Cottaging is a gay slang term, originating from the United Kingdom, referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory (a "cottage" "cottage noun a public lavatory used for homosexual encounters (UK)." or "tea-room"Andre "tearoom; t-room noun a public toilet. From an era when a great deal of homosexual contact was in public toilets; probably an abbreviation of 'toilet room'.), or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere.Sex Tips for Gay Guys by Dan Anderson; Published by Macmillan, 2002; , The term has its roots in self-contained English toilet blocks resembling small cottages in their appearance; in the English cant language of Polari this became a double entendre by gay men referring to sexual encounters.Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang by Paul Baker; Published by Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004; , .
The word "cottage", usually meaning a small, cosy, countryside home, is documented as having been in use during the Victorian era to refer to a public toilet and by the 1960s its use in this sense had become an exclusively homosexual slang term. This usage is predominantly British, though the term is occasionally used with the same meaning in other parts of the world. Among gay men in the United States in the early 1970s, lavatories used for this purpose were called tea rooms.Rodgers, Bruce Gay Talk (The Queen’s Vernacular): A Dictionary of Gay Slang New York:1972 Parragon Books, an imprint of G.P. Putnam’s Sons Page 195.In 1970, an American graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, Laud Humphreys published a famous and controversial PhD dissertation, Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, on the tearoom phenomenon, attempting to categorize the diverse social backgrounds and personal motives. See .
History
In the United Kingdom, gay cruising came about due to the illegality of homosexual acts prior to the Sexual Offences Act 1967, and this illegality meant that many gay men could not live openly as homosexuals. Cruising provided a way for gay men to solicit sexual encounters while minimizing the risk of being caught by the police. When cruising first became known, it usually took place in public fields, parks, toilets and theatres were also sometimes denounced as cruising grounds by moralists of the time. In the 20th century sex in public toilets in the UK became known as "cottaging" and the toilets where sex occurred were referred to as "cottages". Public toilets located next to highways, main roads or rural roads have also become popular cruising sites.
The illegality of gay sex has meant that the history of gay cruising is sparsely documented, as those who used such cruising grounds were likely to be discreet about them. Rictor Norton, author of Mother Clap's Molly House the title of which is a reference to Margaret Clap's illegal gay brothel known as a "Molly House", believes that the first gay cruising grounds and gay brothels in London may have sprung up in the early 17th century and going from the earliest known records they may have originated even earlier in the late 1600s although they most likely originated much earlier than the 1600s.
Mother Clap's molly-house was the most well known illegal gay brothel in 18th century London and had been open from 1724 to 1726, when a raid sustained by the Societies for the Reformation of Manners had it dismantled and 40 gay men who were present at the molly-house at the time of the raid were taken to Newgate prison where most were eventually set free, although those who weren't were either fined, imprisoned, exhibited in the pillory and three were hanged.
Author Mark Turner comments that evidence of gay cruising goes back to at least the 18th century, stating "From St James's Park in the 18th century to Hampstead Heath today, gay men have always gone cruising in search of sex... ...Cruising is nothing new. It's been going on for hundreds of years, and its history is a part of the history of our cities and public spaces. As cities grew and populations became more anonymous, new opportunities for chance encounters arose, for straight and queer people alike... By night, teenagers hop fences to snog, hookers and rent boys ply their trade, lovers admire the moon, addicts shoot up, and gay men fuck... ...George Michael is right to drop his pants and lay claim to his queer culture - to a history of urban sexual adventure and misadventure that is as old and perverse as the parks themselves." Turner has further commented that in "Thomas Gilbert's 'A View of the Town' from the 18th century, a man leaves his wife in their bridal bed, sneaks off to St James's Park, 'roams in search of some vile ingle prize' and 'courts the foul pathick in the fair one's place'... ...such queer encounters in parks, on embankments, in toilets, streets and back alleys are an integral part of the way our cities - and sexualities - express themselves. Where there is public space, there will be diverse appropriations of it, and so it should be.
Locations
Cottages were and are located in places heavily used by many people such as bus stations, railway stations, airports and university campuses. Often, glory holes are drilled in the walls between cubicles in popular cottages. Foot signals—tapping a foot, sliding a foot slightly under the divider between stalls, attracting the attention of the occupant of the next stall—are used to signify that one wishes to connect with the person in the next cubicle. In some heavily used cottages, an etiquette develops and one person may function as a lookout to warn if non-cottagers are coming.
Since the 1980s, more individuals in authority have become more aware of the existence of cottages in places under their jurisdiction; as such, they have reduced the height of (or even removed doors from) the cubicles of popular cottages, or extended the walls between the cubicles to the floor to prevent foot signalling.
