Sex Clubs: Recreational Sex, Fantasies

and Cultures of Desire Chris Haywood

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 Sex Clubs
Recreational Sex, Fantasies
and Cultures of Desire
Chris Haywood
Sex Clubs
 Chris Haywood

Sex Clubs
Recreational Sex, Fantasies and Cultures of Desire
Chris Haywood
Media, Culture and Heritage
Newcastle University
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-14049-5    ISBN 978-3-031-14050-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14050-1

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“The first rule of sex club is…”
For Vicky and Sophia Lelah Sandra Haywood.
 Acknowledgements

As always, thank you to Mairtin Mac an Ghaill, who in the space of a few
words, can make you see differently. Always an inspiration—his criticality
continues to prompt me to reflect and remind me of how much I don’t
know. A big thank you to Jonathan Allan, Andrea Waling and Frank
Karioris for their support and advice. Also, for their patience as I tried to
navigate being joint editor of the Journal of Bodies, Sexualities and
Masculinities and this book. Thank you to Serena Petrella and Ryan Scoats
for your thoughtful and honest feedback. Thank you to my Swedish
friends Thomas Johansson and Jesper Andreasson for also being patient!
As always, Michael Kehler has been there to tell me when he was never
going to see me. Thank you to Professor Tewkesbury, who took time out
to spend an afternoon with me in Kentucky—hearing your commitment
and your pursuit of knowledge was a motivation! Gareth Longstaff has
been brilliant, sharing his thoughts and excellent insights. Thank you to
Nicola Gibson, Karen Robb, Rachel Clarke and my PhD students past and
present for your patience and understanding. A special thank you to the
School of Arts and Cultures research fund, and the Humanities and Social
Sciences bid preparation fund at Newcastle University that helped to sup-
port this work.
To Jade, Dave and Poppy, who have been understanding to the nth
degree—I love you so much. To Nicky and Ian for their help and support
and their special wine drinking and singing skills. A special thanks to Lelah
and Tony for making this book possible. Also, thanks to the lads at
Northumberland Recycling for keeping me grounded on sexual matters.
And to Elycia, always thought about and loved. During the writing of this

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

book, I lost my mum. I won’t sugarcoat it because sometimes she was a

cantankerous, stubborn Daily Mail reading Boris lover. But I could tell her
anything, and no matter what I did or whatever happened, she was always
holding my hand. Although I feel that she still does, I wish I could tell her,
just once more, how much I miss her, and how much I love her. And from
one strong woman to another. To Vicky, who not only grounded my wild
and ridiculous ideas but provided a critical and thoughtful reflection on
the theoretical and conceptual approach that I have been trying to develop.
And not just because you excel at your Excel skills (this book would have
never been written without you). You are fierce, clever and beautiful; I am
truly indebted. Lastly, I want to thank little Sophia for keeping me smiling
as I wrote much of this book in the evening, listening to you singing and
chatting away as you fell asleep. However, this is a book that I will prob-
ably never let you read until you are old enough (probably not until you’re
sixty-five, if I’m honest).
 Contents

1 Welcome
 to the Erotic Oasis  1
Introduction   1
Welcome to the Club   2
Seeking Erotic Encounters: What Is This Book About?   5
Inside the Erotic Oasis: Looking Through the Book  10
Visiting the Playrooms: Moments of (P)leisure  12
Towards the End of the Night  16
Bibliography  19

2 Secret Sex Clubs 23

Introduction  23
Sex Clubs and Recreational Sex  25
The Control and Regulation of Clubs  29
This Book and Its Methodological Approach  33
Sex Clubs: Where Are They? What Are They? Who Is Attending?  38
Where Do We Find Sex Clubs? Geographies of (P)Leisure  38
Recreational Sex and Playrooms  39
Who Visits Sex Clubs?  41
Sexual Identities and Sexual Practices  43
Preferred Sexual Practices  44
Conclusion  51
References  52

xi
xii Contents

3 Cultures
 of Desire: Erotic Hierarchies and Affective
Atmospheres 57
Introduction  57
Sex Clubs and Public Intimacy  58
The Playrooms  63
Complicating Hedonism: Erotic Hierarchies  68
Affective Atmospheres: Feeling the Place  72
Conclusion: Cultures of Desire  78
Bibliography  79

4 ‘Greedy
 Girls’: Women and the Insatiable Abject 83
Preface  83
Introduction  85
Greedy Girl: ‘I Want It How I Want It’  88
The Desirable Abject: The Pleasure of Fucking with Men  92
Black Women and Radical Passivity  97
Women Desiring Pleasure: Beyond Feminism and Post-feminism 101
Conclusion 104
Bibliography 105

5 Sex
 Clubs, Dark Rooms and Post-Masculinity Erotics109
Introduction 109
Beyond Respectable Masculinities 111
Masculinity Rules, Consent and Same-Sex Practices 115
‘Leaving Behind Men as Studs’ 118
New Erotic Configurations and Post-Masculinity 123
Conclusion 130
Bibliography 130

6 ‘You
 Lot Are So Hot’: Race, Black Men and Commodity
Fantasies135
Introduction 135
Black Bulls: ‘I Want a Black Man Who Knows What He Is Doing’  139
The Desire for a Black Masculinity 141
Folding in Masculinities: Cuckolds, Hotwifing and Wittoling 148
Conclusion: Black Men’s Pleasure 154
Bibliography 156
 Contents  xiii

7 Erotic
 Outlaws: Tactile Looks, Women Desiring Women
and Transgender Bodies159
Introduction 159
Collapsing Heteronormativity: Towards a Conjoining of Bodies 163
Sex Beyond the Heteronormative: Female on Female 168
Violent Transgression 174
Conclusion 180
Bibliography 181

8 Conclusion185
Introduction 185
Conclusion: Leaving with the Lights on 188
Bibliography 191

Index193
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Number of sex clubs per UK region 39

Table 2.2 Sex clubs’ facilities 40
Table 2.3 Club visitors by relationships status and age 42
Table 2.4 Club visitors by ethnicity 43
Table 2.5 Club visitors by sexuality 44
Table 2.6 Preferred sexual practices of those leaving reviews on clubs 45
Table 2.7 Availability of condoms in clubs 46
Table 2.8 UK regions with the highest and lowest number of
club visitors 49

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Welcome to the Erotic Oasis

Introduction
I wasn’t sure whether it was the incessant fucking on the bed or the sheer
desperation of men to be involved in the fucking that first grabbed my
attention. I knew that what hit me second was the dank smell of sweat and
sex that I breathed in as I moved in closer to the bed to get a better look
at what was happening. The woman thrusting herself onto the man kneel-
ing behind her and the two men on either side reaching out for her breasts
brought my senses back to me. Here I was in a northern English civil par-
ish, in a building that had once been a thriving pub in a coal mining com-
munity, watching a woman losing her balance trying to switch between
putting one man into her mouth and then another. I had walked up from
the bus terminal no more than 90 minutes before, passing a young couple
pushing a pushchair with their fish and chips in a white bag hanging from
the handle. No less than three hours ago, I had been talking to my mum
about how to get her heating, with a boiler over 25 years old, working.
Earlier still, I had been staring up at the sandwich board in the local café,
wondering whether the sweetcorn and chicken or the bacon and tomato
had more calories. Somewhere in the past 12 hours, I had moved from the
banality of the everyday to the exuberant and rapacious twisting and
searching of hands, clits, teeth, cocks, nipples, arses and lips. It was at that
moment in the sex club, where desire appeared to be exceeding itself,
when the underpinning argument for this book began to emerge. The sex

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
C. Haywood, Sex Clubs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14050-1_1
2 C. HAYWOOD

club, a place outside of the everyday order yet fundamentally a part of it,
is a cultural space that both disrupts and reinforces contemporary sexual
norms and values, and in doing so ‘…provides analytical openings for con-
sidering sexuality as degrees of variation, experimentation and transforma-
tion’ (Paasonen 2018, p. 5).

Welcome to the Club

One of the difficulties of exploring sex clubs is that they are both every-
where and nowhere. It is argued that within 60 miles of every town in
England there is a sex club. These are not strip clubs, lap dancing clubs,
gay bars or other sex entertainment venues. No sex workers are knowingly
employed. These are clubs where men and women meet to have consen-
sual sex with each other (Woods and Binson 2003). Traditionally, such
clubs are often labelled ‘swingers’ clubs’, but, as we shall see, that label
somewhat ironically (hetero)normalizes the diversity of predilections and
practices that the clubs accommodate. Since the 1990s, a number of
opportunities for recreational sex have emerged that have often come
under the umbrella of sex clubs. An online search of sex clubs will bring
up a whole range of events and encounters that have resulted in the term
‘sex club’ being applied to strip bars, exotic dancing, privately organized
sex parties, orgies at private parties or in hotel rooms, hired premises for
events and meets, weekends away and holiday escapes, swinger conven-
tions or festivals, caravan meets, franchised parties and events that tour the
country, and saunas and spas that have rooms for sexual encounters. A
more robust definition is provided in Chap. 2, but broadly speaking, the
sex clubs being referred to here are those clubs where the opportunity for
recreational sex is the club’s primary business. These are clubs where the
address remains fixed and accessible to the general public. Sex clubs are
also places where money is made and they should have some form of
entrance pricing structure. Despite the devastating financial impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic, the number of sex clubs in the UK has increased
from around 2005 from 7 to over 41 and continues to be a growing part
of the sex leisure cultural economy (Attwood and Smith 2013).
Despite their prominent online marketing and their episodic spectacu-
larizing in the media, sex clubs are quite difficult to find. If you look
closely, you will find them in rural locations on the edge of suburbia, sand-
wiched between tyre-fitting garages and plastics companies on industrial
parks or backing onto the streets of local sink estates. Housed in factory
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 3

units, renovated pubs or reclaimed retail premises, their presence is often

underplayed via careful signage or unnoticeable entrances. By day, a sex
club might be mistaken for a hotel, a recently closed pub or a factory lock-
­up. As such, they often appear emblazoned by the ordinary; remarkable
and unique places erased in their pursuit of discretion. Whereas gay- and
lesbian-friendly pubs and clubs often publicly pitch their visibility, clubs
providing opportunities for recreational heterosexuality remain in sight
but out of view. As such, the cultural camouflage of the banal operates as
a form of crypsis, a passive concealment through the resemblance to the
everyday. This crypsis is a powerful draw for a clientele who tends to value
discretion and anonymity for those attending the club. At the same time,
the sex club is promoted as a safe space where people who visit the club
become immersed in a place that is often described as a place to be ‘free’
and no longer constrained by the obligations of heterosexual monogamy.
It is suggested that such ‘immersions in enclavized and secure contexts
contrasts with the stress of people’s daily lives’ (Carù and Cova 2007,
p. 7). In some ways, the (in)visibility of heterosexual sex clubs coalesces
with cultural narratives of heterosexuality that position it as natural and
‘asexual’ (Phillips 2006, p. 167). In most places, heterosexuality is an
implicit, unspoken assumption never to be named, or, as Jeyasingham
(2008, p. 148) points out, ‘Heterosexuality is apparently not conscious of
itself, it just is’. Sex clubs, in contrast, promise erotic encounters that are
disconnected from heteronormativity, and in turn, become conspicu-
ously sexual.
When visiting a club for the first time, there is a heightened awareness
of surroundings, of people, of self, and a nagging doubt as to whether this
is the right place or the right door. The palpable self-awareness of visiting
somewhere for sex connects with a key aspect of the sexualization of cul-
ture thesis where ‘the boundaries between the public and the private are
changing in our culture’ (Attwood 2014, p.xv). More specifically, Attwood
draws upon McNair and argues that there are new forms of public inti-
macy which are linked to new forms of ‘self-revelation and exposure’
(McNair 2002, p. 81). Walking through the door is exposure at a new
level. The reception area is where membership is arranged/shown,
entrance is paid and, if new, a tour of the club is organized. Depending on
the club, and often connected to its legal status, patrons are generally
asked to provide a photo ID and become a member. This is often the case,
as clubs often promote themselves as private members’ clubs. In Auge’s
(1995) terms, the reception is a ‘non-place’, a place of transition and
4 C. HAYWOOD

passing through and a place of disclosure. In the club, patrons can bathe
in relative anonymity, as questions of identity tend to be off-limits. But not
here. Not in the bright lights of the reception, not in front of the club PC
where names, house numbers, email addresses and phone numbers are
collected. Not where identity documents are checked against faces and
utility bills photocopied. Access to the club and, importantly, the right to
enter the club is established at this point. This is a moment of disclosure.
Visitors often wait to sign in with nervous smiles or over-eager laughs. The
reception becomes a place of awkward unspoken mutual awareness of an
overt and non-negotiable desiring of sexual subjectivity. Perry writes: ‘It
seems to me that we heterosexuals have very little understanding of sexu-
ality. We never have to think about it!’ (Perry 2000, p. 81). Yet here, in the
non-place of the reception, heterosexuals have to declare their desire for
sex outside the contours of monogamous, reproductive-focused sex, not
only to themselves but to others around them. At this moment, at the
reception, heterosexuality becomes sexual; heterosexuals have become
desiring sexual subjects that are no longer swathed in the safe desexualized
space of heteronormativity.
The cashier first takes the money. This is a place where sexual value can
be measured by its pricing structure, with men paying around £30, cou-
ples £20 and single women £15 for entry. Those who are most valued by
the club pay less. On different nights, depending on the nature of the
event, the pricing structure changes. On receipt of a small deposit, you are
issued with a locker key and a towel (that is never quite big enough to fit
around the waist). The cashier asks loudly, ‘Have you been to a club
before?’ I deliberately answer ‘No’. ‘Don’t worry, love, Dave will be here
in a minute to tell you what’s what and show you around. We’re all here
to have a good time. Do you want to pass your bottles through?’ I pass my
carrier bag through the hatch and the cashier momentarily disappears
around the corner. Sex clubs often operate without an alcohol licence, and
the bar area is where ‘bring your own’ drinks can be stored and poured.
Bottles with sticky white labels with locker numbers written in felt-tip are
lined up behind the bar. As I hang around in reception waiting for Dave,
a couple comes through the door. I stand at the side, by the coffee table
and an A4 sign that details the club’s policies as pop music pumps out
from above. ‘Be presentable, Smile, Be confident, Don’t bring domestics,
Talk to people, Don’t be a dick, Play, Don’t be jealous, Have fun, Cum
again’. I look closely at number one: ‘Cum again. Every night is different.
Some chilled and sensual, some filthy and rammed. The more you visit us
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 5

the more experiences you’ll have’. The list of rules provides an example of
how clubs appear to market themselves as a space of unlimited pleasure
and a realization of fantasies.
Once in the club, patrons are sometimes met with a social set-up remi-
niscent of a working-class social club, with some clubs providing finger
buffets, holding raffles or having pool tables or karaoke. Some clubs have
pole dancing stages that lead to men and women attempting to demon-
strate their flair, some more successfully than others. There is usually a bar
area where those ‘bring your own’ drinks (depending on the premise
licence) are stored and poured. Those working the bar often ask for locker
key numbers from casually dressed men, and women are often ‘dressed
down’ in more revealing clothing. However, in the warmth of the dimmed
lights, comfy chairs and over-familiar pop music, the sociability contains a
cold functionality. The agenda here is quite clear. Amongst the cliques and
patrons that have met each other numerous times (almost weekly), and
close-­knit friends sit together in ways that make it difficult for others to
join them, men and women stand-by alone. Amid, men and women, care-
fully avoiding being seen, survey the room, watching and waiting for the
evening to progress; couples, sitting apart from each other, awkwardly
talking to one another across tables that are too large. Along with single
people standing with plastic cups held at face height, peering through to
people-watch. This is the place where teasing sex happens. For some, the
club is a meeting place for pre-arranged play; for others, the temptation
and the promise of fantastic sex, exciting encounters and lived-out fanta-
sies have drawn them to this place. Early in the evening, very little hap-
pens. Men tend to walk around and check in on the rest of the club,
looking for action. Everyone knows that sexual encounters will take place
soon and they wait and watch for the first couple or the first single woman
to seek out the playrooms. There is a waiting, an anticipation that some-
thing is going to happen. And something will happen.

Seeking Erotic Encounters: What Is This

Book About?
Perhaps, before going any further, it is important to explain what this
book is not about. This is not a book about swinging, polyamory or con-
sensual non-monogamy (CNM); it is a book about sex clubs. With nearly
half of recorded club attendees not in a partnered relationship, suggesting
that this is a book about sex between partners is disingenuous. Furthermore,
whilst this book does contain discussions about encounters between those
6 C. HAYWOOD

in partnered relationships, it recognizes that conflating cultures of desire

within the sex club with consensual non-monogamy, not only heteronor-
malizes or monogamizes sex clubs it also underplays the diversity and the
multiple ways in which non-normative intimacies are experienced and
practised. Also, this book is not simply about the exploration of different
subjectivities and sexual identifications. Instead, it is about how, in the
context of the sex club, such subjectivities and identifications take shape or
are enabled by the club context. More specifically, this book is interested
in the club ethos, its spatiality, its atmospheres and the different cultural
practices enabled by the club. Furthermore, this is not a book that pro-
vides a guide to surviving sex clubs, or a sex club book for dummies,
though there are some useful insights into the protocol and the rules of
sexual engagement and some cautionary tales of embarrassment and awk-
wardness. Finally, the rationale of this book is to provide readers with a
knowledge of cultural practices and an understanding of the politics of
desire—to make visible an emerging place of heterosexual recreational sex
that has, until now, remained relatively unexplored.
One of the most compelling aspects of sex club research that informs
this book is how the space of the club impacts upon, shapes and reconfig-
ures sexual experiences. In the first instance, clubs pose a challenge to how
heterosexuality is symbolically anchored in the private sphere, augmented
by gendered roles, domesticity, marriage, reproduction and romance; het-
erosexuality depends upon a privatized intimacy (Browne 2011). Hubbard,
in their earlier work, highlighted the importance of the ‘spatialized bound-
aries of moral and immoral forms of heterosexuality’ (2000, p. 200) and
pointed out that confinement is a key dynamic in this process of ordering.
In this way, sex should be part of ‘family life, marriage and even long term
committed partnerships and companionship become the context for deep,
emotionally rewarding relationships “situated within life projects”’
(Bernstein 2007). The spatial re-location of heterosexually through an
erotically charged intimacy ties in with a recreational view of sex where
‘…sex as a means of deriving physical pleasure and sensual ecstasy, gener-
ally eschewing the traditional view that sex should be a relationship
enhancing and/or child-producing endeavor confined to monogamous,
married, adult partners’ (Wright 2012, p. 120). Importantly, this discon-
nection of sex from procreation and family life has resulted in increasing
cultural anxiety, as there is an assumption that sex outside marriage lacks
intimacy and responsibility and will result in the collapse of the networks
and structures of intimacy that hold societies together (Weeks 2007).
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 7

