As even the most saccharine queer representation comes under attack, and porn bans proliferate across the U.S., some queer people have rightfully sanitized their presence online and IRL; but others—sex party promoters, kink community leaders and educators alike—have refused to shy away from the more explicit aspects of the queer experience.

Despite what pearl-clutching critics of play parties, bathhouses and other sex-inclusive spaces would have you believe, the bacchanalian festivities actually serve important cultural and historical purposes for queer people, dating back more than a century. More complex than simply a space for people to have sex, bathhouses, play parties and sex clubs are places where queer culture is born, connections are made and community is found.

And though the advent of hookup apps have made these physical spaces less necessary, per se, spaces where people can meet in public for sex, or meet to suss out a potential hookup, still serve a necessary purpose.

Gary Wasdin, executive director of the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago, says that for the kinky among us, leather bars or fetish-friendly parties allow newcomers to explore the scene safely without needing to gamble on the apps or running the risk of playing with someone with more nefarious intentions.

A play party at a bar might be the safest place for a would-be submissive to test out being tied up or otherwise dominated without putting all their trust in a singular person. And these spaces also allow people to form connections, share safety tips and build community in ways that keep others safer as well.

Wasdin says play parties, bathhouses and sex-inclusive spaces “emerged out of a very clear need for a safe place to meet up, to have sex, but also just to socialize and hang out.”

@xtramagazine In an increasingly online world, what does it mean to take up physical space as a queer person? Over the next few weeks, Xtra is looking at the past and the future of third places as they relate to the LGBTQ2S+ community in our new series “Taking Space” — and we want you to tell us your favorite queer hangout spots. Queer third places are more at risk than they have been in recent years. A whopping 50 per cent of gay bars in the U.S. closed between 2012 and 2021. While some gay bars have come back from those hardships, many have not. And those that are left are up against an increased level of anti-queer and trans sentiment and drag bans. But it’s more than just bars—coffee shops, museums, warehouses and other physical spaces have become vital lifelines for queer gathering in our current moment. And many of those spaces are changing or under threat. What is your favourite queer gathering space? Get in the comments and let us know your favourite coffee shop, public park, museum or party spot (anywhere in the world!) and we might use it in a future project here at Xtra. ✨💖 #thirdspace #lgbtq #chosenfamily #fyp #gay #trans #foryoupage ♬ original sound – Xtra Magazine

That sense of community and security certainly extends to the more vanilla gay bars and play parties that aren’t explicitly kinky—rather, just good ol’ fashioned sex parties—that still provide a safer avenue of exploration—for example, for the newly out or those without an outlet to pursue sex or intimacy with other queer people in their own communities.

Wasdin says it’s a shame there aren’t more bathhouses, actually, because “I think it’s still a much safer place for sex and for hooking up, especially sex with someone you don’t know.” He adds that bathhouse operators and patrons alike crucially act as community watchdogs for bad actors, particularly in spaces like bathhouses where police are unwelcome, to say the least.

The need for safe places for sex can be traced to the birth of what we know as gay bathhouses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A 2003 article from the Journal of Homosexuality by the late, award-winning historian Allan Bérubé puts the importance of bathhouses in stark relief. He writes that in addition to being places to meet where blackmail, arrest or violence were of lesser concern, early bathhouses (pre-dating the existence of bars catering to queer people) were also important social spaces for their clientele, particularly in an era where being openly gay was unthinkable and nearly impossible.

“For the gay community, gay bathhouses represent a major success in a century-long political struggle to overcome isolation and develop a sense of community and pride in their sexuality, to gain their right to sexual privacy, to win their right to associate with each other in public and to create ‘safety zones’ where gay men could be sexual and affectionate with each other with a minimal threat of violence, blackmail, loss of employment, arrest, imprisonment and humiliation,” Bérubé writes.

Bathhouses evolved not just as spaces to meet other men for sex, but to become multi-purpose complexes of entertainment to include restaurants, bars, stages. Bette Midler, for one, launched her career in the 1970s at the Continental Baths, a bathhouse in the basement of a hotel on the Upper West Side in NYC. Man’s Country, a famous bathhouse in Chicago that closed its doors in 2018 after operating for nearly 50 years, at one point hosted queer-culture-defining acts like Boy George, the Village People and Divine in its performance spaces.

While the enthusiastic culture around cruising, bathhouses and sex parties may have been— and some would argue still is—largely popularized by gay men, other queer people, like Estelle Davis, have been inspired to create their own events.

