What is Cruising?

by Alexandra Miller, August 20, 2025.

Elsewhere on this site you can find a number of references to cruising, and the places where it is done. Cruising is a phenomenon perhaps best represented by its places. But, as a behavior exemplified by its transience, it can be hard to locate in any one place. Cruising is the act of seeking out casual sexual partners in public. It can be done in bars, in bathrooms, in parks, and in many other places. It has no infrastructure and no cost. It leaves few traces and does not often center on one place for long. For many gay men, young and old, out and not, cruising is a foundational, or at least a common, experience in their lives. And, because it takes place in public, cruising has a relatively low barrier to entry for those on the margins of the queer community. Cruising can be a place for men who might otherwise identify as straight and be married to women to find sex with other men when they can’t do so openly.

We include cruising on this website because it is so important to the place-based experience of queer community. However, cruising can be a sensitive subject. For many people, it is an uncomfortable one. Public sex is illegal in many jurisdictions, covered by laws against nudity, indecent exposure, fornication, etc. Not only that, but also many cruising sites are public places where people might go for reasons other than sex. For these reasons, we have tried to be sensitive when speaking on the subject.

But there is another, greater reason, why we have been cautious regarding cruising. Homosexuality is of course defined on the grounds of sex. It is attraction to members of the same sex. As a result, it can be easy to reduce queerness simply to sex, and queer culture merely to seeking it out. Speaking about cruising can reinforce that association. However, as we hope we demonstrate throughout this website, queer culture and queer spaces are about so much more than sex.

For us, and for many queer people, the spaces which make up a queer community are important because they are a space in which to be queer freely. It is the lack of judgement, rather than the ability to seek sex, which denotes these spaces. They are spaces full of joy and self-acceptance rather than purely sexuality.