Young queer Londoners are flocking to cruising hotspots for community.
It’s no secret that Gen Z is struggling to find connections – in community, yes, but also through sex. The majority of 18-24 year olds still live with their parents, stifling their potential for romance and adventure. A recent article in Cosmopolitan reported that the decline in Zoomers having their own space for intimacy had led to an increase in outdoor sexual activities. It may seem unlikely that outdoor sex fanatics would choose to live in a bustling metropolis like London, but the city’s al fresco sex scene is alive and well.
What are the names of these forest-haunting collectives you ask? Well, the main communities can be roughly divided into ‘cruising’ (also known as cottaging) and ‘dogging’, both with their own intricacies and differences. However, what they do have in common, is the fact that they’re done outside, normally in a public area just slightly outside of view, and with someone you will likely never see again. They are also all arrestable offences if caught.
“It’s also the natural psyche of men that means we’re likely to just go and get shit done in the forest.”
Cruising
Picture the scene: on a Wednesday evening in Bishops Park in Hammersmith, two men walk past each other, catching eye contact for just a second too long. Nothing is said but something is understood. One of them departs from the beaten track, heading behind the bushes and into a forested area. Minutes later, the other finds him, and the action begins. This is a typical experience for someone in London’s cruising scene.
Will Francis is a 25-year-old from Hammersmith and a long-time cruiser. He has taken to reading up on the history of his passion for doing it outside. “In the UK, traditionally, it’s been called cottaging. Cruising is American. It comes from people appearing to be nonchalant, like cruising around an area, looking for something,” he explains. “They were calling hotspots for this kind of activity, tea houses or tea rooms, but in the UK, they were called cottages.”
Francis has been on the scene since his school days and now describes cruising as an active part of his life. “I discovered it by accident. This would have been swimming pool changing rooms or whatever when I was young and noticed this kind of semi-codified way of interacting with other men who were presumably gay. Once I’d seen it, I just couldn’t stop seeing it everywhere.”
Codes are the essence of cruising. “A common example is like if people are in bathroom stalls”, says Francis. “There’ll be a foot tap where the other person can see. If that tap is reciprocated, then you might know that they’re into the idea. But it can really be as simple as just glancing at someone and recognising some kind of emotion in their eyes.
“Remember, this is happening at all times, layered on top of normal, straight society.” While cruising and dogging have both since been adopted as practises by heterosexuals, they are firmly rooted in homosexuality. “It’s partly entrenched in the historical climate of gay men not having a place to carry out their sex lives, because they didn’t necessarily have a private space to be themselves,” says Francis. “It’s also the natural psyche of men that means we’re likely to just go and get shit done in the forest.”
Dogging
Dogging is a different beast, however. The term dogging is often assumed to have come from the idea of how dogs copulate: any time, anywhere, with anything. In reality, the word probably comes from a distinct type of homosexual voyeurism where a man follows a couple around while they have sex in public, and is therefore linked to exhibitionism. Alternatively, the simple act of walking a dog as a cover-up for loitering outside.
“It’s so evident that it’s going on at all times in a lot of different places.”
In the UK, dogging has since broadened to encompass the act of anyone doing it outside and, unlike cruising, is a uniquely British phenomenon. Its forums and Instagram pages can be found adorned with Union Jack flags, double-decker buses and models with a distinctly English look. Voyeurism is everything in dogging. Not just in the act itself, but in the production of dogging porn. In his book, From Cruising to Dogging: The Surveillance of Public Sex, Chris Ashford found that these pornos blurred the line between porn and documentary of a subculture, while also cementing it as a daring act of heterosexual pleasure-seeking.
Where are people in London going and should they be wary?
Despite being from Hammersmith, Francis’s choices run towards the east side of London, “Hackney or Walthamstow marshes, that area of parkland is pretty infamous.” Infamous would also be the perfect word to ascribe to Hampstead Heath when it comes to cruising, so much so that the park even has a designated ‘fuck tree’. Regardless of where you are in London, Francis assures you that you’re never too far away from someone getting it on outside, “It’s so evident that it’s going on at all times in a lot of different places.”
The infamy of these locations as cruising and dogging spots has historically led to an increased police presence around them. This is also something explored by Chris Ashford’s work, as he documents how queer people have historically been targeted by local authorities and police through the surveillance of these spots in London. In the midst of fear over HIV/AIDS this in turn led to further discrimination of the people who engaged in these acts, as they were framed as filthy for doing it outside, in turn leading to more misinformation relating to the gay community.
“I was always surprised by the kind of tenderness of some of these interactions.“
Not getting caught out is something that is always of concern to Francis. “I am always careful. It’s not only a question of the law and police enforcement, but also about how cruising goes on in public places where there are members of the public who have no interest in seeing sex,” he says. “Exposing unconsenting people to sex is not on. I’ve heard stories of sex meetups getting broken up by the police, particularly in notorious spots like Hampstead Heath.” Being exposed when cruising also poses a risk due to the illegality of the act. While cruising and dogging aren’t illegal acts in and of themselves, they fall under public indecency, and can carry a maximum of two years in prison in extreme cases.
Where to find these communities online
Ironically for the sex act that gets you outside, cruising and dogging cultures have become tied to the internet. Dogging is perhaps more associated with its online presence than cruising. For straight people, the internet could now provide covert ways of contact while circumventing the complex codes adopted by gay men in the real world. The forums that popped up in the mid 2000s to serve this purpose are still active to this day. Dogging action, dogging forum and carpark dogging still provide a hub for suitors looking to get lucky outside.
Meanwhile in the cruising scene, apps such as Grindr have offered an alternative when it comes to gay men’s ability to find quick sex, a shift that started in 2009. The problem with dating apps, however, is they tend to ruin everything. Francis believes that where community may have once been found online in forums is now gone. “The cruising landscape has really changed because of hookup apps. These kinds of apps and things have a bit of a negative vibe and they’re not particularly community places,” he says. “I think some people would say that cruising as an act has kind of died as a result of that or it’s become a lot smaller than it once was because at one point this was the only way that you could meet someone.”
As is always the case, then, in-person experiences provide better solutions to our sexual problems than those found online. Francis believes that, as a queer man, cruising has provided him with a deeper sense of belonging. “Queer people build their homes outside of the traditional boundaries of house and home and bricks and mortar. So when men cruise, sometimes they’re sort of building community and a connection – no matter how fleeting – with other people,” he says. “I was always surprised by the kind of tenderness of some of these interactions. I think traditionally it’s seen as only being about sex. But I actually don’t think that’s true. I think it’s about more than that. People are constantly searching for that connection they’re missing in other areas of their life.”
Header Image by Nick Bolton on Unsplash.