Cottaging ... how were things back then for other toilet users?

[Gettingmadderallthetime]

I followed a rabbit hole (POW candidates for GE) that took me to this interview with Emily Thornberry. In this interview with pink news in 2020 she talks about her work as a barrister defending gay men accused of public indecency in toilets. She was obviously very effective at this. It made me think though ... Led me to think about objections to the presence of trans women in female toilets nowadays. Is this the same sort of 'joke' to ET and others trans allies feel they would make now? During the years when cottaging was prosecuted did anyone speak out about the impact of this activity on others - those who wanted to go to the toilet. I assume toilets were removed from service because of this. Some users will have had unpleasant experiences and I wonder whether this was a consideration at all. Other users in this case being men. To my view toilets are not places for sex or sexual gratification. There seems to be no consideration (then or now) for those who want to just use the toilet and be safe and private in doing so.

Yes, I realise that the police entrapped gay men then. This ruined lives. There were presumably some men who were caught in this net who were just using the loo?

'There was a time when the Metropolitan Police was absolutely fixated with cottaging.They used to hang out in cottages, they used to lie on roofs, they used to drill holes in walls of toilet doors and this sort of thing; sit and wait for gay men and then arrest them, and then they’d be taken to court. I basically developed a practice of representing gay men charged with gross indecency.

Basically, what I used to do was just make the jury laugh, because it was so ridiculous.

Here we were at a crown court in front of a jury with a judge and everything else, and they were charged with gross indecency. And it would be the same police officers would always turn up because you had to volunteer for it.
So you get the same police officers again and again, and I remember they would see me coming, and you could hear them saying, ‘Oh, God, I got that b*h again,’ because they knew the way I would be cross-examining them and I would be playing it for laughs.

I would say things like, ‘So, you say he was “masturbating furiously”, could you explain to the jury what that means?’And of course the police officer would just say, ‘Uhh!’ And I’d say, ‘Well, I’ve got some newspaper here, if I roll it up, would you like to show us?’ Once the jury cracked, once the jury starts to laugh, we knew that they were never going to get convicted.

But it was the only way to deal with this. It was ludicrous that people were being persecuted in this way, it seemed to me, and frankly, it had to be shown up to be ludicrous.

And that’s what we used to do.

I had absolutely no compunction of doing this. And the judges just didn’t know where to look – but you had to do it. You just had to take the mickey.'

https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/02/12/emily-thornberry-labour-leadership-contest-lgbt-rights-boris-johnson-trans/

A pp said this isn't a gay thing, this is a man thing and I totally agree.

Men (compared to women) are much more sexually driven and much more selfish when it comes to doing what they want even if it impacts others. In general, obviously not all men.

I do think it's very wrong, it's abusive to subject someone who doesn't consent to being a party to a sexual encounter.

I think EB defending these men and making light of it really causes a problem and normalises this behaviour which does cause problems.

Man here - they are still terrible. Go to any London station toilets or any toilets in London and there are host of creepy men lingering over their pee looking around with hungry eyes. Thankfully a notorious one at the end of Carnaby Street they have put floor to ceiling barriers to ensure you can wee in privacy. I'm 63 and it's always been a thing in most male public toilets. Some even have holes drilled beween cubilcles.You would think with so many gay clubs, pubs,darkrooms and saunas and discrete cruising grounds they would lay off a place to do your business. But no. I generally try and find a stall to pee in private if I can.

I don't know that I would necessarily agree that kink is more prevalent among heterosexualpeo;le. There are of course quite a lot more heterosexual people but that's not the same thing as prevalence.

It's a consistent problem for many kink and especially swinger type communities to find male/female parity.

As far as whether promiscuity is in itself a problem, historically it certainly has been, because it drives STIs, not only the rate of such infections but also how quickly they mutate. This ultimately affects the whole population including children. The idea that the historical elevation of monogamy and virginity were simply prudishness is very much an idea that comes from an age when not only birth control, but also antibiotics, are easy to get.

One of the common problems of human societies is how to contain the male sex drive in such a way that it doesn't negatively affect society as a whole, either by procreating indiscriminately, through violence towards women, spreading disease, or create violent competition among males. There have been different approaches to that and some have allowed much more liberal sexual behaviour, but typically to the detriment of women and children. It's not ultimately just a problem of individual freedoms.

