Private Parts & Public Sex (Yasmin Nair)
I saw this piece on the Queer to the Left mailing list, and fell absolutely in love with it . Ms Nair is a Chicago area teacher, writer and activist who has a unique talent for getting to the heart of a question with relatively few words. We on the Left could use a lot more like her. Yasim’s words follow:
http://www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=9037
Recently, Chicago’s North Side paper Inside ran a story about Montrose Harbor’s Magic Hedge that should cause concern among LGBTQs. The Hedge is a man-made bird sanctuary, created on a former nuclear missile site; it’s also a cruising area. The Harbor is on a famously artificial lake shoreline. Last year, police arrested nearly 70 men for “public indecency.” (www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?)AID=7264. Now, resurrecting complaints about cruisers supposedly disturbing migratory birds, the Chicago Park District will add fences and “No Trespassing” signs, allowing the police to “clear the area of illegal trysts in a simple and effective way.” The headline refers to cruisers as “gay prostitutes.” (www.insideonline.com/site/epage/26127_162.htm )
“Gay prostitution” incites sexual and moral panics. The idea that gay men have anonymous sex outside their homes reinforces fears about them as the originators and carriers of AIDS. As for prostitution: In a sane society, sex work/prostitution would be legal. Regardless, cruising rarely involves money. Cruisers often self-identify as men who have sex with men, not as “gay.” Cruising suspends divisions between classes, races, sexualities, and gender identifications.
Cruising has always been an integral part of queer culture, but it’s under attack by gays fixated on respectability. Arrested men might plead
guilty to save themselves from exposure. Their differing social, economic and sexual identities make them unlikely to organize as a constituency and more vulnerable as targets of harassment.
And there are the birds. The caption to Inside’s photo of the harbor reads: “Along with migrating birds, peace may return to bird sanctuary.” Peace and birds? A photo of a gull strangled by a stray condom couldn’t evoke more sympathy. Like the swallows of Capistrano, the birds of the Magic Hedge are proof of nature’s cycle of life.
In contrast, cruising is criminalized because it’s perceived as a non-procreative and unnatural activity. It’s frequently referred to as “public sex,”reinforcing a distinction between personal and private. Sex at “home” is more valued than sex “outside.” But as LGBTQs know at our cost, that distinction does not always work in our favor. We are always only one arrest away from being imperiled in our private spaces. We’d like to believe that sex only occurs in “committed” relationships.
The truth is that sex is infinitely varied in its pleasures and can be quick, silent, and anonymous. Most of us have fantasized about or engaged in fleeting encounters. Cruising allows straights and queers to commingle and part, without placing constraints upon each other. Against the cold tiles of a public restroom or in the leafy enclave of a bush, who cares about sexual identity?
We should acknowledge the pleasures of cruising and sex in “public” venues instead of criminalizing them. Public sex can bring us our first sexual encounters. And what would sex look like without voyeurism?
Opponents argue that children should not be exposed to sex in public. But cruising is usually silent and secluded. The thrill lies in sex with someone whose name you never care to know. It’s highly unlikely that a child will see something but if so, why not simply explain the circumstances? Children are resilient and able to make sense of complicated scenarios. Do we fear them learning that people have sex outside their bedrooms? Do we feel such panic when they see straight couples grope and kiss in public?
Cruising is neither gay nor prostitution. Criminalizing it will not make it disappear, especially since straights like it too much. Cruising defines a healthy sexual culture, queer or straight, and it’s a reason why we choose to live in cities. Cities are where we exercise anonymity, dispense with some identities and adopt others and, yes, engage in trysts. Lose all that and we might as well be stuck in the desert of suburbia, with its carefully trimmed bushes and its utter lack of sexual magic.
Which brings me back to the Magic Hedge. It’s a lovely and justifiably treasured space, but the talk about preserving its “natural” beauty is growing tiresome. Given its history, it’s fair to say that the sex is its oldest and most natural feature.
Gregory A. Butler
August 6, 2005 @ 9:04 pm
Brother Louis,
Crusing isn’t gay???
Are you kidding???
