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Culture, Health & Sexuality
An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care
Volume 23, 2021 - Issue 11: Viral Times: Rethinking HIV and COVID-19
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Research Article

(Re)regulating gay sex in viral times: COVID-19 and the impersonal intimacy of the glory hole

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Pages 1559-1572 | Received 09 Dec 2020, Accepted 11 May 2021, Published online: 08 Jul 2021
 

Abstract

COVID-19 has transformed the way we live our lives, and sex has been a significant element of that transformation. Gay male sex in the UK has faced the most significant (re)criminalisation and (re)regulation in living memory with intimacy outside of the heteronormative framework of domestic coupledom at best discouraged and, at worst, made into a criminal offence. This criminalisation provides a temporal praxis in which gay men experience sex in the shadows once more, an echo of a historic legal and cultural regulation of desire. This history also provides a space for experiencing forms of impersonal intimacy and queer desire in a way that is arguably well-suited for viral times, namely the glory hole. These historic partitions and apertures – connecting gay men across legal and cultural boundaries of desire and affirmed through modes of anonymous and promiscuous sex – may once again provide a queer way to experience intimacy as impersonal. This article explores this potential and situates the glory hole as a cultural and legal site of this tension between the intimate and the impersonal, as well as considering how it is being recast as commercial artefact and performance space during these viral times.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Cottage is a British term to denote a public lavatory used as a public sex setting, drawing upon the Victorian cottage-like appearance of public lavatories found in parks and public spaces, whilst the term tearoom (from ‘toilet room’ or t-room’) is more commonly used in the USA (see Ashford (Citation2006, Citation2007, Citation2012) and Johnson (Citation2007)).