Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Cruising & Cottaging: Sex in Public Places

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

With privacy being a modern luxury, where did people in the past go to meet and hook up? Public toilets were (and can still be) a popular option.But what were secret signals? And what were the risks? Especially if, like many of the people who did it, you were part of the gay community.Joining Kate today is Dr. Jeff Meek, lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, to take her into this world and help us find out.You can find out more about Jeff's work at https://queerscotland.com/.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXTYou can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. You are here listening to Betwister the Sheets. But before we can let you do that, the lawyers have told us that we have to tell you that this is an adult podcast, broken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way,

covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And now, fair do's, you have been warned, so you can't winger us if you get upset. On with the show. It's September, and the next. Knights are certainly settling in, aren't they? And as George Michael famously sang, Let's go outside in the moonshine. Outside to a park in the early 20th century, that is,

where newly built public toilets are cropping up in more respectable-looking private buildings that will come to be known as cottages. As privacy in society is a rare and precious commodity for the gay community, these cottages are becoming something of a hangout. You just need to know the secret signals to look for. But what are these secret signals? How has the culture of cottaging come about? And I don't know about you, but I can't wait to find out more. So let's keep walking. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time. Goodness,

Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society with me, Kate Lister. In a time when being gay was illegal and subject to horrendous prosecutions, the gay community had to be very selective and resourceful about where they were going to meet, often at great personal risk. Just take a listen back to our episode on Molly Houses to hear about where the gay community was meeting in 18th century London. As the 20th century rolled by, public toilets were cropping up all over the place, and these new private cubicles provided an opportunity for companionship. How did this culture take off in Britain?

Was this culture enjoyed by women too? What were the social rules around these spaces? And how were they policed? Joining me today is Dr. Jeff Meek, lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, and he is going to help us find out. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Jeff Meek.

How are you doing? I'm great. Thanks very much for inviting me along today to talk about cottaging. What a subject. Constantly my mind is blown about how niche history can get and how everything, every sexual practice has got a history. And of course, cottaging does. But how did you come to research this, Jeff?

Well, it was a kind of natural consequence of looking at prosecutions for what are termed homosexual offences from roughly middle of the 19th century through to the 1970s. And cottaging looms very large in the kind of sexual histories of men during that period. You know, they make up prosecutions for cottaging or whatever particular law they used during these prosecutions accounted for. I would say the majority of prosecutions when we entered the 20th century. So it looms large in the sexual histories of the UK. I should have probably started with this question, but just for any delicate innocence out there who may be listening going,

what are they talking about? It's called cottaging, but can you define what cottaging is? Yeah, well, cottaging is the use of public buildings, generally public toilets for assignations between. primarily men. The term itself, cottaging, I mean, there have been various explanations of where that term comes from, but primarily it's because by the end of the 19th century, the Victorians wanted to kind of remove the very basic public toilets that were available at the time, which tended to be kind of wrought iron constructions solely for the use by men, into slightly more

or less obvious public conveniences. So they started to build small buildings that kind of represented or looked like cottages. So that's why cottaging became the term that was being used for these sexual assignations. Wow. Because the public toilets looked like cottages. But that makes me wonder,

have you been able to find a history of this before the Victorians? Was there a culture of men meeting to have sex in public spaces? Yeah. I mean, any public space that offered some level of privacy was being used. So public parks, notoriously, in Glasgow, for example, there were various locations such as Glasgow Green, Queens Park, Kelvin Grove parks that were being used.

And what you do see is the kind of subtle changes in these parks over that period. So they went from being filled with, you know, row after row of roses, eroded endrons and so forth. eventually these lines of bushes became narrower and shorter, as the authorities became aware of their alternate usage at night. That's, because you've got to wonder with these things, when these kind of spaces take on appropriate meanings, how the law deals with that? Because it's like a park, on one hand, it's a park.

There are families and children and delicate people, and it's lovely and it's nice, but they know exactly what is going on. And it's like suddenly this space becomes really fraught and contradictory. Yeah, I mean, these places extended their shape and meaning in numerous directions. It's not just, you know, gay men, gay men, bisexual men, that are using these spaces. Heterosexuals are using them too. So when you look at the records, the police are prosecuting anybody having sex in public.

