Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (Observations) [Paperback]

Laud Humphreys (Author), Lee Rainwater (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1975 | Series: Observations

From the time of its first publication, Tearoom Trade engendered controversy. It was also accorded an unusual amount of praise for a first book on a marginal, intentionally self-effacing population by a previously unknown sociologist. The book was quickly recognized as an important, imaginative, and useful contribution to our understanding of deviant sexual activity. Describing impersonal, anonymous sexual encounters in public restroomstearooms in the argotthe book explores the behavior of men whose closet homosexuality is kept from their families and neighbors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Tearoom Trade was Laud's most significant book...what emerged in this ground-breaking research was a sociological portrait of conservative and tormented lives: married men, family men, conservative men, whose personal proclivities and preferences were powerful enough, institutionally grounded enough, to break through the conventions of social life."--Glenn A. Goodwin, Irving Louis Horowitz, and Peter M. Nardi, Sociological Inquiry

About the Author

Lee Rainwater is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University and research director emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study. He was an editor at Transaction, the associate editor of theJournal of Marriage and the Family, and a member of the review board of Sociological Quarterly. He has written various books and many professional journal articles, including Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America’s Children In Comparative Perspective; Income Packaging in the Welfare State: A Comparative Study of Family Income; and Social Policy and Public Policy: Inequality and Justice.

Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Aldine Transaction; 2 edition (December 31, 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0202302830
• ISBN-13: 978-0202302836
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #363,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Impressive research, and ethicists' tempest in a teapot, June 7, 2000

By 

Timothy M. Hall - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (Observations) (Paperback)

This book is the first and one of the few and to study male-male sexual behavior as it occurs between men who do not primarily identify themselves as being homosexual or bisexual. Previous studies had been largely clinical, based on the reports of individuals undergoing psychotherapy, and most ethnographic studies have been of more or less gay-identified communities -- gay bars, gay organizations, gay neighborhoods -- or male prostitutes. This was the first to study men who have sex with men but who mostly have lives as apparently ordinary, married heterosexuals. The study revealed some surprising facts about such men, and fired a controversy over sociological ethics and propriety that continues to this day.

During the course of a year, Humphreys observed male-male sexual activity in certain public restrooms (known in gay slang as "tearooms") in an unidentified city in the US. A year later, after having identified many of the men he had observed, he arranged to interview them as part of a different, general sociological study, which allowed him to ask a number of questions about their backgrounds and personal lives without revealing their clandestine activities; he also approached about a dozen of the men in the tearooms themselves and was able to interview them openly.

Humphreys' findings contradict a number of previously held assumptions about male-male sexual activity, and carry some important recommendations. One is that the "seduction of teenagers" does not occur in these public places, and in fact teenage boys are actively excluded despite their frequent desire to participate. Another is that the chance of anyone being unwillingly approached in a public restroom, unless he is behaving in such a way as to invite sexual advances, is practically nonexistent. Third, the most frequent criminal behavior which results from these practices is blackmail, primarily from the policemen on the vice squad who are assigned to eliminate sex in public places.

Finally, the book devotes a significant space to the ethical issues which were raised by its methodology. At the time, practically nothing was known about homosexual behavior in the general population, despite a great deal of attention from police, clergy, and politicians. The study was carried out with no untoward effects, and several participants stated that they were glad of the opportunity to talk about themselves. However, the study involved potential danger to the subjects in the event that confidentiality had been broken, and the subjects could not be asked for consent without fatally compromising the study. The debate which followed among sociologists, journalists, and ethicists, regarding the balance between society's need for objective knowledge and the individual's right to privacy, has continued to this day. It is a must-read for anyone concerned with the debate over research on human behavior, both for the historical documents it contains (several of the major criticisms and defenses of the study) and for the way in which it is often misrepresented today by its critics.

The book is well written and extremely readable, and gives some interesting insight into both the state of American homosexual behavior and of the political climate in the years immediately before Stonewall. It won the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the author was later elected to the national board of a homosexual rights organization, in part because of the importance of this research. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the sociology or history of homosexuality.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, February 25, 2009

By 

M. K. Feliciani "EvilGPiggin" (Ocala, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (Observations) (Paperback)

This book is a very interesting read. Especially for sociological studies or ethical malpractices. The book is about a graduate student who studies public sex in tea rooms. 'Tea Rooms' are public restrooms that men use to receive sexual favors from other men. Basically the author wrote down the license plate numbers of all the males who frequented these tea rooms and waited a year to look up the men and track them down. Once he found them he would interview them about their sexual practices, often in front of their families. When the student published his research, all the men in the book could be identified, even though their names were changed. This book is fascinating as a tool to understand early sociological research.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great example of ethnograhic research, September 28, 2010

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Dr. Cardinal "Cardinal Bound!!!!" (Free of the Mountains!!!!!) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (Observations) (Paperback)

This is a great example of what can be done using ethnographic research. I cannot say whether this book represents a major innovation in gay studies. That is not what I study. What I study is government budgeting, but needed some advice on how to do an ethnogrpahy on th topic. This book provided that advice even though it did not directly touch the topic I was interested in, and that is an achievement. The auhtor also includes a sound discussion of the ethical issues that are associated with doing this kind of research. The book is readible, and very practical in addition to being very informative. Get it and enjoy an improvement to doing this type of research.