🚀 go-pugleaf

As Margaret Atwood said at a rally after the police raids in Toronto, "I
thought people went to bathhouses to get clean..." :-)

I too have very mixed feelings about the whole business of bathhouses. On
the one hand, they provide a way that people who have anonymous sex can do
so in relative safety, and on the other, they contribute to a dehumanising
and dangerous view of sex. Compounding this is the fact that the bath owners
I've known have been very decent and responsible individuals. So I feel very
queasy about simply either endorsing or condemning baths.

There are two separate issues. One is the public health concern centring on
the AIDS epidemic. Closing baths helps this not at all; however, requiring
baths to both disseminate information and to maintain a VD clinic (as some
of the baths in Vancouver have done voluntarily) seems like a reasonable
thing. Publicising ``safe'' forms of sex is another (though when I was
active in the gay community I found that most forms of publicity on matters
sexual just didn't reach people -- what are you supposed to do, put up
notices in the park?).

The second issue has to do with the psychological and emotional aspects of
casual sex. I tend to compare casual sex to a hamburger: ok in a pinch :-)
but not nourishing on a regular basis. Somewhere we have to evolve a sexual
ethic that goes beyond both faceless sex and enforced monogamy. But using
AIDS to frighten people into that is, I think, unhealthy.