So it's interesting, you know, many of the men have interviewed in the past who've spoken about their usage of public parks or toilets, talk about, you know, it's not just a random occurrence. It's not just somebody going there looking for action. There are kind of rules and regulations, codes and signals that are being used to protect themselves and to protect other people. So it's not random. It's very organised. Before we get to that, I suppose I've got to ask you, why are people having sex outside? Why aren't they having sex indoors? It can't just be a kink. It can't just be we'd just like to do it outside, although some people love that. But why are there so many people having sex outdoors? You just need to compare it and contrast it with the availability of apps,

websites, commercial premises that we have today. So you don't have to make much of an effort to find whatever you're looking for. If you go back 100 years, there is no commercial LGBTQ scene. There are no places to go, especially if you're from a working class community in a significant town or city. The chances are you're still going to be living in the family home when you're 24, 25, there is no privacy. So the only opportunity you have for either sex, community or companionship is to look for it in particular places. You're not going to have that opportunity to have a romantic interlude over the photocopier at your workplace. This just does not exist in the same way. And certainly, you know, certainly within some middle class subcult,

There are opportunities for men to engage in socialising in sex and private. But for the vast majority of the population, these opportunities don't exist. Therefore, it's a much more risky strategy, but it's the only strategy to find what you're looking for. You often forget just how recent the concept of privacy is, like in your own home, in your own space, your own bed, your own bedroom. That is really recent in our history, isn't it? It is. It's almost a luxurious comparison between now and the past. And even the private space that you might have been afforded a hundred years ago, that there are limitations to that privacy, especially when it comes to sex between men. For example, if you are having sex with a male

partner in your own accommodation and there is a third person present, whether they be in the same room or, you know, somewhere else, your home is no longer a private space. It becomes a public space. And therefore, the police can interrupt your privacy. So privacy is a kind of tenuous and slightly loose concept in the past compared to today. What is it about the public toilets? Because as you've already said, there are alternatives, there are other public spaces. And it's the case going back through history. In the medieval period, lots of people doing it in graveyards, apparently, that turns up in the records and actually in the churches. But what is it about the public toilet, do you think, that becomes, because you said

that there were rules and it wasn't by accident. So what is the meaning that's attached to this? Why are those buildings? Those buildings are on a basic level in a built up environment and a town. They are the only kind of buildings that are designed to offer privacy in a kind of intimate setting. They're very much designed you can escape the public gaze. You know, for obvious reasons, you're using a public toilet, you would look for privacy. So they afford that level of privacy. And it really depended because there were so many different types of cottages of public toilets at

the time. You had to be very careful about which public toilet or cottage you would use, because many of these cottages were staffed. So you had an attendant there from maybe eight until seven every day. Therefore, some particular cottages were not conducive to assignations. Or if you found an attendant who was willing to turn a blind eye, they might be. So it depended. So the wrought iron structures that the Victorians were trying to phase out by the end of the 19th century and continued into the Edwardian period,

these may look particularly risky, considering they are just kind of circular. wrought iron structures that are open at the top and the bottom. But they offered a means of escape very quickly if the situation changed, whereas a cottage with only one entry and exit point presents, you know, multiple risks and dangers should you encounter a plainclosed police officer or somebody who has other intentions? I suppose it's part of the sort of the function of it is, you know, like you go into a toilet certain, you know, you're going to expose your genitals.

Well, at least you should do. That's the plan. And so it kind of lends itself, doesn't it, to, it's a convenient excuse. You can be very quickly, I wasn't doing that at all. That's not what I was doing. So those kind of things cross over to one another. They do. And, you know, in numerous cases, you will have somebody who is arrested saying, you know, I was simply having a pee.

Yeah. You know, how else am I supposed to have a pee? Any suggestion that I was winking or making eye contact with the plainclosed police officer is nonsense. I was there to do a pee and that's it. Most of these cases that occurred in public toilets, they're kind of strange in a sense because most of the individuals arrested pled guilty. Did they? Yeah.

There are reasons for that. If you consider that you have maybe a good job, a close family, if you were to plead not guilty, that, you know, increases the level of public gaze upon the court action. Right. Whereas if you go into a police court or a sheriff court and plead guilty, the likelihood is you're going to get a shorter sentence or just a fine. Whereas if you plead not guilty, then the potential punishment increases by the very nature of pleading not guilty. The problem with that is if you consider how these offences were prosecuted or the investigations involved would just be just. generally involve a plain-closed police officer in the public toilet,

who would use the public toilet over a period of two or three hours, so we'd use it for the obvious reasons, but with the intention of entrapping an individual into making some form of sexual contact. The person would then make that contact. They could be arrested for a variety of offences, but if it is a plain-closed police officer, the likelihood is you're going to get arrested for the indecent assault of a police officer.