Thus, sex clubs are part of a new circuitry of desire that has developed
connecting sites of pleasure that have previously been incongruous and
mutually exclusive. As such, we are beginning to witness affectivities criss-
crossing an increasingly porous private and public divide. Whilst much of
this can be seen online, sex clubs have emerged as a physical space where
the contours and the spatial dimensions of heteronormativity are being
challenged. Or, as Risman (2019, p. 124) puts it, ‘What is controversial
now is that sex is being liberated from relationships altogether’.
Sex clubs sell fantasies. Perhaps more accurately, sex clubs sell the prom-
ise of the fulfilment of a fantasy. They are not unique in this, as sex and
consumption have been increasingly imbricated (Brents and Hausbeck
2007; Martin 2016; Crewe and Martin 2017). Embedded in discussions
of recreational sex is its relationship to the commodification of sexual prac-
tices and desire. As the research for this book progressed, it became
increasingly clear that the sexual was imbricated with commodification.
Constable (2009, p. 50) clarifies how we can understand the relationship
between commodification and sex.

By commodification, I refer to the ways in which intimacy or intimate rela-

tions can be treated, understood, or thought of as if they have entered the
market: are bought or sold; packaged and advertised; fetishized, commer-
cialized, or objectified; consumed or assigned values and prices; and linked
in many cases to transnational mobility and migration, echoing a global
capitalist flow of goods.

Attending a sex club involves the conversion of an economic transac-

tion into cultural significance, meaning and affect. It has been suggested
that the emergence of recreational sex is being combined with a focus on
self-reflexivity, consumption and the pursuit of fantasy. It’s a complex
interplay that is captured by Kaplan (2017, p. 107): ‘By being (or feeling)
sexually recreational, neo-liberal subjects not only consume sexual com-
modities but also associate themselves with the empowered, glamourous
world of those who have the power to affect and be affected’. Or, put dif-
ferently, sexual practices in the contemporary context have become a key
component of being ‘transfigured’ through consumption (Phoenix 2017).
Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly difficult to disconnect sexual
practices from consumer culture. Others have noted that the shift towards
the imbrication of consumption practices with sexual practices produces
particular alignments between the self and how sex is practised (Döring
8 C. HAYWOOD

and Pöschl 2018; Fahs and Swank 2013). Alongside this, suggesting that
sexual practices are configured in ways that are closely linked to consump-
tion, recreational sex also points to sex having a different relationship to
the self. Attwood and Smith (2013) argue that sex has now become a key
part of how we make ourselves, suggesting that the meanings of sex and
how and why we do sex have changed. Sex has become embedded with
consumption that involves: ‘having the time to give to exercise one’s inter-
ests in sex [and] to engage in sex as a form of relaxation, entertainment,
self-realization, self-gratification and gratification of others, and personal
development’ (Attwood and Smith 2013, p. 330). It is suggested here
that the emergence of recreational sex results from and produces an
expanded relationship between the individual and the self. Sex, in this way,
becomes a lens of subjectivity where the relationship between the indi-
vidual and the self can be viewed, renewed and changed.
However, our understanding of our own subjectivity is a refraction
through the staging of desire, and the formation of fantasies. Sex clubs
provide the framing and erotic templates for how those fantasies are expe-
rienced and it is through the cultures of desire within the club that sexual
themes take shape and are lived out. Parker (1991, p. 79) describe sexual
culture as ‘systems of meaning, of knowledge, beliefs and practices, that
structure sexuality in different social contexts’. Sexual cultures have been
useful for making sense of a wide range of sexual practices, including BDSM
(Bennett 2018), Pup Play (Wignall 2018) and Chemsex (Mowlabocus
et al. 2016). However, this book focuses on cultures of desire rather than
sexual cultures. One of the reasons for this is that sexual cultures often refer
to something that is more stable and enduring. Instead, cultures of desire
make an appeal to the ‘here and now’, sometimes momentary encounters,
where people temporarily (dis)connect and then move on. It points to
encounters in the club as less about sexualities and more about the different
ways erotic pleasure becomes practiced. For example, sexual identities may
be publicly stated in one moment and then cast aside. At another moment,
the ‘sexual’ may become ambiguous, with encounters more aligned to the
erotic or the non-genitally focussed. In addition, cultures of desire are used
to capture the ways that erotic hierarchies and sexual capital become con-
figured through affective atmospheres. However, Parker’s later work
(1999) on cultures of desire aims to achieve something similar by suggest-
ing that gay identities within Brazil are not imported subjectivities that are
projected onto same-sex desire. Rather that cultures of desire are
inter-related with identities and collective cultures from a range of places.
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 9

Sexual cultures is a very useful and productive concept. However, it is a

concept that was initially deployed in the research, but its staticness in the
club context (it may be an excellent concept elsewhere) didn’t provide
enough purchase on the erotic volatility of club encounters.
By using the term cultures of desire, it is important to open up how
certain forms of heteroeroticism can be antagonistic to the heteronorma-
tive. Beasley (2015) has done much of this work by suggesting we need to
develop the notion of heterodoxy in relation heteronormativity. This
alludes to a range of non-normative possibilities that do not necessarily
challenge the binaries of the heterosexual and homosexual but rather pro-
vide scope for the diversification of heterosexuality. Thus, it is possible for
heteroerotic practices to be culturally transgressive, with certain hetero-
sexual practices positioned outside of a heterosexual orthodoxy. According
to Beasley (2011, p. 94) transgression does not necessarily need to consist
of ‘unusual and not respectable practices’; quite simply, it consists of prac-
tices that ‘challenge normative inequalities’. Transgression are those prac-
tices that challenge heteronormativity and disrupt hierarchies and
categorical ordering and thus in some way produce social equity. In turn,
Beasley et al. (2012) lobby for an ‘ethical erotics’—one where heterosex-
ual practice redistributes power relations that are primarily embedded in a
hetero-­patriarchy. Crucially, just because a sexual practice exists outside of
heteronormativity, it does not necessarily mean a recalibration of how tra-
ditional power relations are articulated. At the same time, ethical erotics
are associated with a particular form of care. What this means is that there
is a heterosexual practice that contests or problematizes heteronormativity
in a politically salient manner. Whilst supporting such a position, trans-
gression does not have to occur within ethical erotics (although this is
most desirable); it can occur in the production of disgust, violence and
degradation. Heterosexual transgressions are not bound by a politics of
social justice; they can very easily be contained in practices such as
homophobia or misogyny. The Incel community is an example of an
extreme form of heterosexuality that challenges the normativity that
underpins a ‘respectable’ heterosexuality.
Alongside the problematics of transgression, it is important not to be
contained by antagonisms of difference, dialectically producing new ways
of being sexual. Paasonen (2018, p. 141) usefully captures the difficulty of
holding onto a norm: ‘Since evoking the norm is also a means of perfor-
matively reiterating it, queer critique remains captured within the norma-
tive logic’. Furthermore, not only does an oppositional logic instantiate
10 C. HAYWOOD

absence through presence through repetition, ‘In the course of such rep-
etition, norms may become articulated as more coherent and solid than
they otherwise appear’. In many ways, just as sexual norms often become
solidified through their reiteration, queerness itself is too often invested
with a fixity. It is therefore important to emphasize that ‘[Queer] does not
designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather it
describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous
scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance’ (ibid., p. 3). What
emerges so clearly from Paasonen’s work is how sexual scenarios, particu-
larly through the concept of play, produce new ways of being sexual that
may not be contained in existing categories or through the emergence of
new categories. Rather, desires should be understood as ‘fields of varia-
tions’ that offer potential capacity. Thus, whilst cultures of desire may
operate through a shared understanding of the (un)acceptable, which, in
turn, designates an erotic hierarchy, this is not mutually exclusive from the
potentiality of experiences standing outside of that hierarchy. More spe-
cifically, as Curtis (2004, p. 110) points out, ‘The link between imagina-
tion, consumption, and sexual subjectivity is about the creation of new
possibilities—some are acted on, others not’.