If a man is having sex with another man, that is inherently homosexual activity…in fact, it fits the very textbook definition of “homosexual“ [=same sex]
This applies even if one of those homosexual men is in DENIAL about his homosexuality…
He’s still gay, even if he has a wife at home, who he pretends to be sexually attracted to, while he secretly dreams of men [and acts out those dreams in some sleazy alley – or, in the Chicago case, in a bird sanctuary]..
Bottom line, no matter what you think about cruising, it is a gay activity [even of some of those men go home and pretend to be straight afterwards]
GREG BUTLER
Louis Godena
August 6, 2005 @ 9:35 pm
Hi Greg; Well, I don’t believe there are homosexuals, only homosexual acts (i.e. sexual activity between people of the same gender). I think everyone is inherently bisexual, that is capable of being attracted to people of their own sex. For some, it may be a 5% attraction one way, 95% the other, (and this can and does change throughout one’s lifetime). No one, I believe is *completely* hetero or homo sexual. But this misses the point. People can and do “cruise” people of their own gender and people of the opposite gender. Many if not most of the people I know consider themselves “sexual” not straight or gay. And most of the people I know “cruise” in one sense or another regardless of their sexual orientation. There is nothing “sleazy” about cruising itself — quite the opposite, but yes attempts at intimacy or the need for affection or sexual release can lead to untoward consequences, particularly in backward, religious-cursed America, but that is not inherently the fault of natural sexual desires, only the context in which they are acted out.
Gregory A. Butler
August 7, 2005 @ 1:44 am
Brother Louis,
You must know some VERY different folks than I know… Most people I know are either straight, gay or “bisexual“… Yes, there is some overlap, but generally speaking, most folks fall into one of those three catagories and the fast majority of people fall into the first catagory…
Beyond that, isn’t there something inherently sleazy about a married guy, who pretends to be straight, (and has even convinced some woman so thorughly that he’s hetero that she actually married the dude) going out and having sex with some guy???
I used to work in a sheet metal shop where there were a number of guys like that, who swore up and down that they were straight, and the other man was gay (because they were doing the penetration, and the other man was on the recieving end)
Eventually, during the course of the two years I worked in that shop, two of the guys had the decency to “come out of the closet“ leave their wives, honor the reality that they were in fact homosexuals and move in with each other as a couple
Interestingly enough, nobody in the shop had a problem with it, they were accepted by their fellow workers…especially since they had tried so hard to pretend to be straight (pictures of naked women over their workbenches, constant sex talk…one guy even had a photo album filled with naked pictures of his wife that he would show to the other men, just to “prove“ he wasn’t gay)
The workers in this shop weren’t any Upper West Side liberals either…they were a mix of American Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Italian Americans and Jews…some of the Latin guys were fundamentalist Christians…
But, nobody had a problem with these guys coming out of the closet…in fact, being true to who they really were made them easier to be around, and actually made them more accepted by their co-workers…
Now, I understand that there is a deep homophobic bias in this country, reinforced by the almost medieval religious climate here and I can perfectly understand why guys might have to pretend to be straight to escape persecution
But, it’s one thing to lie to your boss your neighbors and your pastor…it’s a whole different ball of wax to lie to the mother of your kids
And there’s the public health question…some of these allegedly “straight“ guys who “cruise“ for sex in fetid alleys and behind dog urine stained bushes in parks do NOT use condoms…because using a condom would mean acknowledging the fact that they are having sex with men…
These “downlow“ men (to use the African American slang term) are a leading cause of HIV and AIDS infection among Black women, and the problem exists among other races as well
It would be better for us to fight for a society where every gay person, from a sheet metal worker on up to the Governor of New Jersey, could be openly and honestly homosexual (or, as Jim McGreavey put it, a “Gay American“) rather than having to have a fake wife, and hiding their real sexual identity in some disgusting dark corner
GREG BUTLER
Louis Godena
August 7, 2005 @ 2:07 am
I think Yasmin is right; cruising is neither prostitution nor gay. Straights have sex in “fetid alleys” and in putrid areas in parks, lavatories and bedrooms. So what? Cruising and casual sex and multi-partner sex are more of the “norm” in human life than is “straight” married sex. Nearly all of us count among our earliest formative sexual experiences those of an anonymous or at least casual nature. Yes, it is better if one is honest, including being honest with one’s self. I think there is a stereotype (one that is vaguely homophobic in nature) that casts gay or lesbian or bisexual people as somehow outside the pale of forthright human relationships. Your comments concerning the lurking, deceitful married gay man is a bit of a stereotype itself (several gay or bisexual men I know have loving relationships with knowing and supportive spouses; as the galaxy of sexual practices widens and becomes more accepted, this trend will continue. The issue for me is always class; does one have a good understanding of the role of class in the developing of human relationships? And is one forthright and honest in one’s dealings with others? It is not good policy to be “fake”, whether someone is gay, straight or in-between (where in fact most of us are; but, neither is it the touchstone of wisdom to make blithe assumptions about one’s character based upon the gender of those one chooses to love. Good to hear from you, Greg.
