Cruising mens toilets
How did toilet cruising work?
February 17, PM Subscribe
Any info or stories about etiquette and uncertainty mitigation would be of interest.
Bonus points if you can define how toilet cruising worked in an international context. After a strong warning about how threatening cruising is in the Middle East, for example, the guide lists toilets in Syria and Kuwait. There are similar listings throughout the world. While cruising in the U.S.
Of the places queer people have transformed into sites to cruise for sex—from parks like the Core Park Ramble and Berlin’s Tiergarten, to sanctums fond of Provincetown’s Dick Dock and Fire Island’sMeat Rack—few include impacted the queer psyche like the public restroom.
“Mischief in public toilets left more traces in vice squad logbooks than in high literature,” photographer Marc Martin writes in the introduction to his fresh exhibition at Berlin’s Schwules* Museum, Fenster Zum Klo [Window to the Toilet]: Public Toilets, Secret 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 public toilets, whose history is intertwined with the lives and adventures of many gays, transgender people, escorts, libertines, are also unlikely bastions of freedom,” Martin writes.
Martin has spent years collecting tens of thousands of historic objec
Illegal Sex: Photos exploring Berlin’s Underground Cruising Scene
photo: Marc Martin
With his photo series “Cruising” French photographer Marc Martin reimagines a moment before dating apps, a period when public toilets, were the only place to find sexual encounters for many gay men. Behind closed doors, in front of shiny tiles and messy graffiti, these places were a meeting spot for those who could not use their hold homes, who could not be open about their sexuality and desires. His work is on display at Schwules Museum Berlin in the exhibition “Fenster zum Klo &#; Public Toilets & Private Affairs”.
photo: &#;Cruising&#;/Marc Martin
The photos, set in a vintage Berlin toilet, featuring Berlin models such as Pierre Emö, do not shy away from explicit content. Men out of different social classes, pencil pusher or handyman, share a brief moment of intimacy, crammed in a little public bathroom. The scenario might be staged, yet its setting is original and the behavior shown far from the lived reality of many gay men up to the ’s. Underground Public Toilets at Hermannplatz, Kaiser-
Let&#;s Examine the Phenomenon of Cruising Bathrooms Through 4 Famous Queer Men
Throughout history and for a variety of reasons, queer men have looked to public bathrooms as places to get laid. Some men enjoy 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 develop 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 grow a common scenario in gay porn (and even inspired drawings of same-sex attracted erotic illustrator Tom of Finland).
On the other hand, it’s also considered by some to be a dark side of lgbtq+ sexuality and history that has been used to shame queer men for their otherwise harmless sexual proclivities (often in the name of protecting children or public decency).
Noting both sides, gay vide