Our Ribald Times: Public Sex in UK Could Be Discouraged…But It Might Lead to Suicides

The New York Times knows how to grab web traffic. One of its most popular articles right now is a Sarah Lyall dispatch from Thursday on the popularity in Britain of “dogging” — public sex, sometimes with an audience of admirers. Lyall takes a long time getting around to critics (paragraph 12), and then it sounds like this: Britons are a tolerant bunch, and most probably would not care who watched whom doing what in whatever configuration, as long as they all went somewhere else. Why, Puttenham residents wonder, do they have to do it 400 yards from the village nursery school?” But the spirit of the current moment is absolutely captured when someone argues that trying to close down a highway rest stop that’s a popular site, or policing the public sex will lead to yes, suicides: “It was like, ‘Are you taking this seriously?’ ” Ms. Paterson said. “One cabinet member said, ‘If you close this site, there could be an increase in suicides because these people have nowhere else to go.’” The Times headline was “Puttenham Journal: Here’s the Pub, Church and Field for Public Sex.” All of this colorful stuff came before any real mention of critics: Puttenham, about an hour’s drive from London, has fewer than 2,500 residents and is famous for its ancient church; its friendly pub, the Good Intent; and its proud inclusion in both the Domesday Book — an 11th-century survey of English lands — and “Brave New World.” Unhappily for many people here, it is also famous for being featured on lists of good places to go “dogging” — that is, to have sex in public, sometimes with partners you have just met online, so that others can watch. So popular is the woodsy field below the ridge as a spot for gay sex (mostly during the day) and heterosexual sex (mostly at night) that the police have designated it a “public sex environment.” Public sex is a popular — and quasi-legal — activity in Britain, according to the authorities and to the large number of Web sites that promote it. (It is treated as a crime only if someone witnesses it, is offended and is willing to make a formal complaint.) And the police tend to tread lightly in public sex environments, in part because of the bitter legacy of the time when gay sex was illegal and closeted men having anonymous sex in places like public bathrooms were routinely arrested and humiliated. Enthusiasts’ Web sites alert practitioners to known dogging locations — more than 100 in Surrey alone — and offer handy etiquette tips for the confused or overly excited. “Only join in or move closer if you are asked,” advises one site, Swinging Heaven, which says it has more than one million registered members. Richard Byrne, a senior lecturer in countryside management at Harper Adams University College in Shropshire, said that modern technology has made dogging much more convenient than it used to be, thanks to search engines, Facebook groups and people tweeting about their experiences. “And of course, everybody’s got mobiles,” he said. Swinging Heaven says that the practice began in Britain in the 1970s, and that the term comes from the phenomenon of voyeurs “doggedly” following people having sex. Others say that practitioners claim to be “walking the dog” when they are, in fact, going out to meet naked strangers in fields. Next came the “tolerant bunch” paragraph. Lyall never finds anyone to suggest explicitly that anonymous sex in the woods might be sinful (what do Puttenham’s clergy say?), or even pose a threat of sexually transmitted disease. That would apparently ruin the naughty fun of the whole piece. It concluded with the very tentative nature of Britain’s official morality, which seems much more timid than the “doggers” featured: Meanwhile, frazzled residents trade tales of woe: The half-dressed men who materialize from the shrubbery and theatrically pretend to be foraging for nuts and berries. The Internet reviews (“One site listed us as the No. 2 dogging site in Europe,” Ms. Perkins said wearily). The occasion when an unsuspecting motorist went for a bathroom break in the bushes, only to be surrounded by a crowd of eager men. “It was the quickest pee he’d ever done in his life,” Ms. Paterson said. The council has agreed to institute an “active management plan” that might include cutting down some shrubbery and putting in security patrols. And the police recently put up a sign warning people not to engage in “activities of an unacceptable nature.” “There was a lot of debate over the wording for that sign,” Ms. Paterson said. “I guess they didn’t want to say, ‘Don’t have sex.’ 

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Our Ribald Times: Public Sex in UK Could Be Discouraged…But It Might Lead to Suicides

Posted by on October 9, 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry