Laud Humphreys - Tearoom Trade: Impersonal sex in public places

TO MY WIFE, NANCY, AND MY CHILDREN, CLAIR AND DAVID, WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND LOVE MADE THIS RESEARCH POSSIBLE

The class of the individuals treated of in this volume are the Non-Workers, or in other words, the Dangerous Classes of the Metropolis... Their favorite haunts, and the localities in London wherein they chiefly congregate, as well as their modes of existence, are accurately described; in addition to which have been inserted very many deeply interesting autobiographies, faithfully transcribed from their own lips, which go far to unveil the intricate schemes of villainy and crime that abound in the metropolis and prove how much more rational and effective are preventative measures than such as are merely correctional. Every phase of vice has been investigated and treated of in order that all possible information that can prove interesting to the moralist, the philanthropist, and the statist as well as to the general public, might be afforded. In a word, the veil has been raised, and the skeleton exposed to the view of the public.

Sociologists have long been fascinated by the variety and complexity of social patterns in the city, and by the ability of differing groups and disparate activities to exist side by side. Anselm Strauss has observed that urban sociologists are intrigued with cities as places that facilitate the creative use of privacy by their inhabitants, which he sees as the obverse of the much discussed urban anomie. Strauss comments:

People who seek escape from the confines of their small towns or from their equally oppressive urban families have traditionally flocked to those sections of cities known as "villages," "tower towns," "near north sides," and other bohemian and quasi-bohemian areas. Here are found the people who wish privileged privacy: prostitutes, homosexuals, touts, criminals, as well as artists, cafe society, devotees of the arts, illicit lovers-anybody and everybody who is eager to keep the small town qualities of the metropolis at a long arm's length.

Humphreys' research expands those sociological interests beyond the traditional concern with residential locales or specialized establishments, such as honky-tonk districts or gay bars, and highlights another aspect of many city institutions. The use of ordinary park restrooms as sites for impersonal homosexual contacts illustrates one way city places may be used by varying clienteles for varying and sometimes morally contradictory purposes. The sociologist's contribution to this commonplace observation is to show how socially constructed patterns of use of time, space, technolog ical resources, information, and interpersonal contacts make possible this common but at first glance unlikely result. Previous studies have shown how particular settings change their clientele at different times of the day, for instance, a bar that is a working man's tavern during the day and a bohemian hang-out at night. But Humphreys' contribution is perhaps unique in applying the micro-sociological techniques developed by sociologists like Becker, Goffman, and Garfinkel to analyze a situation in which two institutions, one devoted to the mundane necessity for places of sanitary elimination in parks and the other to the need for covert homosexual gratification, alternate over a period of minutes in an area of a hundred square feet, and yet do not conflict in their everyday operation. The contrast is particularly dramatic because his study deals with stigmatized behavior. But the principles that underlie this highly structured operation are much broader in their implications for our understanding of urbanity.

A second area of large significance has to do with the social psychology of interaction and adult socialization. The "tearoom" is a focused gathering (in Goffman's sense), a place where people have certain kinds of business to transact and where during the process of that transaction they must accept certain costs and risks for the gains they seek. Analysis of the highly structured patterns that arise in this particular situation increases our understanding of the more general rules of interaction by which people in routine encounters of all kinds manage their identities, create impressions, move toward their goals, and control information about themselves, minimizing the costs and risks in concerted action with others. Humphreys shows how the participants bargain to establish a mode of interaction in which each protects himself and the other, and establish roles that both provide them with gratification and serve the needs of others. In short, he shows us how the tearoom encounter is structured as a positive sum game for the participants and how a normative structure develops in these encounters to insure that the outcome of the game is positive rather than zero or negative.

The analysis highlights one aspect of all interaction: the protection of the identities of the participants in the gathering. The silence and impersonality of these events are understandable when we perceive their function as a way of protecting other identities the participants value (husband, father, respected member of the community, masculine person). As with all interaction, this social process is structured to avoid overinvolvement by the participants, some of whom have needs defined as inappropriate to the situation, which they might be tempted to gratify if the norms of interaction did not discourage them.

We also learn about the impact of societal definitions, even on such a secret and anonymous activity as the tearoom. Humphreys shows us that the structure of interaction there is adapted to the proscribed nature of the conduct that takes place and to the threats of the outside world (police, wise teenagers, or unsuspecting passers-by). We discover that the highly constrained interaction within the tearoom is a function not only of the desires of the participants to limit their involvement but also of stigmatization of their activity. Activity in the tearooms is organized to make what is highly stigmatized seem matter of fact and taken for granted. So long as there is no conversation and little gestural communication, the participants can mask the varying interpretations each privately makes of what is going on. One suspects that if the participants talked freely about what they were doing they would not find it easy to maintain the gathering as a positive sum game. Evelyn Hooker has observed how even in an interview situation with rapport built up over a long period of time, homosexuals find it difficult to discuss in detail their specifically sexual behavior and their feelings about it.