Australia
An underground male toilet block located at the northern end of Taylor Square, Sydney, that was opened to the public in 1907, was a popular place for people to cruise for gay sex in Sydney for decades until its closure in 1998.
In 2024 the underground toilet block became a part of Qtopia Sydney, a museum that has an extensive collection of objects related to queer culture in Sydney and the toilet block now hosts "exhibitions exploring Sydney's gay beat, sauna and cruising culture of the 1980s and 90s." Qtopia also has a 40-seat theatre located right next to the underground toilet block, inside of a decommissioned electrical substation and it hosts performances including music, drag, comedy, cabaret and poetry all year round with numerous performances held during Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in February and March of each year. Female toilets were opened next door to the male toilets in 1938 and they were located in the above ground section of the substation building until they closed in 1988.
Another popular gay cruising location is a public toilet block off Yarra Bend Road in Melbourne and it has been commented in a 2012 article that "As a dutiful dog walker I have been an observer of the beat for a long time...In all the years I’ve been walking by, I have only seen this car park empty once...for the cruisers, at least those daytime subjects of my curiosity, are not chatty folk. Their language is a subtle one of glances and head-turns – I’ve never seen them converse. They pull into the car park, sometimes sit for a while, sometimes move straight to the toilets; there are always one or two lonely souls wandering the grass. The men size each other up continuously, hyper-alert to each new arrival. Some stay only briefly, others settle in for the afternoon. Cars come and go, all kinds of cars – muscle cars, tradesmen’s vans, family station wagons. The men are all kinds, too – young, old, business-suited, tracksuited...The busiest times are lunch and after dark – the narrow road becomes jammed."
Cottages as meeting places
Before the gay liberation movement, many, if not most, gay and bisexual men at the time were closeted and there were almost no public gay social groups for those under legal drinking age. As such, cottages were among the few places where men too young to get into gay bars could meet others whom they knew to be gay.Prejudice and Pride: Discrimination Against Gay People in Modern Britain by Bruce Galloway; Published by Routledge, 1983; , .
The internet brought significant changes to cottaging, which was previously an activity engaged in by men with other men, often in silence with no communication beyond the markings of a cubicle wall. Today, an online community has been established in which men exchange details of locations, discussing aspects such as when it receives the highest traffic, when it is safest and to facilitate sexual encounters by arranging meeting times. The term cybercottage is used by some gay and bisexual men who use the role-play and nostalgia of cottaging in a virtual space or as a notice board to arrange real life anonymous sexual encounters.
Laud Humphrey's Tearoom Trade, published in 1970, was a sociological analysis and observance between the social space public restrooms offer for anonymous sex and the men—either closeted, gay, or straight—who sought to fulfill sexual desires that their wives, religion, or social lives could not. The study, which was met with praise on one side due to its innovation and criticism on the other due to having outed "straight" men and risked their privacy, brought to light the multidimensionality of public restrooms and the intricacy and complexity of homosexual sex amongst self-identifying straight men.
George Michael
Cruising for sex
The UK popstar George Michael began cruising for gay sex when he was 16 in 1979 and in an interview in 2004 he commented that, "When I made the 'Outside' video I knew I was helping a whole generation of 15-year-olds who are cruising and dying of shame about it. I felt that lightening the stigma around cruising was the most immediately beneficial thing I could do. I know for a fact that when I was 16, 17, when I started cruising, that watching the 'Outside' video would have taken some of the weight off my shoulders."
In the same interview Michael further went on to comment that cruising for gay sex was something that he had done throughout his entire life, "...that’s the wonderful thing about cruising. The vast majority of men were either married or in the closet. So you have a mutual secret and that’s pretty water tight...If you’re a suburban cruiser like my good self and you like guys that are really straight-acting, then most of the people you pick up...are not going to tell your secret because they’ve got one themselves. I mean, fuck, it worked for years. Interviewer: Was there a moment when people would double-take and realise it was you? Michael: I think probably most of them did. Sometimes we’d talk about it afterwards and have a laugh..."
Michael also commented that having gay sex with while cruising was one of the ways he was able to meet new people "One of the things about cruising and having a secret sex life for so long is that...it meant that I was constantly meeting ordinary people...And I still believe that with the people I meet for sex. It’s nowhere near as regular as it was but I constantly meet new people via people that I know are cool and I can trust. When you meet somebody, see them a few times, and basically say, ‘who do you know that’s cool and tasty with a big knob?’ [laughing] and I meet people all the time that way."