Gregory A. Butler
August 7, 2005 @ 2:01 pm
Brother Louis,
I’m not judging the character of individuals based on “the gender of those [they] choose to love“…I’m judging their character based upon their CONDUCT…which is a good way to judge anybody’s character
And there is something inherently sleazy about lying, being deceitful and leading a double life…
I also think that, perhaps, your circle of aquaintances are unusually libertinous and promiscuous, far beyond the norm in American society…
You keep talking about these folks, who think of themselves as “sexual“ and are somehow beyond gay or straight…I don’t know anybody like that (and, honestly, I wouldn’t WANT to know anybody like that)…but apparently you do…
You also claim that “nearly all of us“ had anonymous or casual sex encounters as part of our “earliest formative sexual experiences“
Well, call me sheltered, but that never happened to me…
I DO have friends (female and male) who’s “earliest formative sexual experiences“ involved being molested by married adult male athority figures…and, needless to say, this did NOT work out well for them…and also accounts for my disgust with perverted married guys who screw around with random people, and then go home to their partners….
I did have a downstairs neighbor who’s husband was “straight“ but liked to have sex with men [of course, he wasn’t gay!!! – the other guy was!]….
This led to her getting AIDS, having a misscarrage, and then dying an early death…
Again, this makes me far from sympathetic for closeted homosexual men who are married to women, but screw aroud with other guys [but, of course, THEY ARE NOT GAY!!!! – and they’d agree with you that crusing is “not gay“, even though it centers around a man having sex with another man]…lots of women have died of AIDS because their “not gay“ husbands go out “crusing“….
You also know these “several gay or bisexual men“ who’s “spouses“ (do you mean “wives“, or are these “Massachussets marrages“ between men??) are cool with them screwing around with other dudes….
These must either be the most selfless, doormat like women on the face of the earth, or these are women who married for money, and who have an “arraingment“ wherby they let their husband sleep around, in return for which they get all the financial benefits of marrage…
There ARE quite a few stockbrokers, bankers, lawyers and other bourgeous types here in New York (including, allegedly, our last two mayors) who conducted their personal affairs on those sordid terms…
That’s how Nelson Rockefeller died…he had a heart attack while his mistress was having oral sex with him, in her house across the street from where he lived with his wife…(he would have lived, but his bodyguards had to take him back across the street to his house before they could call the paramedics – by the time EMS got there, Rockefeller was a goner)
In other words, what your describing sounds like bourgeois immorality….a far cry from how a moral working class society would be run
GREG BUTLER
Louis Godena
August 7, 2005 @ 2:25 pm
Hi again, Greg; Yes, you’re right. No one in their right frame of mind would countenance people being deceitful, least of all to those they love. But, we’re not talking about that. We (or, at least, I) speak of those whose affectional preferences are not precipitated by notions of gender or sexual roles, but who perhaps find themselves drawn to others for different reasons. There are doubltess many alienated, lonely and bereft individuals who, having been schooled in the basic tenets of capitalism, find it difficult to share emotional intimacies. Promiscuity means different things to different people. I know men and women who might fit your definition of “promiscuous”, that is, they enjoy physical relationships with partners of both genders, but choose for emotional or whatever reasons to live openly with a particular person with whom they are “monogomous” emotionally. I do not think of these people as “sleazy”, and yes most of them cohabit in a university or artist population, which is not exactly my milieu, but they seem perfectly happy (some have been together for quite some time, more than a decade), and, really, Greg, isn’t that what *really* matters? You will have to describe for me someday how a “moral” working class society would be “run”. I know you don’t mean a sort of “morals supervisor” scrutinizing the