Explaining Gay Sexuality

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Paul Fairweather contributes this week's column from the Labour Campaign for Gay Rig it would be the san ran- encourage gays back under- change the situation för ""insmime emorga yo Erzge CEA VITITTTY, cisco of the North West! will drive IN THIS article 1 want to focus on one of the issues raised in Chris Beer's articles about police harassment of gays-the question of gay men having sex in public places.

For while there is growing acceptance of the idea that the "Personal is the Political" ', there is still often a sense that certain issues are "too" personal for open discussion in the labour movement and are of marginal political importance.

I would argue that by doing this the left is failing to integrate into its political practice one of the crucial discoveries of the gay and women's •movement-the need to understand and relate to people's experiences of sex and sexuality Area By looking at one specific area of gay men's experience I hope to show that it is not only possible, but essential, for socialists to work politically to lessen the repression gay people encounter in their daily lives.

Cottaging is the term used colloquially among homosexual men to describe using public toilets as a place to meet other men for sex. Both before the partial law reform in 1967 and since, it has been the only source of gay sex for many thousands of men.

If we want to look. for reasons why men cottage we need to see it in the context of a society which denies gay people the right to live openly and form relations publicly. We also need to understand how men experience their sexuality and how this differs from women's experience in this society.

As an easy and anonymous way to have sex, cottaging is attractive to many men, to young men discovering their sexuality, to older men who are married and isolated and to men who will not think of themselves as gay but who experience homosexual desire.

In Manchester, the Labour Campaign for Gay Rights has been discussing this issue because we were aware from our own expeliences that the explanations usually given for cottaging were over simplistic. But we were also responding politically to a situation where there was a dramatic increase in the number of prosecutions for gross indecency and importuning.

This was most noticeable in Stockport where in 1980 187 out of a total of 461 cases in the whole of Great Manchester took place.

For weeks the local paper carried headlines announcing the borough as the City of Chame and saving that sqon, In LCGR we were concerned that Chief Constable Anderton was increasing the police surveillance of public toilets in order to alarm the public about the apparently growing number of homosexual men in the area and to create a moral panic about the dangers of "innocent people" being lured into homosexuality.

And when challenged on using police to hide in broom cupboards and peep through spy-holes he argued that it was all essential because of the number of "responsible" people, i.e. school teachers, civil servants etc., who had been apprehended.

Protector

Anderton was giving himself the role of public prorector, and the implication was that gays should not be in public service.

And in Stockport this strategy seemed to be meeting with some success, for soon the Council were holding emergency meetings to discuss how to deat with the "corruptive menace of homosexuals"

By focusing on an area which causes most embarrassment to both gay • toilet the police PERS 12ground, losing even the small gains we have made over the last ten years.

One problem we encountered when raising the issue with people in general, and specifically in the labour movement was how to overcome ignorance about the reality of many gay men's lives. We were also unclear about what specific demands we should be making.

In practice we tended to concentrate on the waste of police resources and stress that this is very much a crime without a victim.

We had a useful meeting with some left Labour councillors in Stockport who had instinctively challenged the actions of the police but had felt unable to explain why there were suddenly men all over Stockport doing rather "peculiar" things.

The Labour chair of the Greater. Manchester Police Committee i met us and stressed that we should make representations to the committee which when under Laboúr control would push for greater accountability and encourage oppressed groups to come forward and present their views.

But while we demanded an end to police surveillance of toilets, no use of agent provocateurs and better publicity for the eristence of gay centres and gay social groups. we were aware that ... solutestsd many who went cottaging.

In Amsterdam, for example, the police routinely refer men found cottaging to the gay clubs and saunas, and in this country, some groups have tried to get the police to do the same.

Wardens

But it is not simply a question of asking the police to act as sexual traffic wardens directly people to suitable sexual outlets, for if you are unemployed or fifteen (to take two examples) the gay scene can present enormous obstacles.

And while the gay scene remains concentrated in the centre of large cities, for many men cottaging will remain the only way to make emotional and sexual contacis.

Men involved in the gay scene and gay movement experience sexual desire no differently from anyone else and for some of us cottaging is one of a whole range of valid locations for sex.

For once you move away from an uncritical acceptance of the heterosexual norm you can begin to have a greater choice in determining the way you structure your sexual relationships.

And if you find that fin. and sexual encounters are taking place in Lewis's basement, it is more difficult to retain socialised notions of love, monogamy and meaningful relationships.

I am not arguing that men into having lots of casual sex are in the vanguard of sexual liberation but attempting to counter the common idea that impersonal sex is necessarily degrading and unrewarding.

Ideally 1 would bke to have a wide range of sexual relationships based upon sex as an extension of my friendships.

But while working towards building a society where this is easier to achieve, we have to recognise that cottaging does provide a place, however unsatisfactory, where some people can affirm: their sexuality and explore their emotions.

Space The labour movement should be providing more space for both gay and nongay people to talk about their sexual feelings and fantasies. Apd the placing of these in a political context and the working out of strategies to combat Sexual oppression must be seen as a central political task of the labour movement.

Not to do so means misery and wasted potential which sexual repression causes in this society.

In Canada recently, and especially in Toronto, police raids on gay saunas and bars have sparked off a massive community protest with thousands of gay people taking to the streets.

The demand for the right to privacy has succeeded in uniting gay men, feminists and the left in defending the right of gay men to have consensual sex.

A deeper understanding of gay men's experience is necessary if a similar unity is to be achieved in this country.

The labour movement has to move beyond seeing gay rights as being only about equal rights for lesbians and gay men towards a recognition that gay liberation is about challenging fundamentally the dominant ideas about sex and sexuality.

Contact: Labour Manchester M1 3LY

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