Set your DV-Rs, fellas, because tonight ABC2 in Australia is taking viewers to a place few mainstream media outlets have ever dared enter: An all-male sauna.
Gasp!
Secrets of the Gay Sauna is a “documentary” that goes inside the “gentlemen’s relaxation zone” of CS2, a popular sauna in Nottingham U.K. Viewers get behind-the-scenes peeks at the management, visitors, and the poor chap whose job it is to clean up.
Related: Bathhouses And Beyond: A Brief History Of Gay Cruising
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“On some levels CS2 in Nottingham much like any normal, conventional sauna,” producers say. “It has a power shower, a jacuzzi and some changing rooms. But it’s upstairs that is unique to a gay sauna.”
“Here, over 1000 sq. ft of space is put aside to cater to every sexual need from ‘dark rooms’ to ‘sex swings’.”
Shocking!
“Customers come here at any time of day–during their lunch break or after a night out to have sex with perfect strangers. And at £12 a visit, business is booming.”
And all this time we thought sex clubs were going extinct. Let’s just hope straights don’t get it wrong. These spaces are our own; you can’t invade them like you have gay bars and clubs.
Check out the trailer for Secrets of the Gay Sauna below. Or don’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5DEAfhDYI4
Kirk Montrealer
I live in Montreal..there are like 4 of these just a couple blocks from me..these are nothing new.
Shane Camfield
Let them have pleasure and fun..
Johnny D. Moore
LOL I think they mean bath housdes LMDFAO and it’s no ones business what happens anywhere unless they are partaking
Brad McDermott
Sex. Is. SHOCKING! OMG!
Britt Wallace
Lol. “Shocking”. Straight people must live a boring life.
Ladbrook
In all honesty, what some gay men do in private clubs is no one’s business. Sure, it’s intriguing, but I wonder if the true purpose of showing this “insightful documentary” is really just to demonize the larger LGBT community.
Mark
uhhh, Blowjobs, Anal Sex (bareback-condom), orgy’s, fisting, drugs, rimming, etc…
Dennis C. McGrath
The ritz. I can say no more
Justin Freebourn
what is this, 1980?
James R Carter
omg
Damian Healy
Really? Shocking? It’s just sex!
(Even if that sex is getting gangbanged by 20 anonymous dudes in a leather sex swing at 4am on a Sunday morning)
Not that I would know or anything… ð??
*cough*
Joey Torrealba
Ohh I didint know these places excited ohh I am scared. I think I am going to go to one to experience it lol..
William Howell
The only thing shocking is all the straight married men sucking dick.
broadshoulder
With dragging its heels on gay marriage I wonder if Australia is entering a homophobic stage….
James Dauria
no secrets we all knew, LOL
Kangol
More power to everyone who goes to that sauna/bathhouse and has a good, safe time.
BTW, why is Australian TV reporting on a bathhouse in Nottingham, UK when there sex-filled bathhouses in Australia???
Sydney Steam, Bodyline Spa, Aarows…do the Google, Australian TV! Or maybe some of the producers and on-air talent can be found in these hot spots so they don’t want their own cameras coming in?
Marcus Fisher
Wait….people spend money to make a documentary on this??
Ashillion Mashuga
I don’t know I think it’s time for Gay men to grow up and stop acting like children. As a bisexual that has attempted to have committed relationships with several gay men… You have to to if you want a real 1+1 partnership… You can’t keep dating you can’t sneak around you can’t have an open relationship and most you cannot continue to be jealous petty little girls.
NoCagada
The only “SHOCKING” thing to be found is all the MARRIED men who go there
onthemark
You realize that TWO of Queerty’s most frequent, obsessive, prudish commenters are going to flip out at this? (You can guess to whom I’m referring!)
andrewl
I live in Australia and watched this last night as I was a regular bath house visitor in the past. I wanted to see how it was reported. It was pretty much non judgemental and was just like a documentary on a day in the life of an airport. Also while Australia is dragging its heels on gay marriage due to our stubborn foolish prime minister Tony Abbot it is important to realise that in Australia there is no difference between treatment of gay and straight de facto relationships (common law marriage) which is treated pretty much the same as a traditional marriage. For example my partner was able to immigrate from the U.S. To live here as we could prove we were in a de facto relationship. Of course it is stupid that the country is dragging its heels over gay marriage but it reaaly is due to our stubborn head in the sand PrimeMinister than to any ant gay feelings in the country.
