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.

Wow! Where did I say it was OK to sterilise gay and autistic people?

"Not all the kids caught up in this are gay (old homosexual definition)" thanks for the clarification 🙄
But you were sure the boy you saw on TV was gay. How could you tell? Serious question. In my opinion, you couldn't tell. And so what you said was transphobic. Feel free to explain to me how you knew that a boy who identified as a girl in a programme on TV was 100% WRONG about that and was actually gay.

There's just no need for it, or justification. Yes, TRAs are causing no end of serious problems. But how does it help to vilify trans people, most of whom are peaceable individuals who hate what's being done in their name?

The teenager was a homosexual because said teenager was male and fancied males and (as far as the 3 part documentary revealed) only males.

Those of us working off old definitions, where a girl is a female minor and a boy is a male minor find it a lot easier not to tie ourselves up in knots.

Come up with some sort of objective diagnostic criteria for gender identity (so brain scans, genetic sequencing etc) and I will reconsider and possibly revise my opinion, but while a girl gender identity remains a subjective feeling (and one that huge swathes of actual females don’t have) I don’t see how it can ever be a basis for pubertal blockade, wrong sex hormones and eventual genital amputation.

The sterilisation process begins with the pubertal blockade, so most advocates for child transition are supporting the sterilisation of minors, perhaps as a side effect, but the results are the same.

Anyway, to get back on topic, this thread is about homosexual male sexuality, which many detransitioners/re identified men come to deeply regret giving up.

I knew one transwoman who when I knew them was a flamboyant gay man living in a homophobic small town. They transitioned about fifteen years ago.

I often wonder if they would make different choices now, particularly because the pub I knew them from is now basically a gay bar.

History has been very cruel to gay men, especially those who are femme of centre.

History has been cruel to lesbians too, of course, especially the butch ladies, but a completely different type of cruelty.

@Redqueenheart no what you are denying is male gay culture!
stop with insults 'homophobe' and NAGM and realize that gay men are different, have different values than you. Whether you like it or not the fact that post AIDS cottaging, saunas, anonymous encounters are still a major part of gay social life speaks to their likes and choices.
Frankly I don't care; it's not my problem . I'm not their mother. Gay men are free, in charge of their lives, as they should be.

I think it’s kinda homophobic to deny something that has been a massive part of gay men’s history and gay men’s culture!

Gay men who aren’t into gay sex culture even have specific phrases and words to communicate that disinterest, such as ‘non scene’.

Oh man

keep going up that mountain

true trans is a phase many of us go through. What’s a ‘genuine’ trans person?

Please can we keep this topic to homosexual male gay culture. It's an interesting topic and there is a lot of denial about it.

I still haven't got over how one man went from shouting at people for being weary of viral pandemic measures, to shouting that it was unreasonable to expect men to cancel social arrangements or keep apart at social events in response to monkeypox. In a week.

These tweets are only seven days apart.

If you're using a screen-reader, here's the rest of Greg's Monkeypox advice in May.

The answer isn't shut down all these parties, tell gay men to stop having sex at them or dancing in close proximity to each other. It won't work. It hasn't worked for HIV or other kinds of infectious disease outbreaks among gay men. 4/

A friend has said this is what we do:
1. Don’t panic.
2. Don’t stigmatize.
3. Don’t suddenly become sex-negative.
4. EDUCATE men on what to watch out for.
5. Ask people to stay home if they’re sick or have some unusual lesion pop up (even if they aren’t planning to have sex).
5/^

"If we jump to 'cancel events and stop having sex,' we lose any hope of an effective response later if this doesn’t burn itself out." 6/