Even if he started it? Even if he started it. And the issue with that is, if you're in that situation and you were arrested, you know, what's going through your head is your career ending, your family finding out, etc. If you were to step back from that situation, you would realize that if you pled not guilty, the likelihood is you would be found not guilty because of the issue of corroboration. It's effectively the police officer word against yours or maybe two police officer's words. And throughout the 20th century, you have magistrates in England and Wales, you have sheriffs in Scotland saying to the police, you need to stop this.

This is happening too frequently. You are using entrapment and this needs to stop. I'll be back with Jeff after this short break. I would have thought that people going, that's not me. I was just in the loo having a pee and this guy jumped on me. I would have thought that most people would have gone for that. But they didn't. I guess that shows how frightening it must have been, that they would just rather.

go, I'm guilty, I'm guilty, can I just go home? Yeah, and I think that's why codes and signals are so important in these kind of interactions. I mean, there were simple things like the lighting was cigarette in a certain way, the touch of an arm, etc., was a signal of sexual availability. And the one thing I found really interesting when looking at cases involving cottages in Edinburgh in the 1920s and 1930s is the kind of astonishment of the. the prosecution and the judge that the person being accused of the witness will say, yes, this happened, we did this.

And what conversation did you have with the person? None at all. There was no conversation. And that happens all the time. So people say, no, we didn't speak. There was no conversation. There was no suggestion. We just understood what was going to happen.

Wow. That's the importance, I think, of these kind of safety measures that were used by the men that were using the cottages at that time. What's some of the earliest evidence that you've got of this? There is evidence of men meeting in public to have sex as far back as there are records. Certainly in London there's a lot of records of Molly's meeting. Normally when they stood against the wall having a pee, interestingly enough. But the work that you're doing, cottaging in Scotland,

what's some of the earliest evidence that you've found? Generally, it kind of is in the middle half, the second half of the 19th century. And I think that's down to awareness. You know, the police are aware that this is happening by this period. The cottages are available during this period. Prior to that, it is a much more, less selective practice. You take your opportunity wherever you can get it. And a lot of the prosecutions, for example, in the first half of the 19th century,

tended to be in barracks, so soldiers. So there was two places. There was the barracks. and there was also the model lodging houses that were in major cities. So places where working men that were working in, say, Glasgow or Dundee for a few weeks could stay. Very basic accommodation. So these become, in effect, an alternative cottage. Because the design is very similar.

You go into these places and there are loose partitions with gaps at the bottom and gaps at the top. You have a bed or a bunk within that. So the ability to communicate, is important there. But I looked at a few cases in Scotland, there was the use of, and I think it was the Indecent Advertisements Act of 1889. That is used.

That crops up in a few prosecutions. And at the time I wondered, why would there be an indecent Advertisements Act prosecution? And what it was was, you know, the simple thing of men leaving messages on cubicle walls or passing notes between cubicles. Wow. Something that we tend to think is quite a modern thing.

You know, we tend to associate this with the 20th century, the middle part of the 20th century. We think of John Gilgud and other notable individuals who found themselves being prosecuted for these offences. We don't tend to think of this long, solid history of cottaging and the way in which men communicated with each other. So that was interesting. But it also shows the diversity and variety of methods. that the law could use or could be used to prosecute sex between men. I was just going to ask you about that, because that feels like a reach to me.

That feels like the police have sat down and just gone, what can we get them on? A homosexuality isn't illegal. What is there? They wrote a note, right, that's indecent advertising. What is the state of the law at this point? So for much of the 19th century, you had a kind of loose interpretation of the sodomy offenses,

the sodomy and attempted sodomy. 1885, you get the criminal. Criminal Law Amendment Act, Section 11, also known as the Labashehr Amendment, that introduces the crime of gross indecency, which can be interpreted very loosely. I mean, what is indecent and what is grossly indecent is up to the interpretation of the prosecution in these cases. So you can be prosecuted for gross indecency. You can be prosecuted for attempted gross indecency. What even is that? It can even be prosecuted for an attempt to organise an act of gross indecency.

And what these tend to come down to, so the procurement part of the gross and decency legislations, referred to things short of gross indecency. So, you know, a nod and a wink, a suggestion. So you could be prosecuted for that. So the diversity of the law by, you know, the 20th century was pretty significant. you had the kind of regional and national diversity within the UK as well. You know, various English counties and Scottish counties had bylaws, specifically focusing on the use of public toilets.

