From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: tearoom sex and bathroom police
Date: 12 Jan 93 18:56:58 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1993Jan12.185658.26658
Distribution: soc
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

In article <TIM.93Jan12075356@ear-ache.mit.edu> tim@ear-ache.mit.edu (Tim Wilson) writes:
>   However, if (as  
>   the complainant in your article alleged) people are feeling uncomfortable  
>   in bathrooms as a result of sexual activity, it is sexual harrassment  
>   plain and simple, and should be dealt with accordingly.
>
>I admit this is an important point.  I'm dubious as to whether such
>harassment has actually occured, or whether certain parties with
>agendas of their own have learned that they can use the harassment
>issue for their purposes.   

I wouldn't have thought that you'd have agreed on defining this point 
as "harassment".  To the extent I have much of an opinion, I think it is.
When we use the word "tearoom", we are not talking about casual
cruising during the middle of the night, we're talking about Grand
Central Station, where the entire environment can arguably be said
to be "hijacked" for the purpose of men having sex.

I have no idea what the situation was at MIT, though I worked there for
5 years, but I worked at the Harvard Science Center for 6+ years, with
an office in the basement, which meant that my restroom-of-convenience
was the basement restroom, perhaps one of the most notorious in the
entire Northeast.  The place was a pit: it continually smelled like the
inside of a used condom (a woman could undoubtedly become pregnant by
simply breathing), there was always dried cum over the stall walls, the
stall doors were taken off (this being a completely impotent attempt by
Harvard to reduce the activity there), and the place was always full of
people hanging around.  Yeah, it seemed pretty creepy to me: it
unnerved me to be taking a piss only to catch someone peering over the
stall behind me to see who I was, I was annoyed by the crowd when I had
to use the facilities, and I could have strangled the Harvard police
for taking the doors off, because I'd rather die of impaction than take
a crap in public.  With the doors on (I was there pre- and post-
doors), you still got people peering thru glory holes.  Ick, ick, ick,
ick, ick.  It didn't take long before I would walk three floors
upstairs to use the facilities.

Now, I'm sure this makes me an anal-retentive prig and a fascist, but,
yes, I felt inconvenienced and put upon.  It annoyed me that in order
to simply take a piss or a crap in the most convenient restroom, I had
to put up with the constant reminder of public sex.  It was simply tiresome
to deal with this all the time.  Did I "use this for my own agenda"?
Well, my own agenda was to relieve myself non-sexually, so I made do.
But I sure would have preferred that these guys got their rocks off elsewhere.

>   As for sex that is genuinely disturbing others, I have no problem with the  
>   intervention of the law. Forcing others to deal with sexual situations  
>   against their will is just plain wrong, and you know as well as I that  
>   this happens quite frequently in the area of tearoom sex.

>I admit it can happen. I don't know the rate of occurance, and I'm
>ignorant as how best to approximate it.  I share your concern about
>forcing sexual situations on people, but I distinguish between a
>situation in which a proposition is offered and refused, and one such
>as a teacher propositioning a student (directly or indirectly) or a
>jilted suitor stalking the refusor.  

Oh, please.  Reality check time.

What if we had common restrooms for both sexes, and perfectly harmless
men would hang around on the off chance that some woman was interested?
Given that this is not the perceived role of such a restroom, do you think
that women using it might object to this behavior, even if they were not
themselves harassed?  Do you think they're being out of line?  Is our
concern here merely a vestige of sexism?

I don't happen to think that it's inappropriate to recognize the fact
that a restroom's primary function is not for public sex, and that using
it as such (when we're talking about a widely-used place with a lot of
traffic) is going to put these folks in conflict with people who aren't
as crazy about this.  I think men who don't like jerk-off clubs have
no business being there or complaining about the environment there.
That's not the case when it comes to sex in restrooms; you've got two
groups with different ideas about appropriate behavior, and that's going
to cause conflicts.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Newsgroups: soc.motss