Bathhouses, also known as (gay)
saunas or steam baths (and sometimes called, in gay slang in some
regions, "the baths" or "the tubs"), are places where men can go to have
sex with other men. (Note that not all men who visit such bathhouses
consider themselves gay.) Bathhouses for women are much rarer, though
some men's bathhouses will occasionally have "lesbian" or "women-only"
nights.
Bathhouses vary considerably in size and amenities — from small
establishments with ten or twenty rooms and a handful of lockers to
multi-storey saunas with a variety of room styles or sizes and several
steam baths, jacuzzi tubs and sometimes even swimming pools — but nearly
all have at least one steam room (or wet sauna), as well as lockers and
small private rooms. Unlike at brothels, customers pay only for the use
of the facilities; sexual activity, if it occurs, is not provided as a
service by staff of the establishment, but is between customers, and no
money is exchanged. In fact, nearly all gay bathhouses prohibit or
discourage prostitution and ban known prostitutes.
Bathhouses are frequently run twenty-four hours. There is typically a
single customer entrance and exit; the customer can either rent a room —
typically consisting of a locker and a single bed (though doubles are
sometimes available) — or a locker, for a fixed period, typically from
one to twelve hours. In many (particularly outside the United States),
rooms are freely available to anyone who has entered after purchasing a
locker. After paying, the customer is buzzed through the main door. This
system allows establishments to screen potential trouble-makers; many
bathhouses refuse entry to those who are visibly intoxicated, or to
known prostitutes. In some areas, particularly where homosexuality is
illegal, considered immoral, or viewed with hostility, this is a
necessary safety precaution. For similar reasons, some bathhouses
require the presentation of identification, though the majority do not.
Some bathhouses require customers to purchase yearly memberships and
many offer special entry rates to members or to students or other
groups. In some countries, bathhouses restrict entrance to men of
certain age ranges (apart from the general requirement of being an
adult) or physical types, and even perceived nationality or race,
although in other places this would be considered illegal
discrimination. Some bathhouses hold occasional "leather", "underwear"
or other theme nights.
Layout and typical amenities
On being buzzed in, the customer receives a (usually white) towel and
the key for his room or locker. Many bathhouses also give free condoms
and lubricants. Some establishments require a piece of identification or
an item of value to be left with the front desk on entry.
Bathhouses are usually dimly lit, and pipe in music via a sound system.
They are usually laid out in a circular fashion, or in such a way as to
allow or encourage customers to wander throughout the establishment.
Rooms are usually grouped together, as are lockers. Bathhouses are
frequently decorated with posters of nude or semi-nude men, and
sometimes explicit depictions of sex. The heat is kept relatively high.
The customer proceeds to his room or locker where he changes out of his
street clothes and wraps a towel around his waist; most bathhouses are
clothing optional and some encourage total nudity, but in some
bathhouses nudity is forbidden in the common areas of the
establishments. While some men may wear underwear or fetish-wear, in
most bathhouses it is unusual for customers to remain fully dressed in
street clothes. The room or locker key is usually suspended from an
elastic band which can be worn around the wrist or ankle. The customer
is then free to wander throughout the public areas of the bathhouse,
which may include:
* group showers
* steam rooms (sometimes more than one)
* jacuzzi tubs (often located in the steam room)
* dry saunas
* mazes
* dark rooms
* "glory holes"
* theme rooms or areas
* orgy rooms
* video areas playing pornography
* relaxation areas where non-pornographic movies are shown
* café areas where food and/or drinks are served
* bars or full restaurants (these are relatively unusual)
* tanning booths
* gymnasium facilities
* dance areas
* swimming or lap pools
According to The History of Gay Bathhouses, in the 1970s bathhouses
began to install "fantasy environments" which recreated erotic
situations that were illegal or dangerous:
Orgy rooms . . . encouraged group sex, while glory holes recreated
[public] toilets, and mazes took the place of bushes and undergrowth [in
public parks]. Steam rooms and gyms were reminiscent of the cruisy
YMCAs, while video rooms recreated the balconies and back rows of movie
theaters. A popular NYC bathhouse called Man's Country provided a
full-size model of an Everlast truck where visitors could have sex in
the cab or in the rear, which served as an orgy room . . . Man's Country
also offered a . . . fake prison cell made of rubber bars (1).
