Men Love Mutual Masturbation

When I came to London aged 21 in 1986 I discovered that men cruised for sex in public toilets across the city. From Wood Green, Highbury, Finsbury Park to Clapham, Brixton and Balham, via Hyde Park Corner, Green Park, Oxford Circus and Soho I discovered men were lining up against the porcelain and masturbating together. The atmosphere could be electric, wild, fuelled by lust and fear. The danger of arrest or gay-bashing on top of the erotic charge kept the adrenalin pumping. This meant most of the action was simply standing and wanking, until the opportunity and the courage arose to reach out to touch, maybe suck or even signal an invitation into a cubicle.

Cottaging, as it is known in the UK – a reference to Victorian, self-contained, toilet blocks that resembled countryside cottages – had become common gay slang by the 1960s. But the act of cruising and masturbating together in lavatories in London goes back way before Victorian times- at least as far as the 13^th century! And of course it does – masturbating together is one of the most basic, instinctual, enjoyable acts that men can do together. It not only feels good, it brings bonds of trust and camaraderie between the guys involved. The instinct to have a Circle Jerk is inbuilt in us. The suppression of erotic relationships between men has always been about keeping men divided and in conflict and thereby control and dominate society. Plato spotted that back in the 5^th century BC when he recorded in the Symposium that, “Taking a male lover is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which male-male love is particularly apt to produce.”

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Among the most ancient cave paintings on the planet are pictures of groups of men with erections.

“In Egyptian myth, the god Atum created the universe by masturbating, and every year the pharaoh ritually masturbated into the Nile. The Greeks regarded masturbation as entirely normal, if more the province of the common man, since the elites had a duty to further the family line, and, beyond that, had slaves for their relief. But the Church took a very different view, rooted in an obscure passage of Genesis. When God killed Er, Er’s father Judah ordered his second son Onan to marry Er’s widow Tamar and ‘raise up seed’ to his brother. But when he lied with Tamar, Onan spilt his semen on the ground—in the knowledge that fathering a son in his brother’s line would deprive him of the larger part of his inheritance. This displeased God, ‘wherefore he slew him also.’” Neel Burton, A Brief History of Masturbation | Psychology Today

When European Christians went out exploring the world from the 15^th century, with a millennium of anti-sexual conditioning firmly in place they were shocked and horrified by the common acceptance and approval of same sex relations they found on every continent. The Japanese and Chinese found the European attitude barbaric, the Native Americans laughed at them:

Franciscan missionary Pedro Font, on a 1775 mission to what is now California, recorded in his journal encounters with groups of Native American Quechan men who “constantly stroked their penises in front of other men. He reprimanded these men. They ignored Font and continued engaging in mutual masturbation. At other times, the kwe’rhame laughed at Font’s astonishment as they continued stroking their penises.” Kwe’rhame was the Quechan name for male-bodied Quechans who wore female clothes and took women’s roles in the community. Female-bodied people who took male roles were called elxa‘. Source: Reclaiming Two-Spirits by Gregory D. Smithers (2022).

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From Peter Ackroyd’s 2017 book Queer London we learn that the oldest cruising toilet in London that we know about is one built in the recesses of London Bridge in 1209. He mentions the public loos of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Moorfields and Green Park as prominent spots in the 17^th century, though “the latrines of any park would do; trees, grass and bushes stirred the blood.” In the 18^th the bog-houses of Savoy, the Temple and Lincoln’s Inn were popular. “The London Post of 20 June 1701 reported that ‘on Thursday, between 10 and 11 at night, a person sitting in Lincoln’s Inn house of office, a youjng man happened to go into the same box, whom the other welcomed, and afterwards entered into a discourse with him, pretending great kindness for him etcetera. But at last discovered his intention, to commit the filthy sin of sodomy with him, and made an attempt to force him. But the young man crying out, some of the porters and watchmen of the Inn, as well as some of the young gentlemen, came to his assistance and soon cooled the spark’s courage, by ducking him in said house of office.” (Queer London)

In the late 19^th century two scandals focused public attention on London’s queer underground. First the Cleveland Street Scandal in the 1870s (when young men working for the post office were discovered to be raking in money as rent boys as they went about town), then the Oscar Wilde trial in the 1890s fascinated the public which encouraged newspapers to feature many similar stories. Public toilets sometimes featured in those. Matt Cook writes in London and the Culture of Homosexuality 1885-1914 (published 2003) that in the Victorian era “casual encounters were facilitated by the new iron urinals which appeared across [London] from the 1860s. Those at Great Castle Street and Woodstock Street, near Oxford Circus, and in Danbury Place off Wardour Street in Soho, had a particular reputation, and the new public toilets which came with the expansion of Piccadilly Circus also appear to have been in frequent use.”

