Tearoom Trade: Buildings, Bodies, Sex

• In Event: If a Body Meet a Body: Making People in Daily Practice

Abstract

Laud Humphreys’ 1970 text, Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, is a sociological classic. But the book’s rich ethnographic analysis of how men accomplished what Humphreys called “instant sex” has long been overshadowed by allegations of ethical violations. This paper refocuses attention onto Humphreys’ important theoretical contributions to sexuality studies, with a particular focus on two aspects of the study. First, it examines Humphreys’ discussion of the buildings themselves and ways in which men repurposed them as sites conducive to sexual activity by removing cubicle doors, cutting “glory holes,” and breaking windows for lookouts. An important contribution of the study was exploration of how sexual practices are constructed by, and lived out within, specific places. Humphreys himself quipped that some men were more attached to the buildings than to the men with whom they had casual sex. Second, the paper discusses Humphreys’ analysis of the tearoom encounters themselves, including the rules of interaction such as approaching, signaling, contracting, and dealing with intrusions. Humphreys’ mentor wrote that the book shows “how socially constructed patterns of use of time, space, technological resources, information, and interpersonal contacts” together produce the “ordinary” public restroom as a sexual site. This paper uses Tearoom Trade as a case study to argue that the epistemic principles and methodological practices of mid-20th century “deviance” studies anticipated later intellectual advances of social constructionism, cultural studies, STS, and feminist-queer studies, for example the focus on performances, places, and a fluid approach to identities.

Author

• Janice M. Irvine, University of Massachusetts