Inside the Erotic Oasis: Looking Through the Book

The aim of the book is to understand what sex clubs are about and what
happens inside them. This book becomes a way of exploring them, using
the book as a way of viewing. Chapter 2 of the book provides more infor-
mation on how a sex club is defined, where they are in the UK and more
information on who is visiting them. For example, in the UK there has
been a rise in events management organizing queer, fetish and kink events.
These organizations often name themselves a club, whereas the definition
used in this book contains some specific dynamics, especially that of a per-
manent place where people visit. The chapter also explores where clubs are
located, who visits them and the sexual preferences and identities of those
who visit them. It places sex clubs within a growing trend of leisure sex
(Berdychevsky and Carr 2020). More specifically, it suggests that whilst
previous approaches to sexual leisure aim to classify it as either serious or
casual leisure, they tend to underplay how contemporary approaches to
leisure sex draw upon notions of recreation and, through consumption,
connect with individualized commodified fantasies. Chapter 2 provides a
more social, legal and historical understanding of sex clubs that is
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 11

mirrored by a depiction of the social, cultural and sexual characteristics of

those who are visiting clubs. It also identifies the reasons for carrying out
the research and a brief discussion of the ethical issues underpinning the
research. From a chapter that relies mostly on quantitative data, the direc-
tion and tone of the discussion changes as the ethnographic fieldwork
becomes more central.
As one of the main aims of the book is to know more about sex clubs,
the understanding expressed in the book are a consequence of the use of
covert ethnographies. I have tried, through the fieldnotes of the various
encounters I have witnessed, to enable the reader to see them, feel them,
hear them and smell them. I want the reader to get a sense of wandering
through the club just as I did as an ethnographer. By doing this, I am
explicitly drawing upon the principles of evocative autoethnography with-
out being wholly autoethnographic (Gergen and Gergen 2018). More
specifically, my experiences of encounters within sex clubs draw upon the
‘intense here and now’ (Jonasson 2018, p. 12). This book however is also
inflected by realist ethnography in that it wants, as Ellis and Bochner
(2006, p. 433) suggest, to ‘put culture and society in motion’ and at the
same time ‘freeze frame’ and ‘tame’ ethnographic encounters. Yet, at the
same time, I want to provide the reader with a way of looking through the
book that moves beyond empiricist ethnographic forms and recognizes
the importance of creativity in capturing the atmosphere, the feelings and
the being-there-at-that-moment sense of the research practice. Berry
(2017) talks about the use of ‘multi-sensory and thick description to cre-
ate emotional resonance and empathy’. My engagement with the encoun-
ters in the clubs positions me within this back-and-forth dialogue between
the evocativeness of autoethnography, empirical encounters as a theoreti-
cal launchpad characteristic of realist ethnographers, and ethnography as a
form of cultural storytelling. It is within this dynamic tension between the
evocative and the realist that my encounters in clubs inform the subse-
quent writing.
However, this tension between the evocative and the realist creates a
different issue, one that is particular to research on sex. The opening lines
of this book point to a style of writing that would be more at home in a
poorly written erotic novel, a pornographic magazine or an amateur video
blog. When re-reading my fieldnotes, I continue to be frustrated by my
failure to fully capture the scene. I see the limits of the language and the
difficulty of expression, especially when slipping between different regis-
ters. I’m very uneasy and anxious about the guttural slang—the fucking,
12 C. HAYWOOD

the clits, the cocks, etc. Apart from this being the register that tends to be
used during encounters in clubs, I want to capture the visceralness, the
physicality, the doing of the encounter. My anxiety about this style of writ-
ing is also connected to the danger of becoming ethnopornographic,
where ‘ethnopornographic’ refers to ‘a cluster of concerns about the
meanings of pornographic representation, the plurality of sexualities, the
legacies of colonial representation’ (Sigal et al. 2019, p. 9). It is argued
that much of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anthropological
work objectified those who were being observed. This objectification pri-
marily operated through racial stereotypes designed to reinforce racial
hierarchies. In essence, the eroticized power of the ethnographer became
simultaneously embedded as the object of the analysis and the research
method. In effect, the gaze of the ethnographer deploys an epistemology
of voyeurism to produce racialized sexualities that simultaneously justify
and reinforce existing colonially driven inequalities. The male gaze, often
firmly located on the sexualized bodies of Indigenous women, became a
means to separate the savage and the civilized, the hypersexual and the
pure. More succinctly, as Nurka (2019, p. 102) points out, ‘in other
words, the sexualizing gaze could hide its immoral desires behind the
veneer of legitimate scientific enquiry’.
In response, the research ensures that its discussion of the various
encounters, interviews with club patrons and review of the quantitative
data are done in a caring, sensitive and ethically appropriate manner. At
various moments throughout this book, I declare my anxiety as a middle-­
aged white man watching white women playing with black men, reporting
on women fucking women, men using women for sex and women humili-
ating men for their pleasure. Quite simply, these are my ethnographic
readings, and whereas others may have a different insight, approach and
experience, this book is simply one limited perspective.

Visiting the Playrooms: Moments of (P)leisure

The ethnographic approach in this book (not the only approach used—see
Chap. 2) enabled me to make connections with Tewkesbury and his use of
the concept of the erotic oasis. Drawing upon Delph (1978), Tewksbury
(2002, pp. 69–70) defines an erotic oasis as:

a location considered physically and socially safe (according to subculturally

defined standards) from threats to exposure. Erotic oases provide ­individuals
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 13

with opportunities to gather and pursue mutually desired sexual interactions

and include both private and public settings. Some such settings are com-
mercially-operated businesses (such as bathhouses or adult bookstores)
while others are natural environments co-opted by men for sexual purposes
(public restrooms, public parks, etc.).

It is perhaps as we move further into the club that the concept of the
erotic oasis becomes most productive. Beyond the bar and the social area,
there are playrooms, such as a cinema room, the dark room, the couples’
room, the sauna, the private room, the dungeon, the glory hole room, the
sauna, the grope room, the orgy room, the school room and the mirror
room. In some clubs, they have cars that provide the dogging experience,
and in one club, there is a truck cab. In another club, there is a tent with a
light that projects the shadows of its users onto the wall next to it. These
rooms often mimic classic pornscapes, with highly theatrical and grandiose
interior designs that tend to consist of black-painted MDF boards and red
and purple velour drapes in rooms with walls that sometimes don’t always
reach to the ceiling. Clubs are ‘edgy sex’ or places that enable ‘sexual behav-
iours and activities that might be considered to be at the borders or the
edges of the permissible, desirable or conceivable’ (Phoenix and Oerton
2013, p. 163). Such behaviours might include but are not exclusive to
anonymous sex, group sex, partner swapping, bukkake, same-sex practices,
cuckolding, threesomes, ‘bareback sex’, gang bangs, BDSM, and interracial
and intergenerational sex. Despite claims that sex clubs in the UK attract
500,000 to 1.5 million visitors each year, contributing to a multi-million-
pound sector of the sex industry, we know very little about them. There is
something about the affective charge involved in looking, revealing and
uncovering what happens in sex clubs that up until previously we hadn’t,
couldn’t or weren’t allowed to see too much of.
On the outside, and often in sex club promotional material, sex club
experience is often framed as a hedonistic or sybaritic free-for-all. To be
clear, it is not. Yes, there may be encounters and moments when the pur-
suit of various forms of pleasure and ecstasy emerges. However, sex clubs
are often characterized by an erotic hierarchy that prioritizes and autho-
rizes who is desirable and what is acceptable within particular club spaces.
In Chap. 3, these erotic hierarchies and how they configure and shape
acceptable practices are explored further. It is argued in this book that
clubs promote cultures of desire that are connected to erotic hierarchies.
Thus, gender, age, ethnicity and sexuality are configured in ways that
14 C. HAYWOOD

promote particular ways of being sexual that are inclusive of the configur-
ing of bodies. One of the reasons for this is that cultures of desire are
underpinned by ‘hegemonic systems of judgment’ that form the basis for
structures of desire (Green 2011). More specifically, Green argues that
structures of desire are embedded sexual encounters that are operational-
ized through ‘representations of who is desirable, in the first instance, and
past and present patterns of sexual sociality, in the second instance’ (ibid.,
p. 245). As such, desire in clubs is structured hegemonically. Importantly,
hegemony is not fixed; it is won through consent, and across various
spaces and in a variety of clubs, the judgement of desirability is often chal-
lenged and reconfigured. It is through the structures of erotic hierarchies
and the affective atmospheres that cultures of desire emerge.
Sex club encounters not only contain traditional gender and sexual
judgements they also disrupt conventional understandings of sexual iden-
tities. It is argued that the sex club has become a space for the emergence
of non-normative intimacies that go beyond traditional understandings of
partner-swapping. More specifically, the book explores an economy of
desire that circulates through cultural practices that rupture conventional
understandings of gender, sexuality and ethnicity whilst at the same time
having the potential to simultaneously instantiate them. For example,
Chap. 4, Greedy Girls, explores the ways in which sex clubs promote a
night where women attend to have sexual encounters with as many men
and women as they want to, either at the same time or one after another.
On the one hand, this can be seen as reinforcing hetero-patriarchy by
positioning women as objects of sexual consumption or through their
own sexual subjectification that being objectified or adopting a sexual sub-
jectivity that ultimately reinforces. On the other hand, the sex club can
transform women’s (and men’s) sexual experiences, offering new ways of
being and subjectivities.
In Chap. 5 there is an exploration of how masculinity articulates itself
and uses the ‘Dark Room’ to explore this. As we shall see, sex clubs pro-
mote, both formally and informally, a masculinity that is premised on a
notion of respect and the importance of establishing sexual consent. It’s a
way of being a man that carries a signification associated with #MeToo and
involves not only clubs promoting and prioritizing women’s safety and
consent but also men being part of that process. This itself connects with
hegemonic judgements and what is seen to be acceptable for men (and
women) to be doing. At the same time, there is a space in the club where
the sexual order is upturned and contested. As can be seen in various
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 15