genitalia of people’s prospective lovers to make sure they don’t “match”, or someone who enforces a sort of “code” based on dispensations that have passed into history but which nevertheless are kept alive by the very “immoral” reason that it favors a class or group of classes which have outlived their “moral” usefulness. No, I suspect, like me, you yearn for a society where each individual is allowed to become his or her “essential” self, a society free of exploitation and abuse, where voluntary associations facilitate the fulfillment of each individual spirit, rather than retard it. That’s what you want, Greg, and that’s what I want too. You are one of the most gifted individuals I have ever met, a person who, given free reign in a free society would accomplish wondrous things. Please don’t get bogged down in superfluities involving the mere rubbing together of body parts. That’s fun, and necessary, but it’s more important to keep doing the work you’re doing. *That’s* invaluable.
Gregory A. Butler
August 7, 2005 @ 2:28 pm
Brother Louis,
Oh, one other thing I forgot to say… I HATE it when people make broad sweeping statements about what other people think (without providing evidence for those statements) when they are really speaking for themselves…
In other words, instead of claiming, with no evidence, that “most people“ are “bisexual“, why don’t YOU comment on YOUR personal sexual orientation?? Almost everybody I know is straight, but I do know men who are openly and honestly gay and women who are openly and honestly lesbians…
I know some closet cases too…I’m aquainted with at least one lesbian who lives with a guy because she wanted to have kids (and she doesn’t make a lot of money while he has a good job with the Department of Ed)…and I have known several closeted homosexal men who, due to societal pressures, had to have fake marrages with women while they spent much of their free time chasing after gay men (and, in fact, that’s who they’re REALLY attracted too – none of these guys really likes women AT ALL)
Instead of claming, again, with no evidence, that “most people“ have had random anonmyous sex as their earliest sexual experience, why don’t YOU speak about YOUR earliest anonymous sexual experiences (if indeed that was the case for you)???
And, instead of claming that you know “several gay or bisexual men“ who’s “spouses“ (your not clear on if those are male or female “spouses“) are cool with them having random gay sex with random gay men, why don’t you comment on how YOUR WIFE feels about YOU having random gay sex with random gay men (if you in fact engage in such a practice)????
I really don’t know any women like that..far from it.. I have a female friend, a former co worker, who found out her boyfriend was having sex with another dude…
The boyfriend went to Puerto Rico on vacation, and spent two weeks sharing a bed with another dude – he swore up and down that him and the other dude didn’t have sex..but, since she’s not an idiot, she didn’t buy it, ESPECIALLY since she’d been suspicious for months about him having homosexual tendencies….instead, she went totally apeshit, flew into a rage, and immediately dumped the guy
Bottom line, it’s better to speak for yourself than to speak for others ….and it’s more HONEST…
Raina
August 9, 2005 @ 3:13 pm
I don’t see the dichotomy here between being honest, which should be a given in any intimate personal relationship, and being free to love whomever one chooses. Greg seems to equate promiscuity or a preference for one’s own sex (or both) with lack of character. I assume from both anecdotal evidence (personal experience and that of close friends) and the findings of researchers, that peculation, double-dealing, and other features of an untoward character, occur just as frequently in all varieties of sexual orientations. For every lover who “dumps” his or her significant other due to the discovery of sexual indiscretions, there are commensurate cases of people being thrown over for financial, or racial, or family reasons. One either accepts the character of one’s partner or one doesn’t. Why try to give it a moral dimension?
Heather
August 9, 2005 @ 4:58 pm
I understand Yasmin to be saying that the fear being whipped up around casual sexual encounters is part of a general scheme to enhance state repression. To be for or against “promiscuity” is beside the point.