Bauhaus
“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
– Mae West
Rob Kuttner
Shocking!!
Finrod
“An all-male sauna” —– Aren’t single-sex saunas and steam baths the norm?
Matt McGaw
Bath houses are called saunas in UK and Australia. Recorded it last night so will watch today. Yes not shocking to us but most of the straightworld do not know the exist
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Would not go. Would not date the kind of person who goes. But happy for you to dig in and get my share. You can thank me later with a brisk,,, handshake (hand sanitiser first tho)
Rick Gillum
Now that the word gets out imagine all the new business they will get. New meat! Lol.
Steve Hanson
1978 much AU?
Bill Hohn
A gay sauna is one with the hots for other saunas. A gay republican is a republican that only has sex with other republicans.
Román Uriel Arévalo
And water is wet . . .
DimAsAnEmber
@onthemark: No, who are those?
SFHandyman
When are they going to do a story at a cheap motel? Open those doors and see what’s happening there.”Men having sex with women they met on the street moments before.”
The only difference is men in the sauna don’t charge you for sex and unlike most of the prostitutes, bathhouses and saunas pay taxes on their income.
Billy Budd
I had a lot of fun in the Saunas in Sao Paulo, in the early 00’s. Nice memories.
Severn Kirchem
Shocking secrets of a Straight Sauna!!!!….no
jason smeds
Men don’t need to pay for sex with men. Men are basically horny and will have sex with other men for free. On the other hand, a man who wants sex with a woman often has to pay for it. Her sex drive is nowhere near as constant and compelling as his, and thus he has to extract consent from her through the use of inducements.
This difference between the sexes basically explains the battle of the sexes: he is constantly battling to obtain sex from her.
In our male-male environment, there is no such battle. The lack of battle is a source of envy to those who look at us.
seaguy
At first I thought if this was Disney owned ABC here in the USA I hope that they sent that hunk Geo Benitez to do this story, that would have been some must see TV.
Billy Budd
@jason smeds: I wholeheartedly agree.
Mathew Fields
Wtf does ABC executives or producers know about “gay saunas”?
Adrian Paul Annas
Boys will be boys
Jorge Rojas
What secrets ? Spare me lol
Reynaldo Rivera
How is this shocking or a secret?
Earnest Jeffery Wiles
What could possibly be different than a straight Sauna that is so shocking? People being intimate at 2:00am after the bars close. What’s new?
martinbakman
@Bauhaus:
“I’m shocked, shocked…”
– Captain Renault
Stephen Devine
Wait! Gay people have sex?
Tommie Wagner
Eugene Pecbot
Cobalt Blue
There aren’t bleach and alcohol enough to make a place like this clean. A chicken coop or a pigsty are more inviting.
Timothy Warner
What for?
notevenwrong
A UK club is Australian news? I don’t get it. Are they recycling UK programs?
TK
Figures, they’d do an expose on a British bathhouse. It looks a tad tame. They’d be shocked if they ever came to Canada and looked into some of our more seedy spots. Montreal has several, each tub caters to a different crowd. In Toronto, they use to have a place known as The Barracks. This one catered to guys who are into other aspects of sex (Bondage and Discipline or Sadomasochism). Now, if it’s a pretty boy you’re interested in, they are out there (in Toronto, you have Spa Excess) but kid you not, it seem’s all tubs do have their fair share of older men, who simply have forgotten, what the word “NO” means. What they failed to address, not everyone goes to these places for sex only. Bathhouses have been a meeting place to meet new people. Sure the pretense is to get laid, eventually but, for some, it rarely happens. For me, a bathhouse needs to have decent facilities (Wet Sauna. Jacuzzi. Gym. A bar is a bonus but not a pre requisite. Granted, these places are not for everyone. I believe every gay fella needs to at least, experience one in their life time (mainly for the experience).
bottom250
Awww sweethearts, how sweet and innocent breeders are. OMG, It is sooooo cute.
notevenwrong
@TK, Spa Excess has become such a dump though. I know for some people the sketchiness is part of the charm, but for the facilities, Toronto Steamworks is so much more sparkling, and at least in my experience has more beautiful people.