So you could be prosecuted, for example, in Edinburgh, for using a public toilet for an activity that it was not intended for. That's very vague. Yeah, that was a bylaw. There was even a suggestion at one point of if you spend too long, a public toilet. You can be prosecuted. So if you're in there for 15 minutes, you know, you have to have a very good reason for that. I mean, I spoke to a former police officer. He was obviously active in the later part of that period. And he was talking about the way in which

they would have blank squads, just fill in the blank, where they would go out deliberately to arrest gay men because he said it was like shooting fish in a barrel. It was so easy. And if they felt that the Friday or Saturday night had been pretty quiet, pretty poor in terms of action, they would head to certain public toilets because they knew they would find people to arrest there. Wow. I mean, it's incredibly risky activity for the most part. Yeah. Did you have a sense of how the police felt about this?

Because I almost assumed that they would think that it was just a spectacular waste of their time. Like, why are we running around after these men having consensual sex? But that doesn't sound like that's the case, actually. There was a certain level of enthusiasm for it. I mean, one phrase that I kept on hearing from the kind of police community was almost, won't somebody think of the children. So there is this concern that the activities of men in public toilets may cause offence or harm to innocent bystanders.

Okay. The extent to which they would kind of monitor that is ludicrous. I mean, as late as 1977, I think it was in Dundee. There was a notorious public toilet that was used for cottaging, which was built into an embankment. So you could actually walk up to the top of the building, effectively. And what the police were doing was they were positioning two officers on the embankment with poles on the end of which were mirrors.

And they were pushing these poles with mirrors into the ventilation slot at the top of each of the cubicles. and spending a considerable amount of time there. There's the kind of reverse argument within that where you could say to the police, what about the innocent users of that public toilet? Right? Where's privacy in any of this? There is an obsessive element to it. So you might think that this would be a waste of police time,

effectively, you know, prosecuting people for crimes that they might get a fine for at most. There is a kind of obsessive quality amongst the police in terms of rooting out these, dangers to the kind of moral welfare of the country. So, yeah. Was it lucrative as well if people are just pleading guilty and paying a fine? Yeah, it would be reasonable.

I mean, they weren't huge fines. It ranged. It was effectively the luck of the situation or the luck of the draw. If you go into public toilet on an evening and you interact with a plainclosed police officer and there is very little evidence, then you might get a five pounds fine. but if there are maybe three or four police officers there

and your interaction is maybe with another consenting adult, you could be looking at one to two years imprisonment. So it was effectively, you know, the risk you took is not just that you could be the subject of violence or robbery. You could find yourself being prosecuted, receiving a sentence, maybe double that of somebody who did it the night before. It was really just kind of erratic policing and policy. This sounds incredibly dangerous, dangerous to the point. I don't know if I would do it. Like, even if I really wanted to, like, your chances of being caught and arrested are very, very high. And I know that you've spoken to men that were involved in cottage and culture. And from them, did you get a sense of, one, why they kept doing it? And number two, what were any safety measures that you had? You alluded to some earlier on, but what kind of things were they doing to?

attempt to protect themselves? There was a kind of delicacy about it because the narrative has changed over the years due to the kind of introduction of the concept of the good gay and the bad gay. It started by Wolfenden and kind of enforced by the 1967 legislation in England and Wales. So there was a kind of hesitancy for many of these men, and I'll maybe talk about that later, but there was a hesitancy amongst many of these men to actually describe or discuss their activity and cottaging because their perception was that I would see this as a kind of moral weakness or a failure on their character. But when they did open up about using cottages, the kind of main thing that came through

was isolation and loneliness. It wasn't, I needed sex, I wanted sex. It was a case of I had absolutely no one that I could, you know, let alone have sex with, but I had no one that I could have a conversation with about my situation. And they would hear through the grapevine, it's always the grapevine, you know, this public toilet has a reputation. And they would put two and two together and think, well, it's obviously a reputation for something. I may as well investigate. And the initial kind of entry under the cottaging scene was fraught with dangers because they had no experience of that kind of scenario.