Davis is a co-organizer of the popular Grind’her event in Montreal. What started as a cruising night at a bar has ballooned into what she calls a “leatherdyke cruising party” held in a porn theatre two to three times a year. Davis says it’s part rave, part sex party and aims to welcome both experienced cruisers and those new to the scene.

“I wanted it to be an easier entry point, I guess, for people who wouldn’t have been as comfortable going to a smaller play party where it’s just a different energy,” Davis says.

Grind’her is not just trans inclusive but “trans integral,” Davis says, acknowledging that such events may be particularly enticing for people who don’t want to feel othered or tokenized as members of gender or racial minorities.

Events like Grind’her, that are explicitly by and for more marginalized members of the community, also aim to insulate trans, femme and BIPOC people from historical tensions that bubble up in intimate spaces like bathhouses or play parties, where bigotry gets laundered as “preference.”

North American bathhouse chain Steamworks, for example, routinely advertises events where trans people are particularly encouraged to attend, though critics of those efforts say that “themed” nights may unintentionally send the signal that certain communities are only welcome for certain events.

And while parties like Grind’her work hard to be welcoming and safe for attendees, that becomes an increasingly tall order amid rollbacks in queer rights and increasing attacks on the community. While Davis says that raids haven’t happened in roughly a decade in Canada, event organizers have recently gotten legal advice to protect themselves in the event anything happens.

Those precautions include procuring insurance, making sure liquor licences are up to code and ensuring people know and affirmatively consent to the sexual nature of the space before they enter.

“The police could raid you for pretty much any reason,” Davis says. “The police mostly target park cruising in Canada and here in Montreal. The last bathhouse or sex party raids were more than a decade ago, so most people are not too worried about it happening again, but, it’s very true that this could change.”

As significant as these spaces have been in the past, bathhouse patrons, sex party promoters and event planners alike say that today—amid the attacks queer people are facing— unashamedly sexual spaces are more important than ever.

Aside from the sexual-social role these parties play in queer communities, it may shock some to hear that they are also important sites of sexual health interventions. Bérubé writes in his article that beginning in the 1970s—before the AIDS crisis—the San Francisco City Clinic began doing free STI testing at bathhouses throughout the city.

During the HIV/AIDS crisis, bathhouse owners like Chuck Renslow, who owned Man’s Country in Chicago, transformed their businesses to keep the community safe. Renslow closed the glory holes and the orgy room at the bathhouse during the epidemic. Safe-sex pamphlets and condoms were passed out and STI testing was done on-site as well.

And in the summer of 2022, when the mpox virus started spreading mostly among men who had sex with men, Steamworks held vaccination clinics in numerous cities, from California to Chicago, as did leather bars like Touché in Chicago.

@xtramagazine China is cracking down on writers of gay fiction and erotica. Lawyers representing one writer told the BBC this week that at least 30 people have been arrested in China for publishing danmei since February. Inspired by Japanese boys’ love manga, danmei is an incredibly popular sub-genre of Chinese literature with a devoted fan community of largely young straight women. But the Chinese government, and its state media, cracked down on the genre as it became more popular, calling it “vulgar culture.” China’s penal code prohibits works that “explicitly portray sexual behaviour,” unless they have educational or artistic value. While the laws have been used against writers of straight erotica, danmei has been especially targeted. We break down what’s going on and what you need to know about this latest wave of censorship of queer stories. 👨‍❤️‍👨🏳️‍🌈 #danmei #censorship #lgbtq #lgbtqnews #boyslove #gay ♬ original sound – Xtra Magazine

As significant as these spaces have been in the past, bathhouse patrons, sex party promoters and event planners alike say that today—amid the attacks queer people are facing— unashamedly sexual spaces are more important than ever.

“No matter what we do, no matter whether or not it’s very tame, no matter whether or not it’s vanilla sex—they don’t like us, period,” says J. Tebias Perry, the director of engagement for the International Mr. Leather (IML) contest in Chicago, an annual celebration of kink, community and unabashed sex positivity. “No matter what we do, they don’t want us to have a space, period.”

Tebias has been with the IML organization for more than a decade as a volunteer, organizer and IML contestant, and credits the organization with giving him the confidence to live so publicly as a leatherman. He says it’s that visibility, that unapologetic sex positivity, that conservatives want to eliminate, and that we should embrace now more than ever.

“All these places are so needed because we get to openly express who we are, and we get to experiment with what our limits are, from the most vanilla part to the seediest part and I think it’s very necessary.”