encounters in the club but in Chap. 5, not only is the existing order of the
club challenged, but it also provides a space where masculinity becomes
‘un-done’. Both Chaps. 4 and 5 provide an insight into the different ways
sexual encounters within clubs take place.
In contrast to spaces where the potential for alternative masculinities
emerges, one of the themes that underpin sex clubs is the commodifica-
tion of sex and how the promise of the fantasy becomes part of the popu-
larity of the club. Despite the porn star images of the online club
promotional material and the promise of pleasure, sex clubs can some-
times be both sophisticated and ‘gritty’ at the same time. Although sex
clubs make money by selling the promise of pleasure, they never provide
explicit representations of sex. Instead, they metonymically configure the
possibility of pleasure through their advertising and promotional materi-
als. In Chap. 6, the promise of the fantasy, through a night where white
women are encouraged to have sexual encounters with black men, notions
of commodity and fetish are explored in greater depth. In particular, it
examines how racialization becomes a source of erotic pleasure. This chap-
ter highlights the ways in which black men become commodified as objects
for women to consume. It shifts its focus to consider how sex in a club
becomes commodified through the fetish of the black male body.
Chapter 7, Erotic Outlaws, examines how sex clubs can be the space for
tensions between transformations and traditions, where erotic encounters
appear to stand outside of sexual identity categories and become restricted,
pulled back and re-aligned to traditional sexual norms and values. They
also become the place where such traditional categories become frag-
mented, contested and exceeded. In many ways, this chapter reinforces
the need to move away from sexual identities to understand sex clubs and
to think about how the club produces the spaces where alternative sexual
practices to be lived out. A part of this is to think through transgression in
the context of a club context that promotes hetero-erotic experiences as
commodities. To re-iterate, heterosexual practices in the club can exist
outside of the dominant or hegemonic values that circulate through het-
erosexuality (Beasley 2011). Berlant and Warner (1998) provide an impor-
tant commentary in heterosexuality and heteronormativity that seeks to
disentangle the two. On the one hand, there is heteronormativity that
provides a coherency and a privileging of heterosexuality. However, they
also suggest that: ‘Contexts that have little visible relation to sex practice,
as life narrative and generational identity, can be heteronormative in this
sense, while other contexts forms of sex between men and women might
16 C. HAYWOOD

not be heteronormative. Heteronormativity is thus a concept distinct from

heterosexuality’ (ibid., p. 548). Crucially, where sex takes place is crucial.
As will be demonstrated throughout this book, heteronormative values
are constantly in play within the club. There are encounters within clubs
that appear to support heteronormativity. Yet, at the same time, the club
context provides the space for a transgression, wherein heteronormativity
is folded in on itself.

Towards the End of the Night

The Conclusion to this book, Leaving with the lights on, includes a com-
mentary on how we might begin to think about sex clubs in light of the
pandemic. The threat of infection has become more salient, and the inevi-
table reflexivity about risk aligns itself with how the fading of the fantasy is
experienced at the end of the night in the club. As well as highlighting a
number of the limits of this book and areas for future investigation, it sug-
gests that sex clubs need to be understood as emersive environments and
it argues that the pandemic has promoted the need to think about uncer-
tain intimacies. In many ways, the end of the book reflects what happens
in clubs themselves at the end of the night. Usually, in clubs, it is the
increasing sparseness of people that signals that the night is coming to an
end. As the evening draws to a close and the crowd thins out, sexual
encounters become spectacles and often turn out to be the final opportu-
nity for a sexual experience. This rush to be involved can create clumsy
attempts at intimacy. For example, at the end of one evening, a man sat
with a younger woman in a black bikini laced top and leather PVC knick-
ers. They were watching a woman fucking a man on a massage bench. At
the same time, they were chatting to a man across from them, a man wear-
ing red PVC shorts, braces and a red dog collar. The couple stopped fuck-
ing and wandered downstairs. In their place, the man in the shorts walked
up to the other man’s partner, lifted her off the chair and laid her down on
the bench. They began kissing, and she started to dry fuck him, pushing
herself against him, tightening her legs around his back. Apart from the
kissing, there was no touching inside the clothing, no genital contact, just
rubbing, a frisson across each of their bodies. They constantly changed
positions, arranging their bodies in ways that would maximize their plea-
sure. It was a form of unspoken eroticism, a shifting, twisting around of
bodies, using one another, urging each other on through touching, all on
the outside of their clothing. They moved to another massage table on the
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 17

other side of the room; she was clinging with her legs around his waist as
he laid her down. This time, a number of men and women stood around
them, watching this intense writhing of bodies, searching and seeking out
pleasure. It was transgressive in that compared with the fucking that had
previously taken place that evening, this was different. The man buried his
face in her hair, kissing and tasting her neck; she lurched upwards, forcing
herself against the hardness of his cock beneath his shorts. She moaned as
the man switched sides, tasting her again with an urgency and a frenzy. An
older man leaned over, close to her face, and shouted, ‘Are you are enjoy-
ing that?’
The spell was broken.
Perhaps it was the presence of a different kind of sex within this club
night that was most noticeable. The atmosphere and the experience all
interwove into the experience of the evening. Besides the group sex, the
use of huge sex toys, the hard flogging on the St. Andrew’s cross and the
multiplicity of sex between a T-girl and two women, this felt transgressive.
However, more generally, there is something about the erotic energies of
the club, something that was picked up by Pini (2001) in their discussion
of dance clubs and raves. They discuss a way of being erotic that exceeds
the categories of straight, gay and lesbian, which operationalize the sexual.
The result is that what appears, for example, to be heterosexual becomes
more blurred and fragmented. More specifically,

This is not about a sexual longing directed towards a specific or individual

‘target’, but about a far more dispersed and fragmented set of erotic energies
which appear to be generated within the dance event. This new form of
‘jouissance’ has little to do with ‘pick-up’ or even with something outside
the self (and this becomes particularly clear when several of the women use
the term ‘autoerotic’). Pini, 175, Kindle edition

It is these energies, this sense of moving away from the individual to a

sense of encounters and moments, that signal transformation in the erotic.
This is why it is important to signal the ways in which the sexual remains
fluid and shifting, difficult to pin down and explain.
The old man leaning over the couple shouting, ‘Are you enjoying
that?’, prompts the woman lying down moved her head away. Another
man intervened and pushed the man away, then tried to put his hand on
her. She moved the hand away. The couple tried to continue and then
another oldish, short man in shorts and braces leaned into them with a
18 C. HAYWOOD

bottle of poppers, trying to get the man to sniff the bottle. The man on
top of the woman didn’t see this, but he flung his head around and
knocked the amyl nitrate all over his face and the face of the woman lying
underneath him. It went into her eyes and hair and over her neck. She
instantly cried out as it stung her. Everything immediately stopped. They
both got up and ran to the bathroom. Amyl nitrate to the eye can cause
irreversible damage and loss of sight. This led to the end of the evening.
The slow-moving, sensation-seeking crowd dwindles into individual
single men quickly checking rooms for swift sexual fixes. The odd couple
remains, but they are either at the bar, getting dressed in a private room or
walking to the changing rooms. A club worker calls out that there is half
an hour left. The cultural politics of the club have shifted; the conventions
of politeness, of women being in charge, of sensual pornscapes, are
replaced by four or five remaining desperate men scuttling back and forth
from room to room, dipping their heads into spaces, eyes darting around
corners, checking for action. Handles of locked doors are tried; some men
knock to be let into private rooms. They stop, listen and knock again.
Sometimes, not even a polite ‘fuck off’ is sufficient. They knock again.
And again. The braided rope that separates the couples’ room from
onlooking singles hangs loose, no longer in place. At the end of the night,
it is the increasing emptiness of the rooms that impels men’s desire. Now,
it is the absence of bodies and a fantasy of limitless jouissance that seems
to drive an erotic desperation. The absence of bodies, the absence of sex
in one room fuels the anticipation that drives them on to the next. It is
now an absence that drives them on to what could be there in the next
room. One last room, one last look, one last knock. Another last room,
another knock. And then nothing.
In some clubs, lights go on and playroom doors become locked. In
others, staff make their way round to say that they are closing. Whilst the
remaining men and couples make their way to their lockers, club workers
begin emptying the bins and washing down the plastic beds. It appears
that sweeping brushes are handy for washing down the walls. Activity
shifts to the changing rooms, sometimes mixed, sometimes single-sex.
People are often dressing in silence, which is sometimes interrupted only
by dropped keys or shuffling coats. There is no locker room talk.
Homosociality is achieved through a lack of talk or banter. The silence is
sometimes broken by familiar faces, previously engaged in sexual acts,
acknowledging each other, ‘Had a good night?’, ‘It’s been slow/great’.
And then conversations simply stop. Even couples, together, get dressed
 1 WELCOME TO THE EROTIC OASIS 19

alone, in silence. The ungenerous glare of the fluorescent lights seems to

catch every moment, from the dropped sock and the unfastened bra to the
stumbling attempt to pull up boxer shorts. Bodies that were once paraded,
performed, displayed, and devoured, now looked uncomfortable and
clumsy. The erotic charge of the space shifts from dissolution to social
dislocation.
As you leave the club, those working there are often talking between
themselves in reception. This is interrupted when clients collect their
deposits for towels. Outside, taxis pull up next to the door. Some of those
leaving the club make their way to the kebab shop, others walk away into
the darkness, and others go straight to their cars. There’s a mingling, a
dispersion of those from the sex club with those from nightclubs and pubs
and bars, a scattering that renders them unremarkable. As they drift into
the night, we continue to know little about them and the other people
who visit the club. How old are they? Where do they live? What kind of
sex do they like? Whom do they like to have sex with? Are they single? Do
they practise safe sex? It is suggested that clubs are being visited by over
one million men and women each year, and we continue to know very
little about them. That is, until now.

