Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places

Rate this book
From the time of its first publication, Tearoom Trade engendered controversy. It was also accorded an unusual amount of praise for a first book on a marginal, intentionally self-effacing population by a previously unknown sociologist. The book was quickly recognized as an important, imaginative, and useful contribution to our understanding of "deviant" sexual activity. Describing impersonal, anonymous sexual encounters in public restrooms--"tearooms" in the argot--the book explored the behavior of men whose closet homosexuality was kept from their families and neighbors.

By posing as an initiate, the author was able to engage in systematic observation of homosexual acts in public settings, and later to develop a more complete picture of those involved by interviewing them in their homes, again without revealing their unwitting participation in his study.

This enlarged edition of Tearoom Trade includes the original text, together with a retrospect, written by Nicholas von Hoffman, Irving Louis Horowitz, Lee Rainwater, Donald P. Warwick, and Myron Glazer. The material added includes a perspective on the social scientist at work and the ethical problems to which that work may give rise, along with debate by the book's initial critics and proponents. Humphreys added a postscript and his views on the opinion expressed in the retrospect.

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1975

23 people are currently reading
1001 people want to read

About the author

Laud Humphreys

7 books1 follower
Humphreys is best known for his published Ph.D. dissertation, Tearoom Trade (1970), an ethnographic study of anonymous male-male sexual encounters in public toilets (a practice known as "tea-rooming" in U.S. gay slang and "cottaging" in British English). Humphreys asserted that the men participating in such activity came from diverse social backgrounds, had differing personal motives for seeking homosexual contact in such venues, and variously self-perceived as "straight," "bisexual," or "gay."

Humphreys was married to a woman from 1960 to 1980 and eventually came out as a gay man. Humphreys was a founder of the Sociologists' Gay Caucus, established in 1974

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
55 (24%)
4 stars
87 (38%)
3 stars
66 (29%)
2 stars
12 (5%)
1 star
6 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
Profile Image for Joseph.
93 reviews10 followers
July 14, 2013
this was a fascinating read. I loved how the author expects us to believe that he was just a "watch queen" during his "observations" of tea room sex. his methods were bad. however it was loaded with really interesting information and gave a neat perspective on male sexuality. It gave a good argument against "entrapment" in tearooms. overall, it seemed like the author over identified with his subjects. it was just fascinating. not many people would go this far to "study" such a taboo topic.
537 reviews97 followers
April 4, 2019
I have no idea whether or not most men know what goes on in men's rooms like the ones that are described. I suspect many know a little bit about it but not enough to prevent their homophobia. This book shows that straight men are "safe" if they truly are totally straight and show no interest in what else is going on in there. The sex is for men who are definitely interested and show their interest by their behavior. If you just go in to use the toilet and then leave, you are clearly not part of the scene and you will be left alone. If you are curious and show interest, then others will assume you want more....

I believe most women have no clue about the extent of these activities. I know I was amazed to read about the details. A male friend told me about the scene and this book confirmed everything he told me. An entire subculture exists in these situations, where the activities are conducted without words and communication is just understood nonverbally because there are certain rules and standards of behavior.

This book made me think about how women have no outlet or opportunity for this kind of sexual behavior and that we would likely never even consider the possibility that it exists by choice. No wonder we don't understand it when men talk about wanting sex as a simple quick act without wanting any communication or emotional interaction. It's like men have this other way of experiencing sexuality that we don't have. It's a foreign concept. For women, anything like that would likely be considered horrible and something we would not choose. But this book got me to imagine that it might be nice once in awhile for sex to be that simple, fast, easily obtained, and free of all emotional entanglements.

This book helped me understand that this is an alternative form of sexuality for many men. Many of the men are married and are just supplementing the sex they have with their wives. Many of them don't want to bother their wives with sexual demands and so they take care of their needs in this other way. I assume that nowadays many men are using Internet porn for this purpose. But I suspect that the men's rooms are just as active because an actual warm body is better...

"These men simply want a form of orgasm-producing action that is less lonely than masturbation and less involving than a love relationship..." If a man stands close to the urinal, so that his front side is not easily seen, and gazes downward, it is assumed that he is straight. By not allowing his penis to be seen, he has precluded his involvement in action at the urinals. This strategy, followed by an early departure from the premises, is all that those who wish to play it straight need to know. If he positions himself in that manner, no man should be concerned about being propositioned, molested or otherwise involved in the action. For defecation, one should seek a facility with doors on the stalls. "
Profile Image for Damon.
69 reviews18 followers
October 16, 2020
I found this book absolutely fascinating! Although I am not at all supportive of his secretive research methods. Here was someone documenting in 1970 honestly and sympathetically a form of homosexual life that was otherwise clandestine and most certainly frowned upon. But hey, where did these guys have to go back then? Over 50% of those in the study were married men and had so much to lose if they were ever outed which was unheard of at time.

I guess what I really loved about the book was that it showed how ridiculous it was for the Police Departments to be focussing so much time and unnecessary energies on pursuing harmless homosexuals when there were so many other violent and more serious crimes that needed to be investigated.
8 reviews
May 12, 2025
great read but he got dicked down in those bathrooms xx
Profile Image for Sharad Pandian.
437 reviews176 followers
September 29, 2020
First published in 1970, Laud Humphreys' sociological study of same-sex sexual encounters in public bathrooms in 1960s America is now used as a cautionary tale for new researchers on a researcher who violated his subjects' privacy. Obviously I had to read it.

It's a fascinating study by a man who was them married with kids (he would separate from his wife and would begin living with a male graduate student in the 80s). He acted as "watchqueen," a lookout within restrooms, which allowed him to observe the acts without participating in them. Trained as a seminarian, he puts his methodological quandry in famililar terms:

His central problem, then, is one of maintaining both objectivity and participation (the old theological question of how to be in, but not of, the world). (27)

He pays attention to floorplans, the ways agents signal without speaking for the most part, varieties in actions and the ways these vary with demographic features (even creating a taxonomy). While he conducted a few standard interviews with willing and fully informed participants, more problematicaly for contemporary eyes, he noted car numbers and tracked down participants in these tearooms, and conducts a general health survey with them. This was crucial for his analysis, and he used this method to show that most of the men participating were married and rather content with family life.

This does seem like an egregious invasion of privacy, but in his Postscript, he addresses potential issues head-on. He argues that social research requires "situation ethics," an ethics that is sensitive to context, and argues that his historical context - one where public sex was unjustly hunted through entrapment and constant surveillance - demanded work like his be done on ethical grounds! I find this argument fascinating, given how ossified current notions of ethics have become. Interestingly, he doesn't address the obvious fact that his own participants might have been unwilling to participate in his study, no matter it's potential eventual benefits. Still, I quote some of his defense to finish:

This is not to say that I am unconcerned about the inquirer’s ethics in regard to the protection of his research subjects. Quite to the contrary; as I indicate in Chapter 2, I believe that preventing harm to his respondents should be the primary interest of the scientist. We are not, however, protecting a harassed population of deviants by refusing to look at them. At this very moment, my writing has been interrupted by a long-distance call, telling me of a man who has been discharged from his position and whose career has been destroyed because he was “caught” in a public restroom. This man, who protests his innocence, has suffered a nervous breakdown since his arrest. Even if acquitted, his personal identity has been damaged, perhaps irreparably, by the professional spy who apprehended him. The greatest harm a social scientist could do to this man would be to ignore him. Our concern about possible research consequences for our fellow “professionals” should take a secondary place to concern for those who may benefit from our research. (168-9)
Profile Image for Aja.
756 reviews
August 24, 2012
I am torn here on stars. On the one hand the information was interesting and valuable, but on the other hand I found his research methods deplorable.

This book is the graduate thesis of Laud Humphreys, who used his time to study sex in public bathrooms. It's difficult to find his research question or hypothesis and reads much more like a anthropological study of a secr, by taking the role of "watchqueen" in the restrooms he was studying. This meant that he could watch the activities without needing to participate. After identifying his subjects through license plate numbers he collected after activities, he went to them under the auspice of another research project a year later and surveyed them.

For the 1960's, which is when the book is written, it is a subject that had little to no attention outside of the judicial system. Although bringing the subject to light was important, I think that other damages were done that may have made any benefits unjustifiable.
Profile Image for Isabel Pie.
86 reviews1 follower
October 23, 2022
não sei se essa pesquisa devia ter sido feita, mas, nossa… que bom que ela foi feita, né?
Profile Image for evie.
3 reviews1 follower
February 16, 2024
this book has caused me nothing but pain
Profile Image for Marcella Wigg.
297 reviews28 followers
September 17, 2025
A while ago, I watched the short film Trade Center about men cruising for sex in the 70s and on in the World Trade Center and one of the more intriguing interviewees in that film talked about “tearooms” and their huge cross-section of society meeting in a public bathroom for anonymous, meaningless sex. Search “tearooms” and what comes up? The Wikipedia article for this fascinating book.

