Why unfamiliar doesn’t mean unethical

On gay cruising spaces having a different – not absent – consent framework. By Terence Andrews.

I love cruising. I love being at Horsemeat Disco or Unter or some other circuit party, shirt off, rolling tits (euphemistically – I got top surgery years ago), making out with whichever men catch my eye and agree, wordlessly, that we want one of those electric dancefloor moments. I’m furry and muscular, blend in inconspicuously with short, ottery cis men, and generally do quite well for myself in gay spaces that appreciate a range of men’s bodies.

“How do you disclose?” is a common question asked of trans men who casually fuck cis men. There is no one correct way to do so, but I’ve found a method that works for me: I don’t. Not on a dance floor, not when some man creeps his hand past the unbuttoned waistband of my jeans and into my tighty-whities. I figure, if you’re going to go around putting your hand down a stranger’s pants, you should be thrilled with whatever it is you encounter.

Luckily, the worst I’ve gotten is a polite stroke, a withdrawal, and a twirl away. (No, that’s not true – once I got a flurry of frantically enthusiastic strokes, and a rambling monologue about how I was a godly blend of divine masculine and feminine spiritual energies, which, no thank you ma’am). Usually I just get a decent dancefloor handjob, and sometimes a date.

It took me a long time to get here. My transition history feels pretty bog-standard: I came out as a lesbian at 17, figured out I was a trans guy attracted to men when I was 20, spent the next decade or so hooking up with all kinds of people, all kinds of genders, and all kinds of configurations of top, bottom, vanilla, and kink. I eventually settled into being a gay man with occasional hints of bisexuality, but for a good chunk of my twenties I moved between different kinds of sex-positive scenes: dyke and dyke-adjacent sex parties, pansexual play spaces, and cis gay leather events.

There are plenty of reasons why I settled in with gay men. It’s not because I stopped being attracted to women, or polygendered people, or because I stopped needing trans community. It’s not because I thought sleeping with cis gay men would present fewer problems. It’s because it became too difficult to move between all those different scenes, and after a breakup with another queer trans person that I shared a lot of friends and community with, I simply decided to seek out new and exciting problems.

It's also because it simply became too difficult to move between worlds, mentally and logistically. Norms around flirting, cruising, and hooking up differ dramatically between dyke-centered sex parties, pansexual kink crowds, and gay orgies. I remember the first two relying much more heavily on verbal consent, and pre-scene negotiation (while it doesn’t account for every scene, it’s common enough that a lot of my friends who are still part of that crowd continue to discuss them in those terms). But gay cruising traditionally relies on a consent model based on non-verbal cues and ongoing negotiation. And just like it can be hard to switch between languages, it became hard to calibrate my approach based on where I was. The last thing I wanted to do was casually touch some femme without asking her first; another last thing I wanted to do was ask some hot man, grinding his dick up against me on the dance floor, if it was okay if I kissed him.

I have witnessed some of my transmasculine siblings try to impose the standards they are familiar with onto new contexts – trying to replace an unfamiliar culture of consent with one they are practiced in.

There is no one singular, unified theory to explain how different cultural norms take root in different queer, sex-positive spaces. I have a lot of theories about how feminism, history, trauma, and socialization help create these modi operandi, though it’s of course necessary to acknowledge that there exists diversity within specific segments of a community, and it is dangerous to universalize a single experience or story. But different places are different. There are reasons for that – and different does not equal wrong.

It can be scary to enter into a new space for the first time. It can be destabilizing to realize that there is a whole new world of language, gestures, references, and physical cues to learn. But over the years I have also witnessed some of my transmasculine siblings try to impose the standards they are familiar with and comfortable with onto these new contexts, trying to replace an unfamiliar culture of consent with one they are practiced in.

Once, I was at a mostly cis gay sex party and this handsome man in a singlet completed a basic cruise: eye contact, smile, pause, wait. I moved back toward him and wrapped my arms around his neck, and he reached down to squeeze my ass. Then, suddenly, noticing one of the new “ASK BEFORE YOU TOUCH,” signs plastered around the space – after some trans people requested them – he flung his hands away and said, anxiously, “Oh, uh, can I touch you?” I sighed, and verbally gave my consent, but I wished he had allowed himself to follow his extremely correct instincts. If I wanted explicit verbal consent to be touched, I would simply choose to frequent a different venue.

Different groups of people involve different histories, and different needs informed by those histories. Accessibility has more than one meaning, and what might work for one orgy won’t work for another. Just because something is unfamiliar doesn’t make it wrong. Just because rules around consent can vary doesn’t mean they cease to exist. It takes time, and practice, and working on your own boundaries and willingness to hold them firm. But if you’re one of my transmasculine brethren interested in exploring cis gay sexualized spaces: go make some friends. Make some mistakes. Find the bears or leathermen or disco queens who know how to have a good time, and have a liberated understanding of what that looks like, because they’re out there. Figure it out as you go along, and have fun!