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In P. Sigal, Z. Tortorici & N. L. Whitehead (Eds.). (2019). Ethnopornography:
Sexuality, Colonialism, and Archival Knowledge. (pp. 1–41). Duke
University Press.
Tewksbury, R. (2002). Bathhouse intercourse: Structural and behavioral aspects of
an erotic oasis. Deviant Behavior, 23(1), 75–112.
Weeks, J. (2007). The world we have won: The remaking of erotic and intimate life.
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Wignall, L. (2018). Kinky Sexual Subcultures and Virtual Leisure Spaces. (Doctoral
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 CHAPTER 2

Secret Sex Clubs

Introduction
‘The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The
second rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club!’ The use
of this line for the subtitle of this book alludes to the film Fight Club which
was adapted from the book by Chuck Palahniuk (1997). The film centres
on an underground fight club and forms the basis for one of the main
themes of the novel. In a world where advertising numbs the senses, the
fight club gives the men the opportunity to experience something real,
something that breaks through an otherwise vapid social world. It is not
that the film is the ideal cypher for understanding sex clubs, but it high-
lights both the importance of anonymity that circulates around sex clubs
and the way sex clubs often become ways of escaping a world of mundane
everyday sex. Even where there are moments within the sex club that may
be seen to reinforce heteronormative ethics, sex clubs continue to provide
a counterpoint to what Portolan and McAlister (2022) call the ‘Masterplot
in contemporary culture’, the romance plot. More specifically,

The plot has clear milestones and events: you meet someone, you fall in
love, you marry, you have children, you live happily ever after. These mile-
stones are flexible and might shift in terms of significance and order–for
instance, not all couples marry, have children, or wait until after marriage to
have children–but the cultural primacy of the romance plot, and our almost
universal familiarity with it, cannot be denied. (Ibid., np.)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2022
C. Haywood, Sex Clubs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14050-1_2
24 C. HAYWOOD

Portolan and McAlister point out that this romance masterplot has
been weaved into same-sex relationships as well as heterosexual ones.
However, it is argued that the development of sex clubs is implicitly con-
nected to the ways in which the romance masterplot is beginning to falter.
It is argued in this book that the disconnection between traditional forms
of intimacy and the development of new ones, driven by commodification
and consumption as a form of self-making, where alternative sexual affects
and practices begin to intersect. The subsequent problematization of rules
and assumed ruptures in collective notions of sexual acceptability is one of
the reasons why the subtitle of this book was chosen. The subtitle also
prioritizes the importance of secrecy. Secrets are often associated with
stigma, a hiding that in itself becomes an indication of psychological prob-
lems. Rather than be indicative of problems, the secret, as exemplified in
Fight Club, provides a way of living within a world that is emotionally
commodified, waxed in heteronormative trajectories that celebrate the
romance masterplot. The sex club becomes a place where the heteronor-
mative rules and conventions of monogamy and coupledom may be chal-
lenged, reinstated, but also exceeded. That said, if we think of secrecy as
dependent on revelation rather than concealment (Fan and Liu 2021), the
sex club relies on the possibility that the secret world can at any moment
become undone.
The secrecy that surrounds sex clubs was often revealed when I was
asked what this book was about. When I said sex clubs, the majority of
people assumed that I was researching sex clubs for the gay community
and for men who have sex with men. Whilst there is much to learn from
research on Gay and Lesbian sex clubs, they have a very distinct history
that is rooted in the experiences of a sexual minority that have been
socially, economically and legally marginalized from society. In Gay and
Lesbian communities, sex clubs have operated as places of resistance, com-
munity refuge and sexual exploration (Meunier and Escoffier 2021).
Particularly with the emergence of HIV in the 1980s, cities around the
world and especially in the USA witnessed the systematic shutdown of
venues because they were deemed to facilitate (unsafe) sex (Sides 2006;
Meunier and Escoffier 2021). The history of Gay and Lesbian sex clubs
and bathhouses operates as an affirmation of Gay collective identities
along with their own specific, often politically inflected dynamics. Another
distinction between clubs marketed to heterosexuals and Gay sex clubs is
that the emphasis on the latter may be more focused on particular sexual
practices. Villaamil and Jociles (2011) point out that in the context of
 2 SECRET SEX CLUBS 25

clubs in Spain, Gay sex clubs tend to market themselves towards advocates
of a particular kind of scene of sexual encounter: ‘This clientele will define
itself as a minority in relation to what is perceived as a hegemonic gay
model—young, urban, upper class, muscular gay. This has given rise to
what is usually called “scenes” (bear, leather, fetish and so forth)’ (ibid.,
p. 585). In contrast, there is no formal history of sex clubs that market
recreational sex for heterosexuals. It is unclear when and where sex clubs
as a legal, commercial enterprise specifically designed to facilitate on-­
premises consensual sexual encounters for men and women began
to emerge.

Sex Clubs and Recreational Sex

A starting point for the emergence of heterosexual-focused clubs might be
to consider examples such as the Order of the Friars of St. Francis of
Wycombe, the Hellfire Club and the Beggars Benison, which were often
run by the English and Scottish aristocracy in the eighteenth century. These
clubs were places where the morality of the day was ceremoniously and ritu-
ally challenged. Such clubs were notorious for sexual orgies, drug-­taking
and blasphemy. Some modern-day sex clubs have adopted similar names,
such as the Hellfire Club. As such, it could be argued that current sex clubs,
which are often run as private members’ clubs, are simply a more recent and
accessible reconfiguration of these older and private ‘Gentlemen’s’ clubs. In
more recent history, Roberts (2003) suggests that sex clubs in the UK
emerged as a consequence of swinger networks migrating from semi-profes-
sional sex parties run in private spaces such as private homes to permanent
premises. One of the reasons for this, Roberts argues, is that as swingers
visited European sex clubs, there was a replication of European practices
within UK contexts. Furthermore, according to Roberts, such clubs have
emerged as a result of their activities shifting a sense of voluntarism within
low key informal within sexual sub-cultures into an commercial entrepre-
neurialism. In short, newly formed semi-professional enterprises began to
formalize leisure practices into a more organized business. Although there
may have been a number of parties or events run from private houses, natur-
ist clubs or porn cinemas that provided the foundations for sex clubs across
the twentieth century, one of the earliest commercial clubs may have been
the Adam and Eve Club that was opened in Manchester in 1982. However,
it was not until the 1990s that a series of other large-scale clubs were
launched, some that remain in use today. Importantly, such clubs have
26 C. HAYWOOD

emerged, according to Roberts, as a result of their activities shifting a sense

of voluntarism within sexual sub-cultures into a commercial entrepreneur-
ialism. Roberts argues that in 2003 there were no more than five clubs
permanently based in the UK. Since then, it appears that there has been an
exponential rise in clubs operating in the UK. This growth in the number of
recreational sex clubs should be understood as part of a broader array of
sexual leisure opportunities that have recently emerged.
It is argued that this growing sector of the sex economy points to more
people in the UK using sex as a leisure activity or ‘leisure sex’ (Attwood
and Smith 2013; Berdychevsky and Carr 2020). Often pitching them-
selves as ‘lifestyle clubs’, sex clubs provide a way of doing sex that is not
dependent on monogamy, marriage or reproduction. This means that in
contrast to relational sex, which refers ‘to building relationships, creating
a family, or cementing committed relationships’, recreational sex is the
pursuit of the experience of sex itself, rather than the experience of being
part of a broader set of relationships (Penhollow et al. 2010). It is argued
that recreational sex signals a cultural shift in late modern society, where
sexual values are becoming unanchored from traditional narratives of sex
and love and instead are emerging as sexual lifestyles that are shaped by
individualism, consumption and leisure (Attwood 2011). More specifi-
cally, Attwood argues that ‘the emergence of late modern recreational
sexuality is linked to—and can be seen as emblematic of—a broad range of
contemporary concerns with image, lifestyle and self-exposure, which
have become means of self-care, self-pleasure and self-expression’
(Attwood 2011, p. 83). Furthermore, the sex club as a space for recre-
ational sex resituates sexual pleasure outside of the domestic sphere into a
public sphere, ‘generally eschewing the traditional view that sex should be
a relationship enhancing and/or child-producing endeavor confined to
monogamous, married, adult partners’ (Wright 2012, p. 120).
In many ways, this lack of clarity over heterosexual clubs is somewhat
emblematic of how the sexual operates within popular culture. Although
sex clubs in the UK frequently appear in news reports, television docu-
mentaries, films and music videos, there continues to be an association of
the UK’s sexual identity with restraint and inhibition; characteristics
‘deeply ingrained in the national character’ (Leach 2004, p. 13). As such,
sex clubs, among a range of other forms of recreational sex, remain one of
the UK’s ‘dirty secrets’. They are often culturally present, yet just out of
view; such visibility becomes framed and statemented in ways that provide
the limits of acceptability. As we move towards a post-COVID era or what
 2 SECRET SEX CLUBS 27

