toilets, whose history is intertwined with the lives and adventures of many gays, trans people, escorts, libertines, are also unlikely bastions of freedom,” Martin writes.
Martin has spent years collecting tens of thousands of historic objects and photos and conducting dozens of interviews about restrooms to try to capture the essence
Public bathroom gay cruising: Exploring the dynamics and culture of public bathroom cruising
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| ktrackertime | Monitors abnormal conditions during y Cottaging & Cruising: Legal PenaltiesWhat is the history of cottaging?In the mid 20th Century, those who partook in cottaging didn’t execute so out of fantasy or fetish. Cottaging was the only way that gay men could connect other gay men, secret away from the government. Furthermore, the concept of being “out” wasn’t normalised yet, and so a surreptitious culture of common sex began across the country. The government would dispatch units of police officers to inspect public toilets and parks in a bid to “rid England of this plague”, with undercover police often arresting cottagers for indecent assault. Whatsmore, it’s estimated that during the 1950’s approximately 1,000 men were imprisoned every year for cottaging and “lewd” behaviour. Is cottaging still popular today?Cottaging is becoming less popular as gay rights progress further. The secret side of queer relationships we witnessed in the past now welcomes modern LGBT family models, marriages and parenting styles. Despite the dwindling numbers, cruising grounds and cottaging spaces can still be located in most cities, if you recognize where to look! How did toilet cruising work? |