A few responses came from scandalized pearl-clutchers, like a 40-year-old straight white man who felt the need to write: “I have never used a glory hole and I can’t believe that they are a real thing in any context.” (To which I say: OK boomer.)īut we heard from hundreds of gay men (thank you for trusting us!), including unsolicited emails from eager glory hole practitioners - advocating for glory hole awareness - who had set up private ones in their homes and were excited that their moment was finally here. In a matter of days, we received a thousand replies. So we did what most people do when they wonder about something: We sent an anonymous survey. In any case, the New York City Health Department’s recommendation got BuzzFeed News’ culture desk wondering: Have glory holes gone mainstream? How are people using them? (By “culture desk,” I really mean my editor, who has never been more excited about anything I’ve ever pitched.) It’s also a recurring trope in straight porn, from kink mistresses, who see it as a form of women’s sexual agency and mastery, to what looks more like aggressively straight gaze–y porn for straight men who want to imagine that ladies love their dicks as much as they do. (Even though Craig did not identify as gay or queer.)Ī quick Google search, though, reveals that glory hole porn, both amateur and professional, is a popular category among gay men on websites like Pornhub. In reaction, assimilationist gay organizations like GLAAD dismissed things such as cruising and glory holes as a tragic aspect of an earlier generation of queer culture. There was an understandable fear at the time that queer sexual practices could lead to anti-gay stigmatization. Technically, no glory hole was involved (“there is no smoking glory hole here,” explained a prominent gay blog at the time) but it’s true that Craig’s toe-tapping in a Minneapolis airport restroom did get him arrested, creating a panicked investigation in straight media about, as the Advocate put it, " What Are the Gays Up to in Bathrooms Anyway?"
Police surveillance of homosocial meeting spaces first uncovered the existence of glory holes for scandalized cis heterosexuals back in 18th-century England, long before the Oscar Wilde trial turned sodomy into a scandal and homosexuality into an identity.Īccording to my highly scientific research, meaning I asked a straight colleague what came to mind when she heard the term “glory hole,” she explained that a certain generation of straight white women first heard the phrase during coverage of the 2007 arrest of Sen. The idea of a hole in a partition of a public men’s restroom - at waist level, to put a penis in or gesture for another person to do so - has been linked to queer men in the public imagination since before the notion of queer identity existed. Queer outlets quickly decoded the recommendation for straights: The department was encouraging the use of glory holes. It suggested, for instance, that New Yorkers try new sexual practices, including "physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face to face contact.” Last month, in the midst of coronavirus quarantining, the New York City Health Department encouraged residents to be sexually creative to stay safe.