Joan Smith : First Person
Why don’t women go cruising? When the media is full of the shortage of single men, why is this method of finding partners, briefly at least, unthinkable for women?
The simple answer is danger. It is unthinkable for lesbians and straight women alike because we are so accustomed to recognising danger on the streets that we are hardly likely to venture alone on to the commons, parks and heaths where gay men go in search of sex.
When women go out together, we tend to make careful arrangements about getting home safely and any woman who announced that she felt like going for a solo walk in a park on a dark night would swiftly be dissuaded.
There is a paradox here, in that gay pubs and clubs have become such an established presence in cities that it is not obvious why gay men take the risk of cruising parks. Or why George Michael, whose sexuality had been an open secret in the industry for years, would take the risk of hanging round a public lavatory in Los Angeles in search of a pick-up. Exposure, mugging, arrest, blackmail, infection: the possible consequences of cruising, for women and most heterosexual men, are the opposite of alluring.
It is a clich, to suggest that all men like sex, while women put up with sex to get love. But it does seem to be the case that more men than women are attracted to secret lives, whether that means running two families or having sex with anonymous partners in a park.
Until very recently, this kind of clandestine existence was not even an option for women, whose domestic duties and lack of financial independence ruled it out. But single women in search of a partner do not make a habit of hanging around Hyde Park after dark.
All this tells us is that women are not much like gay men in this respect, although women’s sexual conduct has changed considerably in the past three decades. While women are having more sexual partners and are readier to initiate relationships, there is a lingering suspicion that men, both gay and straight, fear emotional closeness and commitment – and what could be less committed than anonymous sex in a public place?
If we leave aside the married men who are still in the closet and bisexuals cruising as a way of keeping elements of their lives separate, there appears to be a substantial number of gay men who like precisely those aspects – the risks, the anonymity, the sense of doing something clandestine and transgressive – which are, on the face of it, counter-erotic.
It is worth pointing out here that it is not only gay men who get a kick from the idea of transgression, as we can see from President Bill Clinton’s pleasure in having oral sex with Monica Lewinsky near a White House window or while taking a phone call from an influential businessman.
While Lewinsky talked about her uneasiness in these circumstances, of feeling degraded by them, it is clear from the Starr report that Clinton likes furtive sex, that it gives him a sense of power over his partners and the many other people who are not in on the secret.
Men who fall into this category remind me of the title of one of Anas Nin’s novels, A Spy in the House of Love: like secret agents, their true identity remains under wraps, never fully disclosed, beyond the grasp of their lovers, be they male or female. In that sense, furtive sex may compensate for the deflation and loss of potency some men feel after orgasm, a way of always holding something back. It is certainly a way of living dangerously, of incorporating an edge of excitement into otherwise overprotected lives.
The other side of this coin is sexual disgust. I suspect men tend to feel this more than women, accounting for the way in which some leap out of bed after sex, moving on to another activity as quickly as possible, while women positively enjoy its languorous aftermath.
The irony here is that while women tend to talk anxiously about their bodies to each other, they rarely seek out sexual experiences in which everything – the uncomfortable setting, the brevity of the encounter, the absence of intimacy – suggests a high degree of alienation. At the very least, it confirms the notion that sex is a furtive, shameful activity, better carried on in the dark with someone you don’t know, an essentially puritan view at odds with much feminist and radical theory.
This isn’t to say that many women wouldn’t like to have more sex, or better sex, than they are getting. But whether they’re meeting men at parties, in clubs or through personal ads, the women I know automatically take precautions designed to make the whole business as safe as possible.
Sex has always been dangerous enough for women, without adding to the risks. We are still getting used to the idea that our bodies are our own and very few of us will ever understand the urge to look for outdoor sex on a rainy night with a stranger.