Sydney gay saunas 1967-–2000 : fight for civic acceptance and experiences beyond the threshold

The gay sauna played a central role in the battle for gay liberation in Sydney during the latter part of the twentieth century. This thesis examines the conjunction of social and political forces which contributed to the acceptance of the gay sauna by Sydney’s civic society. Two questions reveal this process:1. How was an illegal and clandestine place for homosexuals, perceived as a threat to the moral standards of Sydney, transformed into an institutional entity, legally recognised as “crucial”, and important within particular environs of this city?2. How did the evolving public domain of gay saunas contribute to the development of gay culture in Sydney by fostering the opportunities for individual and collective expression of homosexual practices? This study is contextualised within international and Australian studies of the sexualisation of urban spaces—such as Michel Foucault’s, Manuel Castells’ and Lawrence Knopp’s—and the role of the built environment in the development of sexual identity and sexual practices—such as Gayle Rubin’s, John Ricco’s, and Joel Brodsky’s. The first part of the thesis is an empirical analysis of development applications for gay saunas in Sydney between 1967 and 2000 which reveals the play of forces within state and local government, legislative processes, the homosexual community and broader civic stakeholders through which the gay sauna achieved acceptance in Sydney’s civic society. Two principal research approaches—documentary research and twenty in-depth interviews—were used in this first part. The second part of the thesis is an ethnography that uses twenty-nine in-depth interviews to provided a unique insight into the evolving public domain of Sydney’s gay saunas and how they fostered the experiences of gay men, allowing gay men to develop individual and collective sexual identities and practices This exploration of the interplay of built form, sexuality, civic governance, social identity and social action provide a sociological contribution which will also be of interest to gay studies, anthropology, architecture, geography and planning. Essential to an experience of the thesis is a concurrent reading of the Special Enclosures—a schematic chronology of Sydney gay saunas, plans of Sydney and architectural plans of its saunas