Today we discuss an article by Alan Berube called “Resorts for Sex Perverts: A History of Gay Bathhouses.”
A transcript is included below.
Credits:
Host and Transcript: Chris Brunet
Research and Discussions: Sarah McCarthy and Kathryn Yetter
Sound Editing and Recording: Jill Rix
Bérubé, A.. Resorts for Sex Perverts A History of Gay Bathhouses. In My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, and Labor History. : University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved 25 Feb. 2018, from http://northcarolina.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5149/9780807877982_berube/upso-9780807834794-chapter-5.
Transcript:
Transcript
Chris Brunet: Its February 21st, 2018 we’re in Grinnell IA, I’m Chris Brunet,
Sarah McCarthy: I’m Sarah McCarthy
Kathryn Yetter: I’m Kathryn Yetter
Chris: Today we’re discussing an article by Alan Bérubé called “Sex perverts: A History of Gay Bathhouses” We asking how ordinary public institutions, bathhouses, became vibrant and important places which were both safe havens and social communities for gay men.
Kathryn: So Bérubé opens up the article talking about the sexual outlaw nature of homosexuality at the time and needing to find these cracks in society where gay men can be intimate and anonymous with one another and enjoy sexual encounter. So we having recordings of bathhouses as gay institutions as early as the 1890s but they’ve involved significantly since then
Sarah: At first the bathhouses were simply ordinary bathhouses, men would occasionally have sex there but it was unusual. They were just using the spaces that were there
Kathryn: Then we transition into what Bérubé calls “the favorite spots” which refer to bathhouse that had maybe an employee would turn a blind eye or a time when a police officer who would turn a blind eye so, not institutionalized but a little bit more acceptable and there was a slightly larger crowd there.
Sarah: And in these bathhouses the setup was no different than in other Turkish or Russian baths except that they had closed and locked cubicles where sex was permitted
Kathryn: And then we transition into the “Modern gay bathhouse” of the 1950s and 60s, the places were meant to be exclusively gay and catered to sexual and social needs of gay men
Chris: What do you think the advantages that places like modern gay bathhouses offered that their predecessors couldn’t?
Sarah: I think first a foremost the provided safety, the patrons of these bathhouses were much more protected from blackmail at these baths than in other public places and thus you can create a group identity and know that the people at this space won’t be offended by your behavior or your identity
Kathryn: I think that last comment really feeds into the idea that idea of democracy and comradery in these bathhouses, in the article they talked about especially later doing things like movie screenings in the bathhouses
Sarah: These establishments were kind of set apart from the general citizenry so this creates then the first urban zone of privacy so that people don’t have to necessarily worry about this being a public act.
Kathryn: The management and employees because this is there building worked very hard to protect the people, their clientele, from blackmail and violence from the police
Chris: Perhaps one of the most important things that these bathhouses offered was a place for explicit erotic expression and that the place itself defined the type of sex that occurred there.
Sarah: Also a lot of the other facilities that might not be seen as inherently erotic were used for that purpose such as steam rooms, pools, hot air rooms and there were many different scales of larger rooms for group settings
Kathryn: well when they talk about the larger rooms, some of them were even labeled, “orgy rooms” and things like mazes and glory holes made it a very sexual environment
Chris: Bérubé himself argues that not only were these important erotic spaces but that the very existence of them made them a predecessor of early gay rights movements
Kathryn: Yeah I think that the bathhouses as a place of gathering for gay people made it a really easy place to organize where as the anonymity of a park or of ones home is more intrinsically private. I think the bathhouse really owns this border space between a public space because its somewhere anyone can go and a private space because of the nature of the vulnerability of bathing
Sarah: Harvey Milk called our society “fiercely heterosexual, a dangerous place to be gay”
Kathryn: That refers to the public spaces. We have instances of YMCA janitors drilling holes through walls and looking through peepholes to see if they can catch men in the act of having sex with one another and what unique about the bathhouses is that they really straddle this public space and the private space where it can be a place for meeting and a place where people can go outside of their homes to find a community, but it also is private and it has more of a nature of safety to it than we would find for instance in a public park or maybe even a bar
Chris: And in walking this line Bérubé argues, these places were not just a place where men could be openly gay and have social community, they really offered resistance to the norms of heterosexuality in semi-public place where no one had before.
