Tea Room Gay Defn | Hostal Era Claverola

Contents:

• TEA ROOM GAY DEFN

TEA ROOM GAY DEFN

Much like people dancg to YMCA at a Republin heterosexual weddg, tea has bee divorced om s origal e by gay men. Ined, discsns of Man’s cup of tea referenced the Boston Tea Party and Kerm the Frog, but did not refer to gay culture at all—no mentn of anonymo sex public toilets, the place of gossip among gay men, or Black drag culture. Get your cup and scer, as I attempt to partially rectify this erasure by servg up the tea about the historil and cultural importance of tea unrstandg gossip gay male cultur.

In his ethnography of the 1970s gay “clone, ” Mart Leve proposed four central issu clone culture: dancg, dgs, dick, and dish (or gossip).

Leve saw gossip as equally important to sex as part of gay culture, but of urse the two are timately tertwed. The term “tea” probably evolved om a Brish gay slang term for ure, and, by extensn, rtrooms beme known as “tearooms. Tearooms were (are) equented by men who were openly gay as well as by men who intified as heterosexual and were married wh fai.

Openly gay men me to refer to the straight men who equented the rtrooms as “tearoom tra” (”tra” is a slang term for men who intify as straight but have sex wh other men). The ncept of the tearoom has a long history gay culture. Aaron Rosanoff’s 1927 Manual of Psychiatry lists “Tea Hoe” as part of the “special slang” among homosexuals.

Gay slang om the early twentieth century had a variety of terms referrg to the clanste ways which gay men would fd one another. Exampl om Gershon Legman’s (1941) glossary clu “playg checkers” (movg om seat to seat a movie theater search of other gay men) or “church moe” (a person who viss church orr to grope other men or cise for sexual partners).

Of urse, gossip was ccial not only for knowg where to succsfully fd other gay men and how to protect one’s reputatn, but also as a way to spread awarens of “rough tra”—straight-intifyg men who have a history of assltg their male sexual partners.