Stephan Gunholst
August 9, 2005 @ 5:24 pm
hi; i’ve been following this discussion with some interest. disintegrating societies, particularly those which are militaristic in character, frequently go through orgies of promiscuity until some new tenable morality is adopted. i agree with yasmin that the issue is state repression of ‘illegal sex’ and that the action of the chicago police has nothing to do with some ethereal sense of moral duty.
Gregory A. Butler
August 14, 2005 @ 4:22 pm
Stephan, Heather, Yasmin and Louis,
It would be one thing if the original article was framed simply in terms of opposing police repression. As a revolutionary worker activist (and as an American Black male) I oppose police persecution on General Principle.
This ESPECIALLY applies when it comes to victimless crimes. While a closeted homosexual man cheating on his wife with an anonymous openly gay dude may be morally wrong, a public health hazard [AIDS, STDs ect] and a civil tort [ie grounds for divorce due to adultery] it does NOT rise to the level of a crime.
If Louis, and Yasmin Nair, the author of the original article, had left it at that, I’d be on board.
But, instead, they launched into a full on defense of public immorality and closeted homosexuality. Instead of condemning a society that makes gay men pretend to be straight, have fake marrages to women and then have sordind high risk disease ridden public sex with male prostitutes, it PRAISED this cauldron of social pathology as if it was the highest achievement of human sexuality.
In a truly free society (that is, in a working class ruled society after an authentic communist revolution), gays and lesbians would be free to be who they are…
Gay men wouldn’t have to hide in the closet in sordid fake marrages with women, and go out and have high risk dangerous impersonal sex with strange men in fetid alleys.
Instead, they could come out of closet early in life, and lead healthy openly gay lives.
Also, lesbians wouldn’t have to enter into fake marrages with men [and/or work as prostitutes, strippers or other sex workers for straight men] because of men’s higher incomes. Instead, women would, finally, after thousands of years of patriarchy, would have full economic, social and political equality with men, which, for lesbians, would open the door to them not having to entier into fake relationships with men, and instead would enable them to have real relationships with other women.
That’s the kind of society I’d like to see, not Louis’ and Yasmin’s perpetual closet.
GREG BUTLER
Louis Godena
August 15, 2005 @ 10:05 am
Well, I can’t speak for Yasmin, but mine was not a defense of “immorality”, public or otherwise, and certainly did not advocate “closeted” homosexuality. I do not condone clandestine relationships built on fear or deception. And I am second to no one, including the estimable Greg Butler, in wanting a society where each can be him/herself in every sense of the word. The problem may lie in semantics (yes, I celebrate “public” sex, though of course not in front of minors or disapproving onlookers), or perhaps in differing values. I do not think men having sex with men, or women with women, singly or in groups, constitutes a “cauldron” of “social pathology”; it is to my mind a normal celebration of human possibilities. But each has one’s own sexual proclivities, and the moral and political dimensions which inevitably accompany them. I share with Greg (and, I assume, with Yasmin)a distaste for coercion in personal relationships, and, I trust, we can leave the matter there.
Rick
July 27, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
Cruising at the Hedge brings on many problems. As a police officer who patrols the area I can attest to the large number of condoms, lubrication wrappers, condom wrappers and used tissues found within the bushes. Also to consider are the trampled plants and bushes caused by men seeking privacy with each other. The Montrose Bird Sanctuary in only about 15 acres in itself so the large number of cruisers who continuously wander back and forth in an endless search for annonymous sex can add up to a lot of damage to the natural area in and of itself. I have asked men cruising here to consider other options such as on-line meet ups, bathhouses, and even larger parks that afford more privacy. There is also a gay beach off of Hollywood along the lake front that gay men can strike up a conversation with each other and see were it leads. I support the gay community but I do not support cruising in this area and I have unapologetically arrested men having sex here when I caught them. Gay sex is fine but when it comes to illegal public sex the preservation and respect for this sanctuary is more justified on a moral level. Ms Nair’s statement “It’s a lovely and justifiably treasured space, but the talk about preserving its “natural” beauty is growing tiresome.” is disturbingly callous.