Twenty-Five Years of Bathhouse Outreach Approaches to Peer Outreach and Play

Twenty-five Years of Bathhouse Outreach Approaches to Peer Outreach and Play Written by Nalini Mohabir In collaboration with ACAS staff team, former staff, and volunteers About the Author: Nalini Mohabir is a long time volunteer, whose involvement with ACAS extends nearly a decade. We found her work and worldview are in tune with ACAS mission and values. In her own words, “As people of colour, it is important to work across the multicultural silos that seek to separate and contain us, as our struggles are shared. Despite recent critiques of solidarity, we still need each other. We are each other’s allies. And I am honoured to be a part of the ACAS family.” Nalini received a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Leeds, UK. Her areas of specialization include diaspora, migration, and postcolonial studies. Over the last twenty-five years or so, community agencies to be reunited with his family…Two nights before Chris borne out of activist agendas have come under increasing embarked on his journey home, I brought Chris some pressure to act as social service delivery agents, with services congee for supper. He asked me why I “was so nice to delineated by the goals of funders. In the process of him.” I answered, rather instinctively, “We are a family, accountability (to funders, not necessarily communities), a community, if we don’t help each other, who’s going to programs are strictly assessed through outcome help us?” It was that sense of family and community measurements. Such an auditing of experiences obscures that inspired and drove the passion that built first the the richness of our conversations, struggles, and sources of Gay Asian AIDS Project and eventually ACAS.2 strength; it fails to scratch the surface of our emotional lives, or speak to our political investments.1 Consequently, ACAS The impact of similar encounters over time informs our has undertaken this short reflection piece to share the values objective to work in a culturally appropriate manner. We behind our outcomes. We hope to spark further reflection provide support, education, and outreach services to on the cultural as well as interpersonal context that belies a Asians and Asians with HIV/AIDS in a collaborative, deceptively simple question—what is peer outreach? empowering, and non-discriminatory manner. ACAS opened its doors in 1994, following the coming These aims are more than just words in an annual report; together of three HIV/AIDS programs in Toronto serving they breathe life into our programs. Consider the Bathhouse the East and South East Asian communities. However, our Outreach Program, which has been part of ACAS’s roots are much longer, nurtured by gay Asian activists in complement from the beginning. Looking back, Peter Ho the city, whose activism was driven by the need for (our first bathhouse peer outreach worker) recalls that the survival (both emotionally and physically). In the words of organization was operating in crisis mode due to the Dr. Alan Li, one of the co-founders of Gay Asian AIDS devastating impact of HIV/AIDS in the early ‘90s.3 Agency project (an ACAS predecessor): staff and volunteers were deeply affected, many in mourning due to both personal and professional losses in the I remember the first client of Gay Asian AIDS Project, community. With pressing resolve (and desperation), we Chris, who was referred to us by Public Health after felt the weight of responsibility to go beyond HIV/AIDS as a being found starving and lying on his apartment floor, public health concern. It was a scary and uncertain time that despairing in isolation with no available support. With required what community, at its best, can offer—an embrace almost no staffing, we mobilized great community of acceptance and a refuge of understanding. We explore volunteer effort to help him fulfill his last wish: the innovations emerging out of this experience below. 1 Why the bathhouse? It is difficult to explain why the bathhouse became a site of outreach for gay Asian men or Asian MSM without ACAS provides sexual health and health promotion understanding their journey of immigration. The details of workshops to East and Southeast Asian men, and lived experiences (both immigration and sexual journeys) distributes free condoms and lube through bathhouses. are documented in a groundbreaking collection of thirteen The main goal of outreach in this setting is to reduce oral histories of Toronto’s gay Asian community.7 This stigma among patrons, and promote safe sex. publication, Celebrasian (1996), represented the recovery of Asian gay men from invisibility on the Toronto gay scene. From our Sexpert Survey4 we found three components that Peopled with individual life stories that doubled as shared have a negative effect on the Asian MSM: 1) the lack of experiences (e.g., expectations of professional success in access to sexual health information and testing, 2) the need Canada from family members, isolation due to separation for community and belonging, and 3) a negative view of from family as well as the twin impact of homophobia and personal body image and of the Asian male body image in racism), these stories were also an important recovery of general. We found that fun and interactive workshops the self, in relation to others. where our peers run the events have better outcomes and achieved our goals. Several of the individuals interviewed in the collection mention the bathhouse as a site of sexual discovery. In this A gay bathhouse is a business establishment (that context, it is important to remember that the ‘90s was still a may be open 24/7) in which gay men and men who challenging time, since there were few places for men to have sex with men (MSM) meet for consensual sex meet men—a bar, a public park or a bathhouse. Although and/or to socialize with other men. For some, it is immigrants comprised over 40% of Toronto’s population at part of the rites of passage into the gay culture. … the time, the gay experience was (is) portrayed as Most bathhouses have lockable rooms with a small dominantly white. So for new immigrants who may or may bed, a dark area for cruising, a lounge area where gay not identify as gay, a bathhouse offered a relatively private video porn is shown or a small bar/snack area.5 space. The softy lit showers and roomettes of a bathhouse are a space unlike any other. And outreach in this space From the definition above, a bathhouse is for sex, first and must acknowledge the reality of private questionings, foremost. It is a space that allows for casual hook ups sexual tensions and desires of patrons (the personal) while within confined spaces. One can rent a locker or a room simultaneously engaging in conversations about sexual cheaply for a short period, instead of going to a hotel, or a health and well-being (i.e., public health). A personal park or a stranger’s home. As one patron says “There’s also account of the first time in a bathhouse provides a vivid a sense of security because people see you check in, and if description of the dynamics: you go missing in the bathhouse, the person you went with would be questioned. So it’s about safety for me.” There is …It’s intimidating. Like I was excited, but also very also etiquette to bathhouse encounters: “I am outgoing. But nervous. I didn’t know whether other patrons would be sometimes I’m not that way. It seems like in the bathhouse interested in me, maybe I’m too Asian or something like there’s more possibilities. If you’re not interested in that. I went the first couple of times there by myself. I was someone, you can just tell them you’re not interested. In the maybe 20 or 21. At that time, I wasn’t very secure in myself. bathhouse, you just go, sorry I’m not interested. You can be There was a lot of low self-esteem there, for myself. It was very direct, instead of beating around the bush.” Because a way to kind of build-up that esteem. Maybe some guy it’s clear you’re looking for sex, the approach is would be interested in me? At the same time, it’s such a straightforward, as is the rejection. Brian Ly, our Outreach weird conflict, because you still feel self-conscious when Worker, describes the environment: “This is a place where someone doesn’t want to hook up with you. …There you should be free to do whatever you want—like ”Hey would be nights where I would be walking around the you’re cute, you’re hot, you’re sexy—and not care how your halls for hours, like waiting, hoping someone would try personality is outside of the bathhouse.” to pick me up, eventually I felt like my standards would lower, and I would just hook up with anyone. Gay bathhouses first came to the wider public attention of Toronto during the aggressive police raids of 1981.6 Moral A bathhouse in Toronto can be a place of pure sexual indecency and sexual deviancy charges against patrons of liberation or sexual nightmare when facing with rejection bathhouses spurred the mobilization of Toronto’s gay due to your skin colour or body type (Brennen, 2013).8 community, and an organized movement was born (our Many of the issues that stem from racism can be seen in Stonewall moment). However, raids on Toronto bathhouses the bathhouse by Asian men (Sexpert study).9 Rejection can continued well into the ‘90s; so ACAS was working within often be verbal to non-verbal gestures coming from the a relatively underground setting, in the beginning.

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