Tearoom Trade is almost more interesting for its meta history than the content of the book itself, though the content is also fascinating. Laud Humphreys, then a married father in the sociology Ph.D. program at WashU, decided to study men having sex with men in public bathrooms because, he said, one of his graduate school professors challenged him as a former minister to study gay bars under the misapprehension that he was naive. He claimed to have understood gay men intimately after ten years preaching in Boystown in Chicago, so it was not difficult to decide to study public bathrooms: who was seeking sex in them? Humphreys acted as a watchqueen, a voyeur who kept lookout for police, “straights,” and youths around the tearoom.

In reality, Humphreys was gay himself, and by the mid-1970s he would publicly come out at an academic conference. The dedication of this book to his wife and two young children is quite interesting in this context. It also caused me to wonder how actually detached he was during his research, since claiming to be studying the activity he had in all likelihood participated in himself is a perfect cover for being arrested around a tearoom, as he detailed that he was. Was the tearoom community really so willing to let him only serve as a watchqueen without personal involvement as he claims, or was he trusted because he participated more than mere watching? My surmise would be the latter.

Humphreys probably found all the sex he observed titillating but it is described in the least sexy way imaginable, all game theory and probabilities. Among his revelations:

- men in these interactions didn’t fit into some approximation of straight gender roles. He argued there was no adherence to traditional perceptions of “male” and “female” in gay relationships. Sounds basic but I think it is pretty perceptive for the late 1960s.
- “straights” were not bothered in tearooms if they aren’t standing at the urinal with an erection masturbating and/or making eye contact with the men in the stalls. Pretty hard to do that unintentionally.
- men in tearooms were terrified of teenagers and avoided them
- older men were more likely to be the aggressor and also the receptive partner; they changed roles in tearooms as they aged and became less desirable
- tearoom connoisseurs tended to be more socially conservative than a random cross-section of similar men; Humphreys called it “the breastplate of righteousness.”
- men in tearoom interactions were almost always completely silent besides the bare minimum. The totality of the silence described was surprising to me; Humphreys said it was needed to maintain anonymity
- police frequently would require bribes from men found in tearooms
- a huge range of men used the tearooms, most not associated with the gay subculture at the time

There were plenty of other minutiae I’m not thinking of. He spares few details.

Much of the end of the book deals with the ethical issues this study, which caused a schism in his department at WashU and cost him his job there. Some argued Humphreys had aided and abetted felonies, but the real controversy mainly focused on him recording license plate numbers outside tearooms and tracking down the identities of the men, researching their backgrounds and careers, then going to their houses a year later under the pretense of doing a general health survey. Humphreys’ explanation for this is consistently weak, but the conclusions he does draw from talking to them under these false pretenses is quite interesting.

I found Tearoom Trade doubly fascinating, both as a snapshot of what Humphreys calls “the tearoom game“ around midcentury, the mechanics that governed these interactions, and because of the controversy and motivations of its author. With Sniffies facilitating, perhaps the tearoom is thriving as much as ever, albeit with different signifiers.

Also must say I love the expression “there’s a witch behind every witchhunt.”
107 reviews3 followers
March 7, 2019
Recommended to me by my intro to sociology professor and presented as classical study that also was absurdly unethical. This is because the author had been observing mens public toilets to analyze casual sex within them and the rules that guide this, and there were many. However, he noted down the license plates of these anonymous men and visited them at home amongst their families (wives and children) about a year later and probed into their political views and feelings towards their marriages and public life/work. Within sociology, consent is mandatory yet laud justifies the lack of it at the end of his book which also has a part on how he believes homosexuality was wrongly labeled as harmful to society. At the time this was against the tide and so I suppose he was at the forefront fighting for the it's normalization only 3 years after it was legalized (1967). He was also probably the first to reveal all the nuances under the label gay. Previously it was thought you were either gay or not, and in the 90 still many only developed this to include bisexuals, Laud observed 50% of his informants labeling themselves heterosexual and showed public toilet "intimacy" in Brittain had to do with other matters as well as described by these men, hence revealing nuances. It was enlighting to see how spread it was beyond men who considered themselves gay, and why.
Profile Image for mimo.
1,208 reviews12 followers
November 26, 2024
I heard about this book in my class on social science methodology, specifically the week when we talked about research ethics. It's (in)famous as a study wherein the researcher did not get informed consent from many of his research subjects, and employed various dodgy means to find out their demographic information. I must confess that I wanted to check out the book in large part because of the controversy surrounding it. I wanted to read Humphreys' words and form my own impression of him and his actions.

