Cruising in mens room
How did toilet cruising work?
February 17, 2015 3:19 PM Subscribe
Any info or stories about etiquette and exposure mitigation would be of interest.
Bonus points if you can explain how toilet cruising worked in an international context. After a strong warning about how dangerous cruising is in the Middle East, for example, the guide lists toilets in Syria and Kuwait. There are similar listings throughout the world. While cruisin
FOOT TAPPING AND BATHROOM CRUISING....Yesterday one of my readers emailed to say he was annoyed by all the ignorant blog commentary emanating from straight young whippersnappers on the subject of Larry Craig's restroom shenanigans in Minnesota:
Here's what set me off: Craig's actions have been considered ample grounds for arrest for decades. Tens of thousands of gay men have gotten permanent records (quite often a fourth or fifth-degree felony), frequently losing jobs and going onto "sex offender" lists. Gay rights advocates contain been furious about this for a long time.Today, non-whippersnapper blogger and culturalIf lefty bloggers feel the Minnesota police behaved outrageously, why haven't they said anything before? If Craig's arrest marks their introduction to this heinous practice, where's the outrage for all the victims? Writing "I don't see how he broke any laws," without comprehending that society criminalized those actions long ago sounds naive. Undertake they really think no one has ever come to that conclusion before — or tried to change the practice and failed?
Appropriately enough, the first thing you see when you walk into Fenster Zum Klo: Public Toilets, Private Affairs, an exhibit at Berlin’s Schwules* Museum about cruising for gay sex in common toilets, is a huge reproduction of a public toilet. The show also features hundreds of historical photos of cruising spots and a comprehensive overview of gay public sex throughout history—but little of that struck me in the way a series of original, staged photos of men caught in the execute of cruising taken by its curator, Marc Martin, did.
Martin’s photos recreate scenes of men congregating in old Berlin toilets that were once legitimately cruisey. You see flashes of a hard dick, an exposed ass, a man on his knees at a urinal, three men grabbing a guy’s ass and taking control. But it wasn’t the hyper-sexuality of the photos that grabbed me. It was the golden light that haloed the scenes, the tenderness on the men’s faces, the beauty and romance and desire they portrayed—how clearly these men wanted not just to be fucked, but to be loved.
I was there at the exhibition with my boyfriend, No
Let’s Examine the Phenomenon of Cruising Bathrooms Through 4 Well-known Queer Men
Throughout history and for a variety of reasons, queer men have looked to public bathrooms as places to get laid. Some men verb cruising public restrooms because they’re turned on by the exhibitionism and the possibility of getting caught, while others see it as a place to anonymously and discretely have a same-sex encounter in times when being outed as queer carries severe social, political and legal consequences.
Cruising public restrooms has become an ingrained part of queer history, with mixed feelings surrounding it. On one hand, it’s considered so seedy, sexy and transgressive that “toilet tramp” hookup scenes have become a common scenario in gay porn (and even inspired drawings of gay erotic illustrator Tom of Finland).
On the other hand, it’s also considered by some to be a dark side of queer sexuality and history that has been used to shame queer men for their otherwise harmless sexual proclivities (often in the label of protecting children or adj decency).
Noting both s