Experts: For many gays, public sex means privacy

Seattle Times ^ | August 30 07 | Idaho Stateman

[freedomdefender]

Many men who solicit sex in public places often are conflicted sexually and seek sex in those locations to maintain anonymity, psychiatric experts say.

Dr. Fred Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, compared homosexual sex at public places with heterosexual men who go to secret parts of town to solicit prostitutes and to drug addicts who find dealers on street corners away from their neighborhoods.

"This is not as complicated as people think," Berlin said. "It is often a case of people with very strong sexual cravings that are difficult to resist, people who are very conflicted and struggling" with their feelings and the stigma of embarrassment of having family members or the community find out.

[freedomdefender]

I call B.S. Bathroom sex is part of the gay lifestyle. It's part of the pervsion, part of the rush, not a response to societal pressure.

[freedomdefender]

seek sex in those locations to maintain anonymity

Sex in public bathrooms to maintain privacy. Right.

[glorgau]

And bank robbers wear a mask to preserve their “anonymity”. That still doesn’t make it right.

[SIDENET]

Icky perverts.

[Rudder]

It's part of the pervsion, part of the rush, not a response to societal pressure.

Thanks for letting us know and sharing.

[donna]

It’s how homosexuals catch and spread all their diseases.

[John Leland 1789]

Well, of course. Now, Freepers, please be careful in all of this discussion not to offend either libertarians or those who believe that nobody has the right to impose their own moral standard on others.

Please, Christians, be understanding of the rest of America which believes that standards and morality are only private matters to decide, and that America’s moral code was never influenced by biblical morality. Please be patient with compatriots who believe that the Separation Clause of the First Amendment means that Christianity cannot be allowed to influence anything in our land at all.

Be longsuffering, please with those who believe that our founding father’s mind set was not heavily that of biblicist Christianity.

[EagleUSA]

A disgusting, repulsive, and disease-ridden lifestyle that is a gross perversion. Just another example.

By the way, how is Nancy Pelosi’s constituency???

[SteveMcKing]

Dr. Fred Berlin... compared homosexual sex at public places with heterosexual men who go to secret parts of town to solicit prostitutes and to drug addicts who find dealers on street corners away from their neighborhoods.

And to university professors who hide in their tenured bubbles on campuses all over the world, where they are paid to endlessly psychobabble on topics they know nothing about.

[SteveMcKing]

What the hell are you talking about?

[Rudder]

And to university professors who hide in their tenured bubbles on campuses all over the world, where they are paid to endlessly psychobabble on topics they know nothing about.

Your opinons about Dr. Berlin sound bigoted.*

*Blindly and obstinately attached to some creed or opinion and intolerant toward others.

[AmericanInTokyo]

This whole damn thing might be solved, to some extent, in the future, IF THE U.S.A. WOULD ADOPT JAPANESE-STYLE PUBLIC TOILET CONSTRUCTION.

What IS IT with American public toilets anyways that have this huge open space between stalls under the dividers, some up very high, maybe even to one-foot high, and you can see the feet and hear the business of the other person next to you doing their business, and facilitates such nonsense as the gay "tap code"?

Not to mention these huge cracks in the stall door, sometimes as wide as two inches, where you can look in on someone and they vice-versa. Ever heard of knocking to see if it is being used??

In Japan, toilet stalls are constructed with dividers 100% clear down to the floor, and in many cases right up to the ceiling, completely enclosed, with complete privacy. The stall doors and jambs also have no gaps between them, so you cannot see in side either.

The only way a rope-sucker is going to get the specific attention of the fellow gay in the next stall is going to be through calling out his filthy desire, which none of those perverts will do for fear of an arrest, or worse yet for them, the prompt delivery of a knuckle sandwich to them by any normal person.

Also, make toilet stalls even more narrow and smaller so only one person can get inside. (Americans on the average will have to lose a lot of weight to be comfortable).

I think all of this to some extent may well put a stop to George Michael-type "cruising" in toilets, on the other hand, watch the American heroin addicts enjoy all that new found "privacy".

Of course the drawback to Japanese restrooms is that, for the urinals at least, often many of them are in clear view from the street!! (At least you can see a stall wall. See, it is clear down to the floor and nearly up to the ceiling! But if you run out of toilet paper and need a break, sorry, out of luck!)

[freedomdefender]

I remember visiting Germany when I was in Jr. High, and going into the men’s room - where you’d see elderly cleaning ladies cleaning and mopping, oblivious to the men and they were oblivious to the cleaning ladies. For a suburban American kid, it was a weird experience.

[pandoraou812]

"I think the main goal is for those people to meet like-minded people," Nevada psychiatrist Sally Skewis said.

Meeting strangers in a public toilet sounds nasty to me. I would get awfully upset if someone rubbed feet with me or made advances for sex to me while I was using one... In fact I might shove their head into a toilet. I hope its just a guy thing because I have issues enough with public restrooms as it is. Its a nasty dirty place to be having sex anyway.

[freedomdefender]

Public toilets not infrequently are gross enough, typically, with dirt and splashes of “water” on the floor - the idea of men making passes at each other, on top of the unsanitary conditions already there, makes me gag.

[biscuit jane]

Yep it is societies fault.

Poor misunderstood perverts.They have uncontrollable desires just like my dog does.

[ClaireSolt]

Several times in my life a stranger in the next stall has asked for TP, and I have handed some over. Now that is illegal invasion of space. Go figure. It’s for the children, I hear.

[MrEdd]

For many addicts, burglary is "working a job".

these people are trying to change reality by redefining language. It doesn't fly, and it makes them look stupid.

[pandoraou812]

I can just see some perv making a pass at my husband. He really would flip out and stick the perv’s head in the toilet. And beat the cr@p out of him. In fact all the guys I know would beat such a person up badly. I think these perv’s must be very stupid. I really have no clue why one would take the chance of getting beat up for sex. Is that part of the “rush”? If so they sicker then I thought.

[AmericanInTokyo]

That happens all the time in Japan. Happened just the other day. Cleaning women often enter men's restrooms in Japan while they are still in operation--not shutting them down for cleaning--and nobody so much as bats an eye. It is indeed a cultural difference.