Glücklich
@Bauhaus:
How have we never met? I adore your sensibilities.
electrongreen
These places should be closed down.
Karl Michael Wein
Didn’t know there was such a thing as a “gay sauna”…
james_in_cambridge
With Grindr, Jack’d and the other hookup apps, how are these places surviving? How are gay bars surviving??
james_in_cambridge
@jason smeds: Wow! You actually managed to say something that doesn’t make you look like a total asshole! Congratulations!
stonrdude
Its no big deal! Why all the talk?
Bauhaus
@Glücklich:
Likewise.
mujerado
@Ashillion Mashuga: If you don’t like it, don’t do it; but don’t try telling other men what to do or how to live. The only one who has to live within your morals is you.
mcflyer54
“Come here to have sex with perfect strangers”- give me a break, nobody’s perfect.
Jacob23
A monument to selfishness, commodified sexuality, disease and dysfunction. More man/years of life lost in places like that than in all the anti-gay murders in the UK.
notevenwrong
@Jacob23, not as many as the years lost to people like you trying to control and shame others into prescribed behaviors.
Chris
The issue, to me, is the focus solely on gay saunas as if they are the only place where people have sex. There are sex clubs, swingers’ clubs, and other quasi-public clubs — with corporately-owned spaces in cities and unincorporated areas of this country — where heterosexuals and het couples go with swing and play. Yet they get a pass; at least until such a time as these latter-day Puritans decide to be shocked by what goes on in those settings.
So yeah; make fun of the people who are shocked by these places. But don’t lull yourself into believing that the reasons such documentaries get made, in the first place, are apolitical. They are deeply political; and gay folk continue to be the focus of this faux outrage.
kwylo
ABCTV (Australian Broadcasting Corp – the national broadcaster) did not promote this as being a ‘shocking’ documentary, neither did I see any Australian media describe it as such. It was never promoted as an expose.
It seems the only people calling this documentary shocking are QUEERTY.
This UK made documentary was not sensationalist or judgmental at all. It just showed a world that the larger population may have wondered more about.
and yes, in Australia and the UK they are called saunas not bathhouses, just like we say mobile phone and holiday instead of cell phone and vacation.
Graeme Watson
Editor, OUTinPerth http://www.outinperth.com
Jacob23
@kwylo:
“This UK made documentary was not sensationalist or judgmental at all.”
I suspect OUTinPerth has absolutely no problem being judgmental on a whole raft of issues. You are probably judgmental about gay bashing, about homophobia, about your clownish Prime Minister, among other things. So what’s the problem with being judgmental about a network of commercial establishments whose business model is premised upon loveless sexual intercourse between and among strangers? Why so reticent about judging corporate entities which have a financial interest in gay promiscuity? Why not do a little investigative reporting on the vast deficits in mental and physical health outcomes when men practice anonymous sex with multiple partners over the long term? Then you can tell your readers and let them, you know, judge for themselves. Or does OutInPerth get advertising revenue from these “saunas”?
Billy Budd
@Jacob23: There is a thing called “condom”, which makes sex safe even when it is random and anonymous. it doesn’t prevent all STDs, but the other ones are curable.
dastardly_deviant
In this age of digital/mobile hookup apps. the seemingly most shock-worthy aspect of the gay sauna, in terms of modern sensibility, would be a face to face meeting in person before carnal engagement.
Aires the Ram
In reading all the comments so far, I saw no-one mention that the sexually charged atmosphere of the saunas/bath houses is very enticing to many men, but it also just might be a whole lot of fun!!! Don’t clutch your purses and run now.
Moritz
@Ladbrook: I couldn’t agree more. We are so rarely covered in documentaries, people will just assume this is what we all do. They should emphasize that this is a subculture within our subculture. Just part of who we are.
Maybe people will think we need marriage to keep us out of these places. Too bad that half the guys there are already married, to women.
John
Was in one a few weeks ago in FLL. While the scenario was hot, the guys barebacking because they are on Prep was disheartening. We do not know what long term use will do to kidneys, liver and will the body in time build up a resistance to the drug? Cone on guys, wrap up the willy.