The Bathhouse Issue in SF:

 

            In 1984 the bathhouses for gaymen here were closed by court order on the grounds that they encouraged unsafe sex, esp. fucking w/o a condom. Or, more accurately according to Dr. Mervyn Silverman (with whom I was on KPFA for an hour on 27 May 99 and who was Director of Public Health in 1984 when the gay bathhouses here were closed and was under extreme pressure from then mayor - presently Senator and still erotophobic - Dianne Feinstein) the court order mandated that all commercial places where people gathered and engaged in sexual interactions had to permit monitoring of such activity every ten minutes. This led to a closure of the old bathhouses and a handful of new "sex clubs" arose which have no "private lockable" spaces; i.e., cubicles containing a bed and with a lockable door.

            So the distinction between "bathhouses" and "sex clubs" has come down to whether or not private lockable spaces are available to clients. All major cities of the world have bathhouses for gaymen except the so-called "queer mecca," San Francisco which does, however, have one officially licensed bathhouse for lesbians (though according to women who go there, it has no private lockable spaces and strongly discourages sexual interaction, though not always successfully) and it also has baths catering to straights which do  definitely have private lockable spaces and with no restrictions on the legal relation of those jointly using such spaces.

            The court order closing bathhouses has expired, but the Dept. of Public Health (DPH) maintains its prohibition of private spaces by fiat. What is most maddening about this policy is that the DPH and the Health Commission which oversees the DPH refuse to hold a public forum to air the evidence on the role bathhouses for gaymen play in the transmission of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs). In fact, this evidence falls most heavily on the side that bathhouses can be an important social institution promoting safer, healthier sex among men [e.g., Bolton, Vincke and Mak "Gay Baths Revisited: An Empirical Analysis" GLQ 1, 3 (1994) 255-273]. In particular, they promote better opportunities for education about healthier sex and so promote cultural change thereby reducing the transmission of STDs. In contrast, banning them, as occurs in general when markets are legally proscribed, encourages "black market activity" because it makes such activity extraordinarily profitable. In this case, the current prohibition seems to encourage the amazingly numerous venues (e.g., "backrooms" at bars) for sexual interaction in this city, venues which are truly dirty and dark and where condom usage, let alone sanitation, is impossible due the harsh conditions, let alone being laughable, unlike the one sex club here which is a "clean, well lit place" (and which is only two blocks from my apt.).

 

 

 

My conjecture about the economics of privacy in bathhouses:

 

Many gaymen seem to very strongly want private spaces for their sexual interaction rather than the large-room with skimpy slats/curtains separating any couple or group playing with each other from the rest of the assembled voyeurs. Some few of us are exhibitionists, but most seem to be very uncomfortable being watched when engaging in erotic interaction.  This apparent strong preference for privacy has two consequences:

i.          Two of the three sex clubs here for gaymen keep their rooms so dark that it is almost impossible to see if your partner has a condom on or any other such relevant details. When asked why they do this, their response has been that they would get no patrons if the lights were turned up: for some clients, the darkness mitigates the lack of privacy, but the rule of no private lockable spaces now has the consequence of making monitoring - BY THE PARTICIPANTS THEMSELVES(!) - difficult to impossible.

ii.         HERE IS MY CONJECTURE (heavily dependent on patrons' preferences):

            Because large numbers of gaymen have a strong preference for privacy in their erotic interactions,  permitting private spaces in bathhouses increases the market for these businesses so much that they can experience increasing returns to scale (where "scale" = number of patrons/unit of time), economies which are due to set up costs of licensing and brandname creation as well as to increased desirability to patrons of more crowded bathhouses (positive crowding effects) since larger crowds offer more "excitement," "action" and choice. These larger institutions offer more facilities as joint products (cafe, genuine reading area, indoor and outdoor tubs and play spaces, wider variety of erotic venues) which, by being together in one location for one cover charge, offer economies of scope to patrons and offer owners ways to differentiate their product - their brandname - in seeking market dominance or at least a protected market niche.

 

 

Foucault on baths (Dits et Žcrits, IV 1980-1988, pp. 280-1):

Les thermes Žtaient un lieu de plaisir et de rencontre trs important, qui a progressivement disparu en Europe. Au Moyen åge, les thermes Žtaient encore un lieu de rencontre entre les hommes et les femmes, ainsi qu'un lieu de rencontre des hommes entre eux et les femmes entre elles - bien que, de cela, on parle rarement. É les rencontres entre hommes et femmes É ont disparu au cours du XVIe et du XVIIe sicle. É [En le XIXe sicle,] les bains ont donc continuŽ ˆ exister comme lieu de rencontres sexuelles. Ils Žtaient une sorte de cathŽdrale de plaisir, au  cÏur de la ville, o l'on pouvait se rendre aussi souvent qu'on le voulait, o l'on fl‰nait, o l'on faisait son choix, on se rencontrait, on prenait son plaisir, on mangeait, on buvait, on discutait É La sexualitŽ Žtait, ˆ l'Žvidence, un plaisisr social pour les Grecs et pour les Romains. Ce qui est intŽressant ˆ propos de l'homosexualitŽ masculine aujourd'hui - et il semblerait que ce soit aussi le cas de l'homosexualitŽ fŽminine, depuis un certain temps -, c'est que les rapports sexuels se traduisent [are seen as - suggested by Marc Gadelin] immŽdiatement en rapports sociaux, et que les rapports sociaux sont compris comme [lead into] des rapports sexuels. Pour les Grecs et les Romains, d'une manire diffŽrente, les rapports sexuels s'incrivaient ˆ [were part of] l'intŽrior des rapports sociaux, au sens le plus large. Les thermes Žtaient un lieu de socialitŽ qui incluait des rapports sexuels. 

 

 

 

Warner (1999) is excellent on privacy and its political economic connections to privatization such as the privatization of public space (pp. 69-70, 132-3 162-165, 172). Thus the goal of much of the current push for samesex marriage is to get lesbigayers to adopt the heteronormative prescription of "cloaking sex in the invisibility of a zone of privacy ... marriage makes your desire private ... marrying embraces propriety"(132-3) Federal law (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Act of 1996, aka "welfare reform") mandates that states teach "that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity." (203)

            Warner also points out that there has been "an expansion of a market at the expense of public space" (162) Many lesbigayers (cite some such as Rottello, Signorelli, Eskind,...) have sought to get straight respectability through the expedient of repudiating sex and to "embrace a politics of privatization that offers both property value and an affirmation of identity in a language of respectability." (164)

            See Warner's list on p. 172 of private vs public.

            This impulse to make samesex sex private perpetuates a geography of shame. This serves, in particular, to constipate our HIV-prevention public health measures since it is tied up in the straight-jacket of moralism condemning "promiscuous" sex: "Abstinence education"  (propaganda) receives more Federal financial support than does all other HIV prevention. (203)

 

 

 

 

References

 

Eric Rofes, Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities and Cultures. 1998 New York: Harrington Park Press (Haworth)

 

Public Sex, Gay Space, ed. William Leap (ColumbiaU Press, 1999). Lots of essays about bathhouses and cruising zones. ref from Kerwin Kay including good piece by Stephen Murray on how for some of us our self esteem and sexual excitement are enhanced by being observed, quite the contrary of the people he cites who take it as obvious that we all want privacy.

 

Warner, Michael. The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. New York: The Free Press, 1990.