Ackroyd: “Some urinals had a worldwide reputation. ‘Clarkson’s Cottage’ was known for its proximity to Willie Clarkson’s theatrical costume shop and it was purchased after the Second World War by a rich American who erected it, in memory of happy days, within the grounds of his New York estate. The toilets in Down Street underground station, off Piccadilly, were deservedly popular. It was reported that urinals have a certain odour… a staleness [which]… excites [queer men] as if they were so many dogs on heat’. Another favourite was a three-stall urinal down a flight of steps beside the Yorkshire Stingo on the Marylebone Road. The toilet beside the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith was ‘chock a block from dusk to dawn’. Some preferred of course the relative warmth of the theatres themselves, especially in the rear areas labelled ‘standing room only’. One theatregoer standing at the back of the Islington Music Hall noted that ‘someone undone my flies and started pulling me out… while they were doing it someone pushed themselves up against me expecting me to do it to them’. ‘It was no uncommon sight,’ a contemporary remarked, ‘to see literally hundreds of young men… walking about, talking in high pitched voices, recognising one another.’”

Ackroyd says that in the first half of the twentieth century entrapment, imprisonment and police raids were “familiar characteristics of London life” for gay men. Yet even so, “public lavatories were still at the top of the list for furtive encounters. They were sometimes known as ‘tin chapels’, as if sacred rituals were conducted within. One client might be informally chose as ‘watch-out’ for the visiting stranger or policeman. The urinals round the back of Jermyn Street were well known to the acting profession, and the public lavatory at Waterloo station was positively cornucopian. The toilet at Hill Place was a magnet for ‘toffs’ or anyone in evening dress.”

For Your Convenience was an account of the lavatories of London published in 1937, written as if by a sanitary expert, this was a secret guide for cottaging pilgrims seeking those sacred rituals. A young man guides the narrator around London, mentioning outdoor cruising spots as well as toilets. The lad says “When for instance, I have been at a loss in Dalston, in Streatham, in Clerkenwell, in Bermondsey, knowledge acquired on previous journeys has always been a blessing… In the section between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road, places may be found at the bottom of Argyll Street.” South London by the bridges and Borough High Street are highlighted, along with St Pauls and Covent Garden.

The 1958 Wolfenden Report on homosexuality and prostitution in the UK recorded that in London and a few other large towns the gay action was “concentrated on certain public conveniences. We have been surprised to find how widely known among homosexuals, even those who come from distant parts of the world, the location of these conveniences has proved to be.” The report admitted that some police went into toilets as agents provocateurs to entrap men.

I walked into a public toilet on Jesus Common in Cambridge one day in summer 1985 and discovered it full of men standing at the urinals with erections. My entire body shook with shock and adrenalin, I quickly left, but hours later, after dark, plucked up the courage to go back. So when I reached London the next year seeking excitement and adventure, I knew where to look.

Cottaging was still going strong in 1980s London. At that time police would stake out a cottage or visit them in plain clothes to catch men pleasuring each other, rather than be directly agent provocative. I was caught in just such an action in Soho’s Marlborough Street toilets in 1987, caught red-handed mutually masturbating with an Italian lad. The police took great delight in announcing loudly at the station, in a room full of freshly arrested thieves and thugs, why I had been arrested, and in leaving me to be the last person processed that day because I, furious that the law would lock me up for sharing pleasure with another male, was lippy with them, wanting to know my rights, demanding my phone call.

The cottages were mostly closed down during the AIDS years. Video cameras were installed to watch comings and goings. Council cutbacks meant there were fewer and fewer toilets. Single person automatic toilets arrived. Cottaging does still happen – I hear Canary Wharf is a hot spot – but now it’s been replaced by Grindr, Scruff and similar cruising apps. Where once every high street in London had a public lavatory where men would lurk, loiter and lust, turned on by each other’s presence, excited and terrified at the same time, now every street has men in their homes and offices using the apps to cruise each other and fantasise. The urge will obviously never go away.

Masturbating together has also gone online in the form of webcam sites where straight, gay and bi men perform for and watch each other wanking. Some straight guys will kick out men who tune into their broadcast, but most don’t. It’s very noticeable that many guys put bicurious as their sexual identity. Wanking together is built in to our human nature.

The imposition of shame onto same-sex erotic relations was a way of suppressing affection and love between men, making them afraid of each other, and so stoking conflict, anger and aggression. It was all about domination and control. Calling male-male sex ‘unnatural’ took humanity on a long dark, twisted journey into division and violence, plus of course overpopulation!

Men who can joyfully express their erotic desires with each other make much better lovers of women, better fathers, better leaders, kinder and calmer beings. Sexual frustration is probably lurking at the root of much of humanity’s violent history.

In Plato’s Symposium Aristophanes proclaims: “Those who love men and rejoice to lie with, be embraced by men, are also the finest boys and young men, being naturally the most manly. The people who accuse them of shamelessness lie; they do this not from shamelessness but from courage, manliness and virility, embracing what is like them.”