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Cruising sites are places where men anonymously seek each other out for sexual contact. Many of them are in parks, highway rest areas, men's public toilets, and beaches. Periodically journalists mention them to inspire horror, but for the most part they are silent and overlooked. The men involved prefer to keep them camouflaged and to prevent awareness of their cruising from leaking into other sites of their lives.
Sociologists are most familiar with them from Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, Laud Humphreys' study of sexual contacts at men's public toilets near Saint Louis, Missouri in the 1960s, first published in 1970 (Humphreys 1975). It is still the main reference for research on cruising. It provided a starting point for what to look for and ask about in my own study of highway rest area cruising in upstate New York in the 1990s (Hollister 1999, 2002).
I did not attempt to replicate Tearoom Trade, nor could I, even had I dealt with a more indulgent IRB (Institutional Review Board). Although our respective field sites were similar, the methodological assumptions in how we framed them revealed or obscured quite different features. In this paper I will use material from my research to provide some perspective on Humphreys, particularly the "tearoom tradeoff" in his methodological itinerary.
Cruising Research
Humphreys observed a range of gay-related settings before narrowing his case to men's public toilets set in parks. With the guidance of twelve tearoom regulars, and acting in the role of a lookout, he observed how men would select their partners and arrange and engage in sexual contact. He found that, contrary to a popular belief that they lurked in the toilets waiting to hit on the unsuspecting, they were cautious and took care to limit their approaches to knowing players and to conceal their activities from outsiders. He hoped that the case for a self-regulating, self-camouflaging scene would undermine claims by police officers that they posed a public nuisance. He argued that undercover decoys posed a more significant and potentially devastating threat (Humphreys 1975:87-88,163). Those who showed no signs of potential involvement are highly unlikely to be approached. Cruisers patiently wait for them to leave (61-62). This was very much the case in the sites I observed.