And I have to admit, even though there's no way anything he did would get approval from an IRB (Institutional Review Board) nowadays, I feel like Humphreys did consider the ethics carefully, had good intentions - see his recommendation that the vice squad stop cracking down on tearooms in order to reduce harm to society; it makes sense in light of his observations - and sympathised or even empathised with his research subjects. Although maybe the fact that Humphreys later came out as gay, which I knew before I started reading this book, biased me.

Work like this can't be done again and shouldn't on ethical grounds, but that doesn't detract from how important it is. Not to mention interesting. I read this of my own accord right after finishing the semester, that's how easily it held my attention. I'm glad I gave it a chance.
Profile Image for Ezzo.
61 reviews
September 19, 2023
The reason that makes this book fascinating is the same reason that makes it controversial, it is a classic example of unethical research methods. And the funny thing is that I read in an article that the author “was stunned by the backlash” his study received due to his unethical research methods. LOL delusional much i guess.

I mean not only he did not have their consent, he pretended to be a ”watch queen” , followed them to their cars, used their license number, lied to the police and pretend to be a market researcher to get their addresses. Lied to whom he observed after following them home pretending to be doing a health survey, used blackmail and threats. And he says he was stunned. 🤣
Profile Image for Nelson Minar.
452 reviews11 followers
April 1, 2022
Now a classic of sociological research and an important document from its time. I read it back in the 90s as a work of gay studies, someone documenting honestly and sympathetically a form of homosexual life that was otherwise clandestine. And I think it served that purpose very well, with insights that would surprise people even now. The book is mostly used now as a prop to talk about sociology research ethics and while there are certainly significant ethical questions in this kind of research, it's a mistake to overlook the primary contribution Humphreys made to understanding one form of homosexual behavior.
Profile Image for RJ.
86 reviews1 follower
June 9, 2025
What at first seems to be an excuse to watch hundreds of guys blow each other in the pre-internet days, Laud Humphreys' Tearoom Trade ends up being an extremely fascinating and empathetic portrait of the gay man's plight in modern society.
Profile Image for Arini.
118 reviews1 follower
December 20, 2023
i had to read this for class so it counts. it is about the research done on gay sex in public. interesting.
Profile Image for Jonathan May.
Author 6 books4 followers
April 11, 2025
endlessly fascinating and unwittingly hilarious — I will be thinking about this for a while —
Profile Image for Edwin Pietersma.
220 reviews9 followers
March 30, 2020
The book is nowadays famous for the debate it sparks on research “ethics.” However, the work is so much more, and the discussion that Humphrey brings forward is of dire interest, even today. His open-minded approach and sociologist approach helps in avoiding a judgment but providing an explanation to the dynamics of the tearoom situation. Many elements of this can be find in modern forms of single-time sexual intercourse. This version is also a nice addition as it adds the discussion of ethics in it by voicing researchers with a different outlook on the approach of Humphrey.
4 reviews2 followers
July 18, 2007
Laud makes even gay sex in public restrooms boring... but, it's a classic must-read. especially if you're looking to get the tricks of the trade (sociology, that is).

In all seriousness, covert ethnography, sex, getting arrested, descriptions of the secret world of straight men who have gay sex... no brainer.
Profile Image for Joshua Nomen-Mutatio.
333 reviews1,025 followers
November 19, 2008
I read large sections of this for a sociology course I took back in 2002.

I was reminded of it today when it was brought up in relation to the many scandals involving idiotic (as if there's any other kind) anti-homosexual propagandists being caught in homosexual "affairs" a la Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, et al.
Profile Image for tmll.
98 reviews
January 21, 2009
kinda of dry though informative. for the subject matter--70's ERA GAYBO PUBLIC, ANONYMOUS SEX--at times an utter snooze cruise. probably could fulfill the good times and high fives requirements for all those queer theory enthusiasts out there.
Profile Image for Dee.
367 reviews
March 15, 2011
Read this during undergrad for one of my many sociology classes.
Profile Image for Dusty Waltner.
10 reviews
September 16, 2012


Only read if you want to see how not to do ethnographic research. His methods are deplorable and would never get IRB approval today.
53 reviews
February 4, 2016
read for deviant behavior class in college. obviously it stuck with me all this time.
Profile Image for Avasomestha.
22 reviews1 follower
December 10, 2024
ugh.

jamás me he sentido más alien que leyendo este libro. realmente se ha sentido vejatorio.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.