Many bathhouses have small shops selling such items as cigarettes,
pornography, sex toys, latex gloves, massage oils and lubricants, razors
and shaving cream, aftershave and cologne, toothbrushes, hair products,
and related items. Some also sell condoms, shower gel, shampoo and hair
conditioner, but these are usually provided free.
Some bathhouses provide non-sexual services such as massage and
reflexology.
Etiquette
Customers typically divide their time between the showers/saunas/jacuzzis
and the main areas of the establishment. Customers who have rented rooms
may choose to rest there from time to time, while those who have rented
lockers must rest in the public areas such as the café or lounge.
Customers who have rooms may leave their room doors open to signal that
they are available for sex. An open door can also be an invitation for
others to watch sexual activity that is already occurring, or to join
in. Some men will position themselves to suggest what they might like
from someone joining them in the room. Those who would like to be
penetrated anally ("bottoms") will sometimes lie face down on the bed
with the door open, while those who prefer to penetrate others ("tops")
or to engage in fellatio might lie face up.
In the past, the baths served as community spaces for gay men. Even now,
some men choose to go to the baths with their friends (even though they
may not necessarily have sex with each other). While many men talk to
each other at the baths, even forming long-lasting friendships or
relationships, many others do not, preferring, for various reasons,
anonymity. Interested men will usually look at each other; in this
highly sexualized environment a look is frequently enough to express
interest. A nod signals interest, while looking away or shaking the head
is usually enough to signal a lack of interest, though sometimes people
misunderstand or refuse to take the hint. Such men are called trolls. In
darkened areas of the tubs and in mazes, video rooms, group sex areas,
and the saunas or jacuzzis (but not generally in the showers, toilets,
hallways, gyms, café areas and lounges), men are usually free to touch
other patrons; it is expected and usually — but not always — welcomed. A
shake of the head, or pushing away the other's hand, means that the
attention is not welcomed.
Some establishments encourage sex in public areas (albeit usually
excluding the hallways, toilets, cafés, gyms and lounges) while others
do not; in some jurisdictions such activity is prohibited, and sex must
be confined to private rooms. In such areas individual bathhouses
enforce these rules to varying degrees, often at their own legal risk.
Customers are usually free to watch others masturbating or having sex in
public areas, and also to join in, providing none of the participants
objects.
History
Gay men have been meeting for sex in bathhouses at least since the late
19th and early 20th centuries in the West, a time when homosexual acts
were illegal in most Western countries and men who were caught engaging
in homosexual acts were often arrested and publicly humiliated. Men
began frequenting cruising areas such as public parks, alleys, train and
bus stations, movie theaters, public lavatories ("cottages
(U.K.)/tearooms (U.S.)") and gym changing rooms where they could meet
other men for sex; they also frequented bathhouses, or Turkish baths.
Some bathhouse owners tried to prevent sex between patrons while others,
mindful of profits, allowed discreet homosexual activity (2).
Russian poet, novelist and composer Mikhail Kuzmin (1872–1936) is known
to have patronized bathhouses. Some of the bathhouses in St. Petersburg
at the time became known as friendly to gay men and provided
"attendants," who might provide sexual services for a fee. In his diary,
Kuzmin writes of one bathhouse visit: "the evening I had the urge to go
to a bathhouse simply to be stylish, for the fun of it, for
cleanliness."
In the 1950s exclusively gay bathhouses began to open in the United
States. Though subject to vice raids these bathhouses were "oases of
homosexual camaraderie" and were, as they remain today, "places where it
was safe to be gay", whether or not patrons themselves identified as
homosexual. The gay baths offered a much safer alternative to sex in
other public places (3).
In the late 1960s and '70s, gay bathhouses — now primarily gay-owned and
operated — became fully-licensed, gay establishments which soon became a
major gay institution. These bathhouses served as informal gay meeting
places, places where friends could meet and relax. Gay bathhouses
frequently threw parties for Pride Day and public holidays such as
Thanksgiving and Christmas, when some gays, particularly those who had
been rejected by their families, had nowhere to go.
Another service offered by the baths was voter registration. In the
run-up to the 1980 election, the New St. Mark's Baths in New York City,
with the assistance of the League of Women Voters, conducted a voter
registration drive on its premises (4).
Although most bathhouses do not allow customers to leave temporarily and
re-enter, men frequently used bathhouses as a cheaper alternative to
hotels, with the added attraction of the possibility of sex. This
practice continues today.
