With the coronavirus pandemic having drained “lifeblood of advertising revenue” and hindered a stateside “digital upstart” being “transformed into a highly respected peer to traditional media outlets” (theguardian.com, May 2020), it seems BuzzFeed has had to resort to old staples of user interaction in a world of gender and pansexuality where seemingly the obvious is now anything but:
Have you ever used a glory hole? Fill out our anonymous survey (buzzfeednews.com).
Blimey, with BF saying that NYC Health Department is suggesting that the anonymity preserving holes bored in public restroom partition walls are seemingly as important as any facemask chap about to jizz in someone’s gob is wearing—although with it an open question as to whether the novel virus can be passed on it semen (theguardian.com, May 2020).
Glory holes have long been associated with gay male culture and swinger clubs. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the New York City Health Department encouraged creativity in sexual positions “and physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face to face contact.”
Following on from its earlier advice of sticking to masturbation—leaving Grandpa Danger Heels in Chapopolis chat room feeling erect and thoroughly validated with mutual masturbation mentioned—or/and only having sex with people in your household in the form of partner or consenting roommate, with proactive advice in a list item with emphasis to “make it a little kinky” in the NYC Health Safrer Sex and COVID-19 advisory (nyc.gov) seemingly giving the allusion to glory holes for those not content to be “taking a break from in-person dates” and be pulling one off or paddling the pink canoe in video chat “Zoom parties”.
This got BuzzFeed News thinking: Have glory holes gone mainstream? And how are people using them? We'd love to hear from you if you've ever used a glory hole, either before the pandemic or because of it.
Indeed, but seemingly more than just so lampooning staff can have a good snigger when revealing that what is being poked through hole was in fact an unusually shaped vegetable which was then made to explode to surmount their viral exploding watermelon (buzzfeednews.com). Can glory holes really go mainstream? Well, it seems even Cosmo has shone a light through recently:
A definitive guide to glory holes (cosmopolitan.com, Jan. 2020).
Which may cause some to sarcastically exclaim that a guide to glory holes is just what Cosmo readers need, but of course, that would be making something of as assumption of that readership and as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was recently told (bbc.co.uk), gender today is somewhat more a matter of semantics. But under the sub-heading ‘Do women use glory holes?’ it does seem to suggest any cisgender interest is merely lascivious feminine curiosity:
[Don Bapst, an academic who penned an informal study called Glory Holes and the Men Who Use Them for the Journal of Homosexuality] tells me that some trans women frequent glory holes. As for cisgender women, he explains that they only tend to appear there in ‘straight-bait’ porn films, in which they lure straight men to glory holes before letting a gay guy take the reins.
“I’ve heard of women dressing in male drag for the purpose of sneaking into gay male bathhouses,” Bapst says, “but in the anecdotes I heard of – which I have no way of verifying – the women were mostly curious to observe, were quickly discovered as ‘looky-loos’ and asked to leave.”
So, pandemic and Health Department advisory or not, is there really any suggestion that, as BF states in the page’s opening line, glory holes are not still associated with “gay male culture and swinger clubs”, or is it just a case of too much streaming “straight-bait” glory hole porn being viewed in its offices, with it being porno tropes that have long gone mainstream.
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