So the beneficial side of that was if you met the right people, they would kind of inform and educate you about how to keep yourself safe in these situations. you know, not to go barging in, waving your wares. You know, it was a case of being far more subtle about knowing how to determine whether that person was a legitimate potential partner or whether that person was just somebody using the toilet or whether that person may be an undercover police officer. Opportunity was there to engage with people that you had been denied that opportunity to engage with. But there was also an educational necessity of,

entering that subculture. Because if you didn't, if you didn't understand it, then you were prime candidate for arrest and prosecution. What kind of things were they looking out for? I wouldn't have a clue. It could be in certain areas it was a colour of a tie. Certain times it was the wearing of a particular flower in the lapel. Other times, you know, it would be simple things about asking whether you had a cigarette. And then if the person said, yes, I have a cigarette, you would ask them, could you light it for me? And if the person says, I'd be very happy to light it for you, then that was a kind of code for this might be an opportunity. So it was about, you know, learning these codes as one method of keeping you safe. But, you know, the police would eventually

catch up on the codes. So they would know the codes. They would know what to say in a situation to entrap somebody. So that the codes were ever evolving throughout that period. I'm just thinking now about the police officers that were doing the luring. Were they very convincing in what they were doing or were they standing out like a saw-thum looking very much like a police officer? Some did, but others were chosen specifically because they were perceived to be the perfect candidate. So they would choose younger, more attractive police officers. They would generally take them from uniform division because they were less likely to be known

in that kind of circle, they would choose the candidate well because, you know, it is. I mean, the more you think about it, the more ridiculous a case of entrapment, it becomes, it becomes, you know, it's like leaving a gold watch in the seat of a car in an area that has problems with crime, you know, it's entrapment, it's you're creating the criminal offence rather than monitoring the criminal offence. I suppose I don't feel very sorry for the police, it has to be said, but I kind of kind of help thinking that there might have been some like little 16, 17 year old recruit into the police doing work experience, has suddenly found themselves as bait in one of these cottages. I mean,

were they at risk as well? Or were they kind of, you know, were they protected? How could you be? Yeah, you would have to be willing to do it in the first instance. Yeah. Selection was based on, you know, appearance and their willingness to participate. It was just a part of the the building experience in the police force, you had to do it at some point. That's shitty, isn't it? How about class? Does class play into this at all? Do you get poshutaging areas? Does that play into this at all?

There certainly were individuals from the middle classes and beyond that were participating. There is one case that I discovered in Edinburgh where these were in the Sheriff Court records for the 1930s, which were closed. I couldn't reveal any names, but there was a very notable. individual who was caught up in a case that involved him visiting a public toilet, engaging in a sexual act with someone who then went on to blackmail them. Wow. And I think his position enabled him to go to the police knowing that his sexual assignation would be overlooked. The police would only be interested in the blackmail attempt. Now and again, you do see individuals that you

might perceive to be middle class or beyond participating, but they tended to move in slightly different kind of environments. There was a significant rise in male sex work during the 30s, 20s and 30s in particular in large cities. And that kind of broadened the potential for sexual engagement for the middle classes. So they would deliberately position themselves at theatres and such like. So it kind of took, you know, the kind of sexual transaction out of the kind of public toilet into a different arena. If you were somebody who was involved in sex work during this time, the opportunity to move in different circles in relative safety would be an attractive option.

I'll be back with Jeff after this short break. I research the history of sex work. That's kind of my specialty. And one of the things that you do notice is that wherever sex work is criminalized, Crime against sex workers increases exponentially because what are you going to do? You're going to go out at the police and admit that you're committing a crime? Do you see that playing out in the history of cottaging and of gay men? Were they more likely to be the victim of other crimes? Were like criminals hanging around these cottages to target them because they knew they couldn't report it?

If they were, there was little evidence of it. Yeah. You know, the police were not obviously going to be interested, kind of complete lack of empathy as well as the the criminal justice system being designed the way it was. If there was, there's very little record of it. What there is records of is a kind of reverse of that is sex workers being the protagonist, the individual engaged in criminal activity. So you've got the white hats in Glasgow and the 20s in particular.

This is a group of male sex workers who are engaged in sex work, but also in significant blackmail cases, running illegal nightclubs and so forth and kind of luring innocent visitors to the city disembarking from the train at 11pm unsure of where they are targeted by these groups. There's plenty of evidence of that

because obviously that's how the criminal justice system will present the information as criminals rather than victims. The victims are often disregarded entirely from that conversation. Do cis women go cartaging? maybe I'm just very naive, but I've never encountered that. Nobody's ever said to me, do you want to go cottaging? I've never heard of groups of women meeting up like this.

Have you found a history of that? And if not, why not? I have not found any evidence of that. This baby, because of the kind of patriarchal lens through which, you know, history has been written and archives have been collated. The whole thing about, you know, sex between women, never being a criminal offense, kind of relegates women's sexuality, this kind of strange position within history.