Gay bathhouses and STDs
Gay bathhouses have been blamed for the spread of sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs), in particular HIV, and this has forced their closure in
some jurisdictions (see Legal issues, below). There is likely some truth
in this claim, at least in the early days of the epidemic, as condoms
were rarely used between men before the early 1980s, and bathhouses
served as a primary meeting point for same-sex (male) sex partners.
Sociologist and author Stephen O. Murray, however, in his book American
Gay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), writes that, "there
was never any evidence presented that going to bathhouses was a
risk-factor for contracting AIDS."
On the other hand, David Horowitz, writing in Front Page Magazine in
1997, claims that the "re-emergence of a bathhouse-sex club culture that
fosters large cohorts of promiscuous strangers" was responsible for
spreading STDs in urban gay centers. Specifically, he claims that what
he calls "sex clubs" (bathhouses and sex clubs are different types of
establishment; see the Legal issues section for more details) are
responsible for the spread of AIDS:
Cowed by the politically correct activists who have crippled the battle
against AIDS, the media have turned a blind eye to the rash of new sex
clubs and refuse to make the connection that AIDS is as much a
behavioral as a clinical disease(14).
Neither the claim that bathhouses are responsible for the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases, nor the claim that they are not, has been
conclusively proved, but it is known that STDs are spread via
unprotected sex, and as part of their membership agreement, or as a
condition of entry, some bathhouses now require customers to affirm in
writing that they will only practice safe sex on the premises, and
venues frequently provide free condoms, latex gloves and lubrication
(and/or have them available for purchase).
Some anti-bathhouse activists argue that these measures are not enough,
especially given that it is virtually impossible to monitor sexual
activity in a bathhouse; however, while they acknowledge that closing
gay bathhouses may force some men into unsafe or illegal situations in
public parks and lavatories, they point out that they may be less likely
to engage in anal or multipartner sex — both of which put participants
at risk for contracting STDs — in such situations (5).
A related issue is that of drug and alcohol consumption. In some
countries, most bathhouses are prohibited from selling alcohol, but in
other countries, such as Japan, they are not. (In Canada, where some
bathhouses serve alcohol, a bathhouse holding a liquor license may open
it up to liquor inspections, which activists claim are often a pretext
for regulating gay sexual activity.) Many bathhouses deny entry to those
who are visibly intoxicated but do not — or cannot — regulate the
consumption of drugs (typically alcohol, marijuana, poppers, ecstasy and
cocaine) by their patrons. This is a problem because the use of drugs
and alcohol may make people more likely to engage in unsafe sex.
Intravenous drug users may be more likely to share needles, considered a
very high risk activity, while under the effects of narcotics. Sex
clubs, which have no private areas, find it easier to regulate
consumption of drugs on their premises.
The use of Crystal meth is also known to lead to riskier sexual
behaviour, but since gay Crystal users tend to seek out other users to
engage in sexual activity, they often prefer to make such arrangements
via the Internet; for more information, see Crystal and sex.
In some areas, fears about the spread of STDs have prompted the closing
of bathhouses — with their private rooms — in favour of sex clubs, in
which all sexual activity takes place in the open, and can be observed
by monitors whose job it is to enforce safe-sex practices.
Others counter these claims by pointing out that bathhouses are a major
source of safer sex information — they provide pamphlets and post safer
sex posters prominently (often on the walls of each room as well as in
the common areas), provide free condoms and lubricants, and often
require patrons to affirm that they will only have safer sex on the
premises. They point out that closing bathhouses does not prevent people
from engaging in unsafe sex.
[edit]
Bathhouses today
Gay bathhouses today continue to fill much the same function as they did
historically, although the community aspect has lessened somewhat in
many areas, particularly in Western countries, with the increasing
tendency of gay men to come out publicly.
Men still use bathhouses as a convenient, safe place to meet other men
for sex, although in some areas where homosexuality is more accepted,
safety may no longer be a primary attraction. Certainly bathhouses still
offer convenience.
Sexual encounters at bathhouses are frequently, but not always,
anonymous. They sometimes lead to relationships, but often do not.
Bathhouses are still used by men who do not identify as gay or bisexual,
but who have sex with men, as well as by those who are closeted and/or
in heterosexual relationships and by some men who identify primarily as
heterosexual.
The advent of the internet has made it significantly easier to find
lovers and casual sex partners, and some men who used to frequent the
baths may be using internet personals instead. However, for many men the
baths offer other attractions: the opportunity for group sex or sex with
several partners, public sex, the fantasy areas, convenience and safety,
and the use of steam saunas and jacuzzis and other amenities.
