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/

I still feel slightly guilty for laughing when my friend came out of a loo in the vicinity of Crystal Palace mast (now sealed up) having had a pass made at him, very disturbed. "Now you know what it's like for us!" was my reaction.
The trouble with these people is that they designate an area for their activity, but don't let anyone else know, so people minding their own business can trip over fornication unbeknownst, and then, when it becomes known, a place is closed down.

We also ran across this sort of thing in a park where children play and sometimes go to the loo by themselves. It was rather odd. My friend was working on a wildlife site - think shrubbery - and I was with him. I noticed a man on a nearby seat watching us, and radiating hatred of our presence. My friend did not share my interpretation. The man was in his twenties, good looking with an athletic build, dressed in expensive looking denim, jeans and jacket, cut to show off his figure. We had no intention of moving, and he resented it. After a while he received a phone call, and took himself off to the gents the other side of the lawn, where another man arrived. He was much older maybe in his sixties, in a rumpled ill-fitting suit, and he didn't look as if he cared for himself. Time passed and the young man went off. We were leaving by this time, and saw the older man come out without adjusting his trousers, fully exposing his penis. He walked to the car park and got in a car, where he just sat without driving off. Watching the children about. We reported him to the park staff, whom we knew, who said they would check him out. (Gave them the reg no.).
The more I think about it the more I feel sorry for them. The old man, with nothing in his life but a paid for contact with a man who would only be pretending, in a cramped loo. (Maybe they had planned for it being in the greenery of the wildlife area). The young man, who would certainly have been able to find a partner if he'd gone down to a gay pub, reduced to prostitution with grotty older men. Anything less like gay in the old sense is hard to imagine.

And by the way, if the young man had not been so noticeably wishing us gone, we wouldn't have noticed any of the rest of it. I don't go round looking for people to spy on. He should just have watched the ducks and geese in the lake, like normal people do.

There are and have always been plenty of gay men who intensely dislike the sordid aspects of things like cottaging, the public sex or chemsex scenes, and think that it gives gay men a bad name! And there have always been lots of gay men who don’t associate cottaging with joy or sexual expression. Your post sounds like you have learned about gay history from the internet and are treating it like a monolith. In reality there have always been different ways of being gay, and as many gay men who dislike the promiscuous scenes as much as enjoy them. (I know far more gay men in happily boring long term partnerships and marriages, whose most exciting act is doing a bit of brass rubbing of a weekend at the local Anglican church fete, than who are out enjoying anonymous public sex!)

Does this mean that we add another one to the "didn't happen" list?
Yes, gay men were marginalised, but that doesn't mean that they were all saints and we shouldn't be rewriting history of those that fell foul of either the law or those that were abused by some of those gay men.

@AliasGrace47

‘Don't see the issue w an advance in a clothing shop, as long as respectful & accepts no.’

So you think someone shouldn’t mind being felt up in a changing cubicle, because they are a man ? Why should a bloke have to say ‘ no’ to a sexual advance in a totally unexpected and unsuitable situation, anymore than a woman ?

Double standards much?

I remember the dodgyness of public loos being a big thing when I was a small boy. And my Dad talking about it, albeit obliquely. But as I recall, they just started closing most of them around that time, or not so long after.

Exactly.

People used to say that loads of public loos were used for cottaging, but I think it was an excuse to close them off. They were more likely to be used by junkies or rough sleepers tbh. It was just an excuse to close facilities.

Of course men use all sorts of opportunities to secretly bum each other. Its hardly unusual

I had a relative who was a traffic warden in Liverpool in the 80’s. There was a particular set of public loos opposite the offices of a well known solicitor, and she used to wonder why he went in there rather than use the loos in his own offices 😂

This thread is a blast from the past. I am going to put some facts across in this post that aren’t anti-men or homophobic. They are just to contextualise lots of history around toilets and sex. Apologies if I repeat a couple of points I said months ago but I am talking about sex in toilets per se….

For example, in the 80’s, 400 men were entrapped and arrested from one set of loos in Wembley in one month. This was from the police hiding in the roof for weeks, taking photos through holes they had drilled in the ceiling. Can you imagine that police practice happening now with voyeurism laws?!

