Bathhouses & Sex Parties

Rolling with Rejection

Bathhouses and Sex Parties are popular places where Tina is used with sex, although most arranging of such events is done online. Online sex apps and hook up culture is rife with rudeness and dehumanising interactions. There’s something about the apps themselves that reduces everyone on them – the men we are seeking and ourselves – to things to be liked, or disliked and discarded. It becomes a catalogue of body parts, where what is sexy about us is reduced to a graphically strong, strategically arranged digital photograph, and where all the other sexy things about us – our personality, our values, our humour, are disregarded and devalued and invisible. Online sex app culture can be a real source of painful rejection.

Hooking up for sex can be scary. Although Canadian culture has come a long way for gay guys, homophobia is still alive and well – both within the gay community and outside of it. We have this belief that homophobia has been eradicated and that isn’t the case – at all. In many cases, it has gone within, and become internalised. Biphobia, in particular bi-invisibility is real, as is transphobia and sexual racism. Body fascism, prejudice based on weight, appearance and lack of youthfulness remains a constant in men’s hookup scenes.

Then there’s the fact that most of us were never adequately taught skills for selecting mates. Hooking up and connecting for sex and romance involves complicated, socially nuanced skills – as does giving rejection, and receiving it gracefully. Tina can help us overcome all of this and feel very liberating.

Although this is one of the useful features of meth, it is important that we develop skills in how to approach a prospective mate for sex, romance, or a date. It is also vital that we develop the skills in how to both give and receive rejection so that we do not rely on Tina to bypass this process for us. See our Dating and Flirting without Tina page for some ideas.

The Intimacy Paradox

Tina helps us to overcome any worries or feelings of rejection when hooking up. Tina stimulates dopamine, the chemical associated with new and novel experiences. Tina sex is often tied into wanting new sexual partners, more sexual partners, and pushing our sexual limits towards edgier kinds of sex.

Tina causes our pupils to dilate, making it seem like we are gazing into the core or souls of our sex partners. Coupled with the intensity of the sex, and the sense of liberation from barriers to intimacy, Tina can make it seem like we are deeply connected to others when we use, especially when we use with them, but it actually reduces our empathy. We become less interested in emotionally bonding with our sex partners, and more interesting in fulfilling our sexual impulses. Common scenarios include being blindfolded and letting random strangers ejaculate inside us, being degraded and used.

This can be really fun when we’re high. However it can be really scary at the same time. When we are sober, we may regret the kinds of sex we had when high – as meth can make us have edgier sex, or sex with people who are not even our type, than we would normally find enjoyable when sober. This clash can induce feelings shame and guilt.

Tina sex paradoxically is often felt to be mechanical, robotic and compulsive. Many of us have the experience running into the guys we had Tina sex with the next day, or week outside of the sex pary or bathhouse, only to feel completely disconnected from the same guys, and accompanied increase in loneliness and isolation. We call this the Intimacy Paradox.

Consent is Hot, Assault is Not

Keep checking in. When having Tina sex in bathhouses, it’s important to know that guys may be making decisions they wouldn’t normally make. They might be having edgier sex, or sex with more partners than they really want.

It is up to all of us to make sexual spaces safer for everyone. If you go to a sex party or bathhouse for Tina sex, it is up to you to contribute to a safer place for the guys you have sex with.

For the guy who’s rolling on T, getting fucked by multiple strangers, blindfolded – or in a similar situation, how do we…

• Make sure he’s still enjoying it? or is ok?
• Make sure he’s still awake?
• Check to see if his ass is bleeding?
• Is actually able to say “no” if he needed to?
• Knows where he is, or where his stuff is?

If you cannot affirm these above questions, the situation is one where sexual assault is occurring or has occurred.