Some men also continue to use the baths as a cheaper alternative to
hotels, despite their limitations:
* They tend to be noisy, with the background cacophony of music,
pornography and the activity of other patrons present 24 hours a day.
* The rooms tend to be awkwardly small (little more than a lockable
windowless cubicle containing a locker, a simple bed and a small
dustbin) and rather spartan. While a towel and a bedsheet are normally
included, blankets or bedcovers are most often not provided. Even a
simple electrical outlet may or may not be available in-room.
* They do not provide the comfort, the privacy or anything close to the
fire safety of even the least prestigious hotel or motel room. On May
25, 1977, for example, a fire broke out at the Everard Baths in New York
City, one of the oldest gay bathhouses in the U.S. Nine men died and
several others were seriously injured.
* Entry and exit to the building is subject to strict control.
Bathhouses are often not identifiable as such from the outside, though
this is by no means always true. While some bathhouses are clearly
marked and well lit, in some cases there is no marking other than a
street address on the door of the establishment. Bathhouses sometimes
display the rainbow flag, which is commonly flown by businesses to
identify themselves as gay-run or gay-friendly places. Bathhouses
commonly advertise widely in the gay press (for example there are
two-page advertisements in the British scene magazine Boyz for the
London bathhouse Chariots), they also sometimes advertise in mainstream
newspapers and other media. In 2003, for example, Australia began airing
possibly the world's first television advertisements for a gay
bathhouse. Local TV in the city of Melbourne screened some advertising
for Wet, a sauna in Wellington Street, Collingwood.
Gay Men's Health Crisis - http://www.gmhc.org/index.html
An organization founded in 1981, GMHC offers hands-on support services
in New York City and education and advocacy for hundreds of thousands
nationwide.
The Berkeley Free Clinic - http://www.berkeleyfreeclinic.org/
Community based collectively run clinic, staffed completely by
volunteers. Offers limited medical, dental, and counseling services, as
well as information and referrals.
AIDS meds.com - http://aidsmeds.com/
This HIV+ owned and operated site has easy-to-read guided treatment
lessons, drug information, recent news, community forums, and drug
interactions checker.
Youth Suicide Problems - http://www.youth-suicide.com/gay-bisexual/
A number of facts, articles, links, and resources; many written from an
academic perspective.
Gay Men's Health - http://www.gmhp.demon.co.uk/
Information about this Wiltshire and Swindon organization.
Gay-Bisexual Male Suicide Problems -
http://www.virtualcity.com/youthsuicide/index.htm
The most extensive and comprehensive resources on gay and bisexual male
suicide problems available on the Web.
OzPoz - http://www.ozpoz.org/
Online support, information sharing and discussion for Australian gay
men who are HIV-positive.
Gay Men and HIV/AIDS - http://www.thebody.com/whatis/gaymen.html
Presented by The Body, resources on issues related to men who have sex
with men. Includes topics ranging from bathhouse closures to dating tips
for the HIV positive man.
YoLanda Says .... - http://www.yolandasays.com/
Humorous columns about HIV and AIDS.
POZabilities - http://www.sandiegopozabilities.com/
A social group for HIV+ men in the San Diego area. Details on
activities, events calendar, and photographs.
Hortilad's Place - http://www.hortilad.co.uk/
HIV and AIDS resource and discussion centre. Includes message board,
chat rooms, personal ads, and HIV related links.
xtwkrs.org - http://www.xtwkrs.org/index.php
Information about crystal meth addiction; with a forum, news, personal
stories, and links.
HIV Dating Online - http://www.livingpositive.com/
A free and anonymous way for people with HIV and AIDS to meet for
friendship and dating through personal ads and chat.
Bodywork For Men - http://bodyworkformen.com/
A free site with links to male bodyworkers and masseurs interested in
male clients, a discussion board for bodywork/massage issues, an
exchange board for men seeking to give or to get bodywork/massage from
other men.
Touch For Life - http://www.touchforlife.com
Information about different types of massage. Group for men interested
in massage to contact one another. Massage techniques and sessions. Fees
and biography. Membership required for some pages.
Gay Men Fighting AIDS - http://www.metromate.org.uk/amm/gmfa/
London-based volunteer-led gay men's health organisation which offers
training and support to prevent the spread of AIDS and to improve the
health of HIV positive gay men. Structure, history, volunteer
information, workshop schedule, news releases available.
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