Study
The book is an ethnographic study of anonymous male-male sexual encounters in public toilets (a practice that was known as "tea-rooming" in U.S. gay slang and "cottaging" in British English).
Humphreys was able to observe and describe various social cues (body language, hand language, etc.) developed and used by participants in those places. The encounters usually involved three people: the two engaged in the sexual activity, and a look-out, called "watchqueen" in slang. By offering his services as the "watchqueen," Humphreys was able to observe the activities of other participants.
38% of Humphreys' subjects were neither bisexual nor homosexual; 24% were clearly bisexual; 24% were single and were covert homosexuals, and only 14% corresponded to the popular stereotype of homosexuality - clear members of the gay community interested in primarily homosexual relationships. Because Humphreys was able to confirm that 54% of his subjects were outwardly heterosexual men with unsuspecting wives at home, an important thesis of "Tearoom Trade" is the incongruity between the private self and the social self for many of the men engaging in this form of homosexual activity. Specifically, they put on a "breastplate of righteousness" (social and political conservatism) in an effort to conceal their deviation from social norms.
Humphreys also concluded that such encounters were harmless, and posed no danger of harassment to straight men. His research has convinced many police departments that such encounters resulted in victimless crime; hence they were able to focus on other problems.
Read more about this topic: Tearoom Trade
Famous quotes containing the word study:
“Then, though I prize my friends, I cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty seeking, this spiritual astronomy, or search of stars, and come down to warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the vanishing of my mighty gods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I thought that the chief thing to be done in order to equal boys was to be learned and courageous. So I decided to study Greek and learn to manage a horse.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)