The only time I ever encountered this was when I was speaking to an older lesbian. It was probably 10, 15 years ago, who said that her friend had come up from London had been disappointed by the cottaging scene in Glasgow. Wow. What that meant at the time, I'm not entirely sure. It's only now that I reflect back on it, I think, was she disappointed in the fact that cottaging happened in the city, using men as the issue here?

or was she disappointed that the opportunities for her to go cottaging were limited? That's the only kind of engagement I've had with women going cottaging. It's different, isn't it? Because women weren't allowed into certain public spaces in the way men were. I'm not sure what the history of public toilets is. Were they just for men or were their public services for women too? Originally, it was purely for men, solely for men. And towards the end of the 19th century, as the old kind of history goes,

women entering the public sphere, increasingly, there was this necessity to create public toilets for women. And that's where the cottages kind of come in, in the sense they had that dual role as men's and ladies. But it's interesting if you look at older photographs, and there's actually an old cottage in Glasgow on the Brumelaw right beside the Clyde. And if you look at the side of it, one side it says men's and the other side it says ladies waiting room. I love it. Just like the image of just a lady just sat there in Glasgow. So what am I waiting for? It's just been there for ages. Oh, see, that fascinates me.

They must like trying to get to lesbian culture and see what was their meeting system? How did they meet each other? It's just not there, is it, in the same way. It's just they weren't being prosecuted in the same way. They weren't being targeted in the same way. They weren't aligned in the same spaces. We just don't know. We don't.

All we have are kind of, the whole romantic friendship kind of history. That we were just good friends. Yeah. So let me finish off by asking you this. Where are we up to today with it? I mean, has it been completely done away with by dating apps and the fact that we've got a bit more space now?

How does it exist today? Is it still something that people do? It is. You know, I was speaking to someone recently in Edinburgh who was pointing out a notorious cottage. And I asked, what do you mean by that? Is it historical? and he said, no, it's a public toilet I wouldn't use because it's notorious.

It's still used. Maybe because Edinburgh is such a kind of a city that attracts thousands of people every year for the festivals and so forth. Maybe that's why the legacy continues. It still exists in Glasgow. There are apps you can use to find the best location, whether that be a public toilet. Increasingly, it's more likely to be somewhere else because public toilets are disappearing at an alarming rate anyway. So it still continues. I think there's a shift in the discourse, though.

I mentioned earlier the concept of the good and the bad gay. The Wolfenden report, the Wolfenden Report introduces this concept very clearly. There is a good type of homosexual, and that's the homosexual that is discreet, that is kind of straight acting, that commits his moral outrages behind closed doors and not in the public domain. And that has an effect on the way in which homosexuality is discussed from the post-1957 era. throughout the 1960s into the period of decriminalisation where arrests for public indecences increase

rather than decrease as a result of the change in law. I remember speaking to Chris, who was a barman in a very famous bar in Glasgow, Vintners, it was called. And he was telling me about his experiences on the scene. And I mentioned cottaging, and he was saying, oh, that was an outrage. Your whole reputation would be shattered and shredded if it was discovered that you were cottaging.

Wow. It's amazing how powerful that discourse was that it really shaped and changed attitudes from within the community as well as outside of the community. Wow. Yeah, but I think cottages still, they certainly do still exist.

There are many cottages that are very popular and continue to be popular for whatever reason. I know I said that was my last question, but I just want to ask you now, do you think the concept of the good and the bad guy is still with us? Does that still underpin?

gay identity today? I think it's slightly loosened in the last few years. I think as the kind of diversity of the LGBT group increases and the way in which we speak about each other changes and is shaped and reshaped,

I think that concept has diminished to a certain extent. I think with the availability of ways to engage with each other, whether that be through apps and websites, I think that kind of moral peak that occurred

in the 60s and 70s into the 80s has slightly diminished. I think the greatest threat to the way in which we talk about ourselves has returned to politics in the public arena. I think with the rise of certain bigotries, I think that's where the greatest threat comes from. I think it's that community that are attempting to reintroduce the concept of the good gay and the bad gay. Weirdly focused on toilets again, that particular narrative.

That's coming back. up again, like this space? Absolutely. The toilet is the moral compass, I think, of Britain rather than anything else. It's the way we discuss toilets that tells you most about the kind of position we are in morally and in terms of rights. Jeff, that's an amazing place to leave it. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Are you online? I have a website, Queerscotland.com, so you can reach me through that. I have social media

profiles on Twitter and on the sky. Thank you so much. You've been fascinating to talk to. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Jeff for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like with you and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com.

We've got episodes on everything from Viking Beauty Standards to the history of underwear, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.