Cottaging

[TimeAtTheBar]

Is very much still a thing.

My best friend is an older gay man, long term single. Several times a week he visits the ‘naughty toilets’ at several locations around our (small, conservative) town to, er, get his needs met. It’s a whole thing. There are websites and an app to arrange encounters, but you can also just go to these locations on the off chance and there’s a system/signal.

I’m very open minded but I do find it pretty shocking. Also I didn’t know opportunist cottaging was still a thing with the advent of Grindr etc.

He is obviously horrified by the creeping trend for unisex toilets. And it got me thinking that this behaviour is EXACTLY why they are a horrible idea.

Men are just SO different from women. Different motivations, different needs, different boundaries. This drive to pretend we are exactly the same and can pick and choose which one we are is fundamentally a big fat lie.

Im just posting for thoughts really. A post on another thread (the one about wtf moments) made me think of it.

I also have another friend who is happily single but uses Grindr for one off encounters several times a week and from what they both say this is standard behaviour for many gay men. It’s not just the risk of assaults in mixed spaces, it’s the behaviour of men in general, gay or straight.

Solidarity Keyansier

The same sex attraction part common to the LGB is the key reason to organise together, because even if socially and culturally those letters don’t have much else in common, the core legal protections are the same.

huge numbers of parents (especially mothers) of same sex attracted adolescent and adult children stand with you as well as with our lesbian feminist sisters ✊

Being fair to you when i see you post i know what you mean by lesbian and when i see thecloglady post i know what she means by lesbian

unfortunately for anyone who doesn’t recognise either of you they are fucking clueless because you both mean different things

but we both know what i meant about issues 😉

Yeah lesbian sex in the public bathroom...only if they have penises...
This whole problem came about with forced teaming. I have nothing in common with the TI orQ. And certainly we lesbians received no support from the G when this started years ago.
Gay men are just like straight men except more so as they are unaffected and don't adjust to female culture. The same goes for lesbians...my good male friends are married men, Beta males. Gay men are no friends to women.

Thanks @TheClogLady Right back at you. I feel like that there is active discourse (not in this thread I must stress) to unsettle our united goal in legal protections for same-sex peoples by enhancing the view that our goals aren't the same by some bad faith actors (I'm not mentioning any group in particular... but you know the group in particular). And it's frustrating that every time it's voiced, it's shut down instantaneously. But on we fight and march. ✊ "It is happening again" (that's just for the benefit of you and your username lol) - We have had much worse things to deal with and defeated than a bunch of confused bullies who probably need help remembering what day of the week it is, never mind their own pronoun for the particular day.

More vulnerable groups…..gotcha!

@QueenHippolyta
"Gay men are no friends to women."

That's stereotyping. It's true for a subset of gay men but personally I and many of my fellow gay male friends who agree with me will always stand for 1 lesbian woman or even 1 heterosexual woman over 1000 T or Q women, always. Because we are both same-sex attracted. The problem is that the Twitter and social media mob have their already loud voices amplified and highlighted that theirs is "the" voice.

@QueenHippolyta I'm probably around your age and I agree with this. I remember back in the 80s a lesbian friend saying that there was a very strong streak of misogyny amongst a good number of gay men. I understand what she meant so much more now than I did then. (But you still won't find gay men having sex with trans men)

I mean it's obvious they don't like women...what can we expect? 😂👀

Why would anyone do this?!

Not that conservative then 😂

@ohthehorrorthehorror @MsBombastic555 when I came out my 2nd wave lesbian mentors told me they hated gay men, who were superficial and selfish, and who also despised us. We only got together on legal issues.
In all the years nothing has changed . Gay men do nothing to promote women's rights.

Sure we can. And I know lots of men who are not interested in endless hook ups, and that includes gay men.

But in my experience, it's actually a lot more common for women to be totally naive about the gap that exists.

If you look at something simple, like the statistics on how many partners people have, for example. The majority of straight people and lesbians have a pretty small number of partners over a life, somewhere around ten if I recall correctly. There are a few in the next group up, with something like 10 to 30. But above that it gets much smaller very quickly. Very few straight people or lesbians have 100 partners, much less 500. When you see women with numbers like that they are usually involved in prostitution.

Gay men are a different story altogether and a lot of people are very shocked when they see the difference.

I think it's because many people have been exposed to activism that basically said or implied that there were no real difference of that kind between the two groups, and it was homophbia to think otherwise.

😂😂😂

@TheClogLady

Oh, one thing I do absolutely have an issue with is the men who are out having risky sex with other men with an unknowing wife/mother of child at home. I don’t care if that makes me unfashionable or judgemental, you can’t have cake and eat it if that means taking away someone else’s right to informed consent (same goes for straight men having affairs, no homophobia here).

