Gays, lesbians, sex and holidays

Some gay and lesbian destinations do have word-of-mouth reputations as places where casual sex is possible and this aspect undoubtedly has significant influence on destination choice for some, though there is no hard ‘evidence’ for this. Some of these reputations are rendered explicit – as in the case of Fire Island – in books, television programmes and popular pornographic films or novels. Fire Island has had a reputation for outdoor cruising and ‘recreational sex’ ever since the 1930s and entered popular mythology as a sexual heaven (Newton, 1993). Provincetown (Cape Cod, Massachusetts) has not had the same reputation but it too has outdoor cruising areas which are, for instance, mentioned in a recent travel book by Cunningham (2004).

Media articles about holiday products or destinations do, though, sometimes pick up on the sexual angle. In an article about Gran Canaria in a mainstream UK national newspaper, a journalist commented ‘as far as I can see gay holidays are designed with two things in mind: to allow gay men to spend the daytime ogling other men in Speedos without having to switch on their gaydar and to spend the night trawling the bars trying to identify each other fully clothed . . . Sex is readily available’ (Wells, 2002). Alternative Holidays’ resort holiday in Sardinia in 2004 was described in a travel article in Gay Times as ‘a sun, sand, sea and (hopefully) sexy holiday with 500 other gay men from all over the world . . . [where] the only other people on the island will be the 5000 US marines holed up in the nearby nuclear submarine base’ (Tatchell, 2004b). The resort holiday (in Sicily) was described the previous year in a national newspaper as ‘a week of freedom, giddiness and, yes, shagging’ (McLean, 2003). Fire Island has been depicted as ‘renowned for beach parties, drugs, wild sex and beautiful boardwalks’ in the (UK) Pink Paper (Czyzselska, 2003). The ramparts of Ibiza Old Town were identified as a traditional cruising area in an article in the UK gay magazine, Attitude (June 2004).

Tourist guidebooks are rather more likely to mention sexual opportunities. Spartacus, for instance, identifies places, such as parks and beaches, for cruising – for casual sexual encounters. The extracts from the work of gay and lesbian writers in Bledsoe’s (1998a, b) two edited collections frequently include reference to, though do not focus on, sexual encounters during travels. Luongo’s more recent edited book (2004) is explicitly ‘a collection of gay travel erotica’.

In the Brighton (UK) survey of gay men, half agreed that there were more opportunities for sex on holiday and nearly 40% were more sexually active on holiday than at home (Clift and Forrest, 2000). Of those who had been on holiday at least once in the previous year, half had been with a new sex partner on holiday and, of those, half had sex with three or more partners; 60% of those having sex with a new partner had penetrative sex. Not surprisingly, men holidaying in ‘gay destinations’ were more likely to have new partners and to have more partners. Sexual activity was also associated with being on holiday alone or with a friend, with ‘gay life’ as a motivation for holiday and also with a high number of sex partners at home. ‘Gay men are considerably more likely than heterosexuals to have sex with new partners on holiday’ (Clift and Forrest, 1999b, p. 290). A survey of gay men carried out at travel fairs in London (1997–1998) was similar in content to that of the Brighton survey (Clift et al., 2002a). Findings were similar in that nearly half had a new sexual partner whilst away and 30% had four or more new sexual partners, though just less than half of those having sex with a new partner reported having penetrative sex. Of these, one-third had penetrative sex with three or more new partners. In a sample of US circuit partygoers, 67% had had some form of anal or oral sex during the circuit party weekend (Mansergh et al., 2001).