In the 1980s we had many more public loos than we do now though. The problem is they are an expense to maintain and get closed down if they get a bad reputation (not just sex- drugs, vandalism as well). This summer Bath public toilets were opened but lasted only a few hours before they had to be closed again. Another set of public further north were closed, the last straw being the number of carrots the cleaners were expected to clean up.

In 2003 it was made illegal to have sex in a public toilet. MP Chris Bryant had argued this was discriminatory against men but it got through. It’s an interesting debate in Hansard and he tells the history of how dangerous it was for gay men.

If you look at a government consultation on public toilets (2008) a few years later, they were told that men were still having sex in toilets and were using websites to discuss where (pp have discussed this is still going on). As others have said, sex in toilets is a problem still.

Having sex in toilets is more common than people realise and always involves one or more males. In the Spectator, Rod Liddle discussed how much it is said to have happened in new disabled loos at the BBC. He also then discusses how the Russell Brand allegations are of Russell allegedly trying to force a woman into a toilet at another venue.

The ‘mile-high’ club usually means (an ‘aspirational’ shag to laugh about later) in the plane loos for many men and women. However people do get sexually abused in plane loos too. This is the problem with loos in public - there are so many different experiences that happen in them and the default should be to stop the bad.

One U.K. organisation even tried to limit the amount of sex happening in toilets by making it more difficult by decreasing the cubicles size. One manufacturer tried to stop it by having the door open automatically if the floor exceeded a weight limit. Imagine being too fat to have the door closed?!

If you design a toilet that makes it easy for consensual sex then it makes it easy for sex that isn’t consensual too, and also sex that can’t be consensual due to being under the age of consent. This where there are all sorts of debates about the pros and cons of door gaps! Do they hinder or facilitate? What happens when you get rid of them for propriety?

From a practical viewpoint, I think the easiest and most effective way to stop all sex in loos is to make the cubicles less private (door gaps above and below the door) and to put notices up with the details of the sexual offences act 2003 and voyeurism laws. This should only have to be a 15cm gap floor to door and a gap above a 2m high door. It would also solve a lot of other problems too, preventing sexual assaults and alerting others to if the occupant was in trouble medically etc. It’s also better for ventilation and cleaning.

It would also mean toilets would have to be single sex and have a single sex area in front as this is the only design that permits the toilet door design not to be floor to ceiling.

I have spent a lot of time researching loo safety in schools. Pupils have sex in school toilets and gender-neutral designs are targeted because both sexes have permission to be by the toilets and the cubicles are private. Two ways to stop sexual abuse in toilets in schools is to make the cubicles single sex and have door gaps. This will protect both sexes. The risk of being caught is too great.

Careful design of where to locate toilets is another factor. High visibility at the entrance may deter some people. However it did not deter the organised crime gang that used toilets with a group of school boys in full view of Rochdale Social Services Department. Men were travelling from a wide area, it was obvious what was happening and everyone seemed to turn a blind eye.

Although people like having sex in toilets they usually don’t like everyone to know they are having sex in toilets if there’s a chance they can be identified and caught. The Act says ‘imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or both’. In reality there have to be aggravating factors to get these terms but the shame and embarrassment may put the average person off getting caught and up in court.

I believe toilets should be as safe as possible and, practically, that means sex should take place elsewhere. It may be a boring view, but it’s safeguarding to prevent those times when a toilet is misused and other health dangers and emergencies for the occupant.

It also means there’s more chance of actually being able to access a toilet for what it’s intended for. There are people (especially disabled and elderly) who have distressingly soiled themselves due to the lack of facilities in towns. It stops them going out at all after that. We need safe, clean, working loos.

I'm with Miriabelle on this - gay men don't have a hive mind, no more than we do.
But gay men are men and the male sex has its little quirks and peculiarities 😒that us women not only don't share, but that make us go 😨or 😱 or😝.
Like having sex in a public toilet... 😨😱AND😝!

My main problem with this thread is the title:
Cottaging ... how were things back then for other toilet users?
This is Mumsnet. We are not 'back then' and we are not the 'other toilet users' in men's toilets. How on earth would we know?

Take your point about the title. Could have done better. I was just struck by some men using toilets for purposes other than their designed for purpose and wondered what sort of backlash there had been at a time when that was more common. From MN posters I now realize it's still happening and other toilet users are still not comfortable with it.