It is fascinating the hoops you felt necessary to jump through here in order to justify your criticism of infidelity in marriage. Which is hardly a controversial or indeed overly conservative position, even by today's standards. I've been quite impressed by how the voices of trans widows have been acknowledged in the trans debates, considering the voices of gay widows have been largely ignored by the 'out and proud' narrative. (Although it was interesting how few bought the Scofield speil). This was brought home to me a couple of years ago (2 maybe 3?) when on a radio show the women?/producers? of the show deemed it necessary to mask the voices of the women who were telling their stories. All of them. The stories were not pretty and spoke to disturbing levels of misogyny that are largely airbrushed from the accepted narrative.

Interested that you consider that hoop jumping? I do tend to constantly reiterate stuff not being -phobic in an attempt to avoid a MNHQ smiting, I wouldn’t feel compelled to do so if it weren’t for the weird rules and external Eyes.

Totally agree re: transwidows voices. Very important to hear them and Tinsel does sterling work holding space for them, often amongst feminist groups (one of many reasons I prefer the SFW approach to the WPUK one).

FWIW though, the husbands who transition in later life are not gay men, they don’t have a exclusive sexual orientation to other males.

The best theory to describe their interest in men, imo, is one that isn’t able to be discussed here because people who like the report button find it offensive.

Suffice to say, it’s entirely possible that the two ‘women’ told to turn it down at a lesbian comedy show may could be two transitioned males motivated by this particular paraphilia. Impossible to tell when some posters use ‘woman’ meaning ‘adult human female’ and some posters use ‘woman’ to mean ‘a human of either sex who claims to have a female gender identity’.

Strange times.

"You have been mentioned on the thread - cottaging" 😂 it's all downhill from here.

I think you have a point. My ex who I suspect has gay tendencies had a mysogynistic streak 🤔 still surely there must be some that genuinely care about woman's rights? A minority? It would be interesting to know when it all boils down to it how much they actually care about women. I think most women are too nice and naive to notice.

I think we all jump through hoops and so often end up excusing or minimising behaviours that have really nothing to do with orientation. (I'm not at all suggesting you are doing that here). I remember being appalled when I learned that the gay community commonly refer to these women as 'beards'. Plenty of misogyny there.

"- I remember watching a BBC3 programme about a boy who identified as a girl and it struck me that all that was really needed was a move out of extremely rural wales and into a big city where friendships could be made with other, similar GNC males."

Because being trans doesn't exist?? So it wasn't possible that this boy did, in fact, identify as a girl?? Good to know you are so skilled that you can diagnose this just from watching a TV programme. WHY is it necessary to make transphobic comments like this?

@TheClogLady rent-a-butch auntie is so right. If those poor young German detrans lesbians had such mentors they would never have seen themselves as trans gay men.

In 2010 we still had older women in the lesbian community who would help and advise the newly come out (of any age) . It was great.
I knew as a girl effeminate boys from the country that came to the city and were gay men; fashion designers, in the arts, interior decorators etc

@MsBombastic555 hehe, I do think women are naive and kind about gay men. Name a gay MP who cares about women...

You say ‘transphobic’ I say ‘protecting minors from a pathway that leads to the amputation of their genitals’

Good to know you are so skilled that you can diagnose this

Haven’t you heard? The diagnosis requirement is now considered to be oppression. Team Trans are all about Informed consent and Self ID.

YOU are transphobic by 2022 standards, being a transitioned person won’t save you from those accusations.

and no, I don’t believe a teenager is capable of giving informed consent to become a medical patient for life.

@sashagabadon ·
''I was listening to a podcast with Louise Perry the other day and she made the point that if you want to see what male sexuality is like in all it’s glory look at the activities of gay men.''

This is a rather sweeping generalisation and smacks of homophobia.

Not all gay men behave in the same way. To suggest that if a man is gay they are automatically into casual sex, saunas and cottaging is completely inappropriate.

Equally you have heterosexual men that are into swinging, seeing prostitutes and other promiscuous sexual practices. While other men will find these practices inappropriate.

It depends on the individual, not just their gender or sexual orientation.

‘Transphobic’ ‘bigot’ ‘fascist’ ‘racist’ ‘prudish’ ‘conservative’ ‘reactionary’ ‘nazi’…
None of these words frighten me any more.
There was a paedoacademic on the Mermaids Board of Trustees!
WPATH has a new ‘Eunuch’ section authored by men who trade online stories of child castration!

You can’t shut mothers up by calling us transphobes anymore.

And increasing numbers of transitioned adults agree. The trans orgs are a joke.

Not all the kids caught up in this are gay (old homosexual definition) but lots are, and lots are autistic too, and you will never convince me that it’s ok to sterilise gay and autistic people while they are still children.