Dupree names as a ‘Post-Apocalyptic “Sex Fest”’ (Dupree 2021), discus-

sions about recreational sex and its damaging impact on the family,
younger people and the future for society emerge. Recreational sex, one-­
night stands, no-strings-attached sex and hooking up are often used to
convey ‘sex without commitment’. Importantly, in the media, these forms
of sex are primarily associated with younger people. Eva Illouz (2019,
p.61) suggests that casual sex epitomizes the shift from capitalism that was
organized factory and family life, arguing that ‘Sexuality was not only
what one did in one’s bedroom, but a myriad of consumer practices reor-
ganizing the body, its appearance, one’s rapport a soi, one’s desires, pre-
sentation of self, and social relationships in general’. In many ways, the
resulting dispersion of capitalism has resulted in casual sex generating a
high level of uncertainty about how to navigate the disconnection of the
erotic from family life. This means that in contrast to relational sex, which
refers ‘to building relationships, creating a family, or cementing commit-
ted relationships’, recreational sex is the pursuit of the experience of sex
itself (Penhollow et al. 2009, np.). In other words, we are beginning to see
the fragmentation of sexual lives that have traditionally been a part of fam-
ily life and marriage. Furthermore, the proliferation of clubs and the diver-
sity of their provision suggests that those visiting clubs are engaged in an
experience economy where it ‘…is primarily for the experience itself, and
not necessarily connected with some deeper meaning’ (Penhollow et al.
2010, n.p.). Or, as Schwartz and Rutter (1998, p. 45) suggest, it is ‘sex for
sex’s sake’.
Whilst we have moved on from Comfort’s (1977) suggestion that we
can distinguish sex as being ‘reproductive, the romantic and relief” (see
p. 48 in Morris 1978). There is often a cultural juxtaposition between
relational sex as deep and emotional and that sex that is cold and calculat-
ing. Embedded in this assumption about casual sex is a gendering. As
Illouz (2019, pp.72–73) points out, casual sex is masculine

because it mimics male power, as it is a trope of autonomy and signals the

capacity to detach, to look solely for one’s pleasure, to obliterate care and
reciprocity (the traditional signposts of feminine identity), and to pursue
market subjectivity. Casual sex for women is a marker of equality in the
mutuality of detachment.

In a number of instances, there is no doubt that casual sex for men can
be characterized by a self-centred pleasuring that lacks care and a sense of
28 C. HAYWOOD

reciprocity. However, sex clubs, rather than promote detachment, provide

the contexts that promulgate a range of intense emotional encounters.
More specifically, they are encounters that facilitate forms of affectivity
that are not necessarily linked to traditional heteronormative relationships.
In Illouz’s account, there is a claim that men’s detachment is different
from women’s and there is no doubt that in some instances, this is the
case. However, and perhaps along with notions of good and bad sex
(Rubin 2002), binaries used to describe emotional engagement, such as
‘deep’ and ‘shallow’, may also regiment the ways in which the sexual is
experienced. In response, it is important to understand the concept of the
‘recreational’ as a device to capture the quality of the sex club experience.
The concept of recreation has its roots in the Latin ‘recreation’ and refers
to a process of restoration to health (Torkildsen 2005). Recreation has
relevance because, as Torkildsen (2005) suggests, ‘recreation needs to
provide satisfaction in some way’ (ibid., p. 57). Earlier versions of recre-
ation have been connected to being a moral force, a good for society
(Brightbill and Meyer 1964; Nkwanyana 2020), pointing to the eude-
monic nature of recreation. This traditional approach to recreation has
been connected with forms of self-restoration and recuperation, drawing
upon the re-creation of the self (Stothart 1998; Lamont 2009). Rather
than understand sex as either serious or casual leisure, the emphasis on
recreation refers to the quality of the practice being engaged in rather than
its temporal character (Mill 2008). In the context of the sex club, recre-
ational sex builds on its traditional definition and connects with the pur-
suit, excitement, gratification, enjoyment and satisfaction. This may be
physical, emotional and affective which may result from attending the
club, its sociality, the sex in the club, feelings of identification and desire.
According to Bernstein (2007), recreational sex complicates the division
between the private and the public, the domestic and the commercial. The
result is that ‘commercialized form[s] of sex in the guise of sex toys, fetish
clothing and apparel, and pornographic magazines and films have trans-
gressed this most private and heteronormative of spaces’ (Maginn and
Steinmetz 2014, p. 4). This suggests that the intense intimacy and emo-
tional depth of the bounded domestic sphere are becoming embedded
within publicly available consumer-focussed sexual cultures. More specifi-
cally, Bernstein (2007) suggests we are seeing those forms of authenticity
and emotional intimacy, once culturally restricted to family relations,
being experienced within commercial relations such as sex work. Whilst
sex clubs reject associations with sex work, the shifting nature of leisure
sex from the private to the public sphere is important to acknowledge.
 2 SECRET SEX CLUBS 29

The Control and Regulation of Clubs

The introduction to this book highlights the various ways that the term
‘sex club’ has been used. In response, this book pins down what the term
‘sex club’ refers to. The first aspect of the definition is that it refers to clubs
whose primary business is providing opportunities for on-premises het-
erosexual recreational sex. There are clubs across the UK whose primary
business may be to provide saunas or swimming facilities, who also have
rooms for anonymous casual sex. Many of these places also forbid sex tak-
ing place in the wet areas such as jacuzzis or swimming pools. These have
not been included in this definition. Instead, the primary business of the
sex club is a commercial enterprise where facilitating sex is central to the
business. Another criterion is that the premises for the commercial enter-
prise are in one location. What this means is that it is not a commercial
enterprise that hires venues. Again, there are other businesses that do just
that and stage events across the UK, tending to promote themselves as a
brand rather than a club. More recently, it has been argued that there has
been a surge in the number of sex clubs in London. This surge refers to a
number of hosted events run by organizations that rent out premises.
Rather than be physically located in one area, these ‘clubs’ may be under-
stood as one-off events. These potentially could signal a new trend in sex
clubs that appeal to a newer generation as the clubs involve underground
DJs and artistic spaces. They also tend to cater for kink and fetish com-
munities and tend to have a residency at clubs. Therefore, it is important
not to conflate networks, contact groups or online organizations where
people regularly meet up for sex in hotels or homes. In these situations,
there may be at no or a nominal cost. Such networks can also be highly
selective in who they invite and would not be open to the general public.
In contrast, the definition of a sex club as it is used here refers to a club
that is accessible to the general public and is run as a commercial venture.
This definition of a sex club means that it tends to be a venture that is
subject to particular licencing laws and planning regulations.
Unlike the United States where sex clubs have historically been subject
to specific laws, the development of clubs in the UK has also been shaped
by a more ambiguous relationship to the law. Various laws such as licenc-
ing, land usage and by-laws specific to various local authorities, and
whether clubs adhere to these laws make it especially difficult to pin down
the legal status of sex clubs. Historically, clubs have been subject to a range
of UK laws, including the Disorderly Houses Act of 1751, an act that made
30 C. HAYWOOD

it illegal to keep a ‘bawdy house’ where inappropriate sexual activity would

take place, such as brothels, adultery and fornication (McBain 2015). The
current legislation around sex work and the term ‘brothel’ has relevance
for today’s clubs. The definition of brothel tends to refer to ‘be “a place
where people of opposite sexes are allowed to resort for illicit intercourse,
whether…common prostitutes or not”’: Winter v Woolfe [1931] KB 549. In
such instances, ‘illicit intercourse’, is often referred to as ‘sex outside of the
bonds of marriage’. Roberts (2003) also points out that sex clubs may be
subject to the regulation of indecent behaviour, given that there does not
have to be an exchange or reward for sex (Kelly v Purvis [1983] 1 All ER
525). Just because a club bans sex work from its premises does not in itself
disqualify them from potentially being searched. However, Hubbard
(2013) point out that when it comes to the governmentality and regula-
tion of commercial sex is more likely to be a consequence of planning and
licencing laws. As a result,
This means that it is planners, licensing officers, and environmental
health officers, rather than the police per se, who are charged with ensur-
ing that sex premises do not have ‘negative externalities’ for those living
and working nearby. In practice, this means that sex premises are encour-
aged to conduct their business in a discrete manner, and are seldom per-
mitted near ‘sensitive’ land uses such as schools, religious establishments,
or areas of ‘family’ dwelling (Hubbard 2009; Lyons et al. 1999; Hubbard
2013, p. 127).
Perhaps most important to the current regulation of sex clubs is the sex
entertainment venue licence. Leo Charalambides and Charles Holland
(2021) in their excellent discussion of Sex Entertainment Venues high-
light the importance of the Home Office’s (2010) Sexual Entertainment
Venues that, among other things, is designed to guide Local Authorities,
club operators and local communities to make sense of Section 27 of the
Policing and Crime Act 2009. This Act, developed primarily to control
and regulate a growing number of lap dancing clubs, has major signifi-
cance for sex clubs. It is important to quote the guidance at length:

“2.4 Paragraph 2A of Schedule 3 as inserted by section 27 sets out the

meaning of a ‘sexual entertainment venue’ and ‘relevant entertainment’ for
the purposes of these provisions. A sexual entertainment venue is defined as
“any premises at which relevant entertainment is provided before a live audi-
ence for the financial gain of the organiser or the entertainer.”
 2 SECRET SEX CLUBS 31

2.2 The meaning of ‘relevant entertainment’ is “any live performance or

live display of nudity which is of such a nature that, ignoring financial gain,
it must reasonably be assumed to be provided solely or principally for the
purpose of sexually stimulating any member of an audience (whether by
verbal or other means).” An audience can consist of just one person (e.g.
where the entertainment takes place in private booths).
2.3 While local authorities should judge each case on its merits, we would
expect that the definition of relevant entertainment would apply to the fol-
lowing forms of entertainment as they are commonly understood:

• Lap dancing
• Pole dancing
• Table dancing
• Strip shows
• Peep shows
• Live sex shows”

Sexual Enteratinment Guidance (2010, p. 7)

The above definition, apart from the inclusion of live sex shows appears
relatively unambiguous. However, it is the following that has resulted in a
number of clubs requiring to be licenced as Sexual Enteratinment Venues:

“2.4 The above list is not exhaustive and, as the understanding of the exact
nature of these descriptions may vary, should only be treated as indicative.
Ultimately, decisions to licence premises as sexual entertainment venues
shall depend on the content of the entertainment provided and not the
name it is given”. (Ibid.)

Charalambides and Holland (2021) point out how such variations

operate in practice. Not only does this involve differences in terms of what
is interpreted as sexual entertainment, Charalambides and Holland note
the variations in the application of liecincing according to interpretations
of ‘Live Performance’, ‘Live Display of Nudity’, ‘Audience’, ‘Organiser’
‘Finacial Gain’ and ‘Assumption of Sexual Stimulation’. Furthermore,
they recognise that some clubs may be simply overlooked. Therefore,
there is an uneven application of licencing law across England.
Alongside their relatively ambiguous legal status, sex club applications
for usage permissions of their premises also provide little definitional clar-
ity. In the UK, planning applications for sex clubs can be specific to local
32 C. HAYWOOD

authorities and local by-laws and subject to the local government priori-
ties. Some planning permissions appear progressive, specifically debunking
speculation about members’ licentiousness and predatory sexual behav-
iours. This can often be the case when trying to promote business and
commerce in a specific location. For example, one club in the south of
England changed its use from being an old pub to offices, then to a private
members’ club. One more famous club has been in use as a club since
2008. However, a retrospective planning application was not made until
2013 when the club was investigated for non-compliance by the local
authority. The case for permission was made on the basis of the club bring-
ing £250,000 per annum into the local area, the employment of 12 staff
and the provision of a community facility. This club used a planning spe-
cialist which is uncommon as most applications are completed by the own-
ers. The club remains open. Other council planning decisions, drawing
upon the Human Rights Act of 1998, refuse permission to open up clubs
if they deem that the club will affect the ‘amenity of the area’. In one case,
a sex club having no shop frontage would lead to a ‘loss of confidence in
the area’. A red PVC entrance canopy, apart from being called ‘dated’,
would be ‘over dominant and incongruous’. Applications are routinely
challenged by MPs, communities or the police and are often labelled as
‘unsuitable and inappropriate for residential areas’, ‘too close to the pri-
mary school’, with a negative ‘impact on house prices’ and ‘possibilities
for illegal or exploitative activities with no checks in place’. In such
instances, small- to medium-sized business incentives and/or lower busi-
ness taxes associated with regeneration regions can contribute to increased
community resentment when sex clubs are proposed in close proximity to
housing conurbations, schools and shopping centres.
At the same time, in their research on community perceptions of sex
establishments in Australia, Prior and Crofts (2012) highlight how the
way a sex club is perceived can often be influenced by a vocal minority.
They suggest more integration of sex clubs within the community as a
form of normalization. In Scotland, a recent local government survey of
where to situate sex venues was rejected by those living in more upmarket
locations. Whilst for some survey respondents, there was a zero-tolerance
of sex venues, a number of respondents were happy for sex venues to be in
their area. Alongside this, Haringey Council in London has attempted to
close down a number of sex clubs, but these are fetish or kink clubs and
not those marketed to heterosexual communities. It appears that in the
UK, moral entrepreneurs routinely challenge ‘unusual and
 2 SECRET SEX CLUBS 33

counter-­normative practices’ of sex clubs, ‘which interrupt hierarchical

discrete categories’ (Beasley 2011, p. 36). This smaller vocal minority can
drown out alternative views. As such, the need to protect the fragility and
vulnerability of heterosexual neighbourhoods by such social majorities
sometimes frames sex clubs as dangerous, subversive and predatory. Again,
the ambiguity of sex clubs and their regulation is illustrated by how sex
clubs are categorized in planning applications. In the UK, sex clubs tend
to operate through seven diverse planning use categories, as defined by the
GPDO (General Permitted Development Order) (1995/2015), more
commonly known as the Town and Country Planning Act. Some clubs
operate under the same permissions as cafés (A3), offices (B1A) and hotels
(C1). Other clubs operate under the same permissions as creches, law
court and places of worship (D1). At the same time, some clubs operate
outside these categories and are based on residential usage. The ambigu-
ous planning approval status of sex clubs is compounded by the fact that
buildings and their uses are not static but change over time. One club, for
example, changed its use from a Gay sauna to a sex club which in practice
resulted in a change of use from a retail status to a licenced café and the
removal of opening hours. The status of other clubs remains more ambiva-
lent. For example, one club in the Midlands was granted probationary
planning permission despite the possibility of becoming a noise nuisance
and a large number of objections raised by the public. A further planning
application was submitted and another 12-month extension was granted.
However, no further application remains on file even though the extended
planning application ran out. Perhaps the final point to make in relation to
planning is that there is a significant proportion of clubs where planning
applications are publicly unavailable. The implication here is that permis-
sion was granted prior to 1994 or even that some clubs have no planning
permission. A number of clubs have had their planning applications refused
and continue to open regardless of their planning status. For example, one
club requested a change of use of premises, from offices to a non-religious
meeting place that operates as a swinger’s club. Despite this refusal, the
club continues to trade.

This Book and Its Methodological Approach

The origins of this book began in response to an emerging public health
issue around sexual infections. At the time of the initial application for
ethical approval, the UK government had identified that one of the
34 C. HAYWOOD

fastest-growing communities for the prevalence of sexually transmitted

infections was the heterosexual community between the ages of 45–65+.
In such instances, first consultations for heterosexual men between 2016
and 2019 rose by around 10,000. In comparison, heterosexual women’s
first STI consultations rose by around 50,000 (Public Health England
2020). Furthermore, in 2020, the majority of new HIV cases were in het-
erosexual communities, and the majority of late diagnoses (where infection
is already detrimental) were recorded in heterosexuals aged over 45
(Health Security Agency 2021). This emerging public health concern
dovetailed with research I was already carrying out, and participants alerted
me to the importance of exploring sex clubs (Haywood 2018). This initial
public health concern recently dovetailed with recent findings that indicate
that despite the reduction of HIV between men having sex with men
(MSM), heterosexual transmission has not declined. Given that most
research on high-risk sex targets MSM, sex workers and young people, re-
positioning sexual risk as something experienced by older heterosexuals is
an attempt to recalibrate a policy agenda that continues to view sexual
health as something elsewhere. Whilst research has acknowledged the
importance of understanding sexual health risks of ‘swinging’ communi-
ties, it has not recognized that not all sex within sex clubs is carried out by
swingers or those within couples. Fundamentally, as the research began to
explore and understand the nature of sex clubs, it became clear that this
was a site of leisure that had been explored in very little depth, and that
although there exist a number of accounts of swingers, threesomes and
group sex, there is very little research exploring clubs marketed to hetero-
sexuals as places for recreational sex. In response to a lack of knowledge
and understanding of sex clubs, this book is based on three research meth-
ods that were all given full ethical clearance by Newcastle University.
It will be noticeable that whilst data on safe sex was obtained and there
are a number of fieldwork occurrences where sex without condoms was
practiced, this book does not focus on this per se. Discussions of sex and
marginal sexual communities are often reduced to sexual health issues and
the book purposefully avoids doing something similar to sex clubs.
Narrowing the discussion of sex clubs to solely safe sex reinscribes a narra-
tive of sexual practices as risk-driven. In contrast, the argument here is that
sexual risk is about how sex operates through hierarchies of desire and
affective atmospheres. Once sexual risk practices are located within these
terms, a discussion about interventions may gain practical traction.
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