What consenting adults do is entirely their business. They do not have the right to involve other people in their sex lives without consent. It isn’t funny and should not be treated as such.

no, it’s not safe to meet a stranger for sex in a private space. That doesn’t make it acceptable to meet them for sex in public.

Cottaging led to notorious public toilets being shut down including those next to our main hospital; there were local gay clubs where men could have met up.
I took my son into the women’s loos with me if my husband wasn’t with us. I did receive a complaint once and whilst I understood this, I felt my child’s safety was paramount.
I support gay rights but don’t feel it was right that public toilets were used in this way.

My goodness I’ve just ROARED at the last sentence loll

Guy I used to work with needed the loo when we were out and about once, middle of the day. We stopped at some pubs toilets on the edge of a park, I stayed in the car. Was sat there and then I hear all this shouting and my colleague is chasing some bloke out the toilet while pulling his trousers up.

he said he’d been sat on the loo having a shit and then thought he saw some movement, realised there was a small hole in the door and there was an eye at the hole watching him!

the toilet block was shut down due to cottaging a few years later.

Is that Tony Blair? I thought it was just gossip?

These attacks on what is a thoughtful and enquiring and open OP would perhaps hold weight if it weren't for the fact that some famous gay figures still openly campaign for their "right" to have sex in public spaces.

x.com/petertatchell/status/1311962893248847872?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

"LGBT community"? It's not lesbians and bisexual women who are fucking behind bushes.

Get a room, Tatchell.

He's ridiculous.

His reply literally says "people should NOT have sex in public".

But then goes on to say that if the bushes are cut down it will expose the public to sex acts.

Rather than calling on men not to shag in the park, he's blaming the council for trying to deter them.

It's a bit "I'm not racist but..."

I am assuming (perhaps too kindly?) that police were asked to intervene

But why assume that, OP? Don't you think that Emily Thornberry knows more about the background than you do? The reality is, as she pointed out, that they intervened because it was such an easy way to improve the arrest statistics without doing anything dangerous or difficult. The reality is that the policemen staking out men't toilets could have been far better employed on, for instance, the gang squads.

His reply literally says "people should NOT have sex in public".

😂

He's really not saying that. You know this. But OK. So long as men get to behave appallingly and do whatever they like. No one else matters.

Sorry??

More likely Heath.

The toilets at Heaven were practically an orgy

Men and their sexual desires drive everything

I can't find anything categorical from a reliable source, but it has been discussed/suggested/reported in mainstream newspapers; and the mentions of it online would appear to be a lot more than just 'gossip', IYSWIM.

Allegedly, he gave the police two of his middle names as though they were his actual 'known as' name.

It's interesting that he never seems to have used his power and his money to put the allegations to bed once and for all, nor to seek damages from any of those making them.

Yes, I'm not convinced that Heath would have remained quite so under the radar if he lived nowadays, with cameras, phones and modern methods of communication.

The suggestions for Heath were actually extremely worse than that - not 'just' activity with consenting adult men.

@TempestTost "Part of the conservative POV on this I think was always that male sexuality is inherently socially problematic."
One of those points of overlap with radical feminism, which puts them on the same side of various political campaigns.
Radical feminism made so much sense to me when I encountered it as a teen. I'm in the age group who was supposed to find it really daggy. I now think that the influence of Methodist missionary women in my childhood dovetailed with Greer and Daly and Dworkin much more than I realised at the time.

Possibly the most interesting thing about this thread is the revelation that Emily Thornberry has (or had) a sense of humour.

I think Sheila Jeffreys was mentioned upthread..? In "unpacking queer politics", she's got a whole chapter on public sex, including the defence of it via romanticisation of it.

I keep thinking of Louise Perry's line, 'if you want to know what male sexuality is really like, look at gay men'. Also, when I lived in a shared house with four gay men, they all either went to Finsbury Park or somewhere else nearby for casual sex, and were quite open about it. I remember one saying, 'I've just been counting up, and I think I've slept with about a hundred men ... I mean, actually slept with not just had sex with obviously.'