so is this what you do in a cottage?
Cottaging
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the sexual behavior. For other uses, see
Cottage (disambiguation).
The appearance of public lavatories, like this one in Pond Square, London, is the origin of the term
cottaging.
Cottaging is a British
gay slang term referring to
anonymous sex between men in a public
lavatory (a "cottage",<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference">
[1]</sup> "tea-room"<sup id="cite_ref-Dalzell2007_1-0" class="reference">
[2]</sup> or "
beat"<sup id="cite_ref-Mowlabocus2008_2-0" class="reference">
[3]</sup>), or
cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere.<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference">
[4]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference">
[5]</sup> The term has its roots in self-contained English toilet blocks resembling small
cottages in their appearance; in the English
cant language of
Polari this became a
double entendre by gay men referring to sexual encounters.<sup id="cite_ref-fantabulous_5-0" class="reference">
[6]</sup>
"Cottage" is documented as having been in use during the
Victorian era to refer to a public toilet and by the 1960s had become an exclusively homosexual slang term.<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference">
[7]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference">
[8]</sup> The word used in this sense is predominantly
British (a cottage more commonly being a small, cosy, countryside home), though the term is occasionally used with the same meaning in other parts of the world.<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference">
[9]</sup> Among gay men in
America, lavatories used for this purpose are called
tea rooms <sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference">
[10]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-humphreys_10-0" class="reference">
[11]</sup>
The term cottaging is often associated with gay men and is rarely used outside gay context, although it can apply to anybody.
