Tea Room Study Assignment
The Tea Room Trade entails Humphreys best and worst in sociology. He pretends to be a voyeur while he investigates activities of homosexuals while they are at the bathrooms. Starting from 1965 to 1968 Laud Humphreys ordains Episcopalian minister so that he can investigate men that have impersonal sex. He does without disclosing his role as a sociologist researcher.
In addition to that, Humphreys plays his role as a watch queen since he investigates men that engage in oral sex while on the public restrooms in the main metropolitan areas. Humphreys has the authority to act as a voyeur and observe other people’s sexual gratification. He observes those acts on the bathroom stalls that do not have doors. Other roles include gathering data on locations, collecting the ages of different men, frequency of the acts, and the importance of money for one to perform the acts. Later on, he discloses his role to the men he observes and interviews them on their daily lives. In other instances, he records his subject’s license plate numbers to track their residence. The year before he began investigating the sexual gratification acts he acted in disguise to represent a public health officer conducting one of the ministry’s survey. According to his report, it is crucial to protect the confidentiality of his data. In that case, he stopped publishing anecdotes such as identifiers. While he observes the illegal behaviors, he faces the risk of imprisonment once busted by officials.
Humphreys explains that while he observes the activities he manages to record the license plates number of sample tearoom participants. The author once he started the study he defended the ethics behind it and this made he him to experience anxiety due to the backlash observed later on. Years on after his demise people still question the ethical issues especially among the social research community.
Some of the strong points include: (1) Humphreys suggest that the tearoom participants wear a breastplate of righteousness. It is sensibly that men engage in impersonal gay sex especially those people that appear as conservatives to hide their deviant dalliances from others. (2) Humphreys classify the participants using occupational status and marital status, closet queens, am bisexuals, and trade. The author informs that closet queens are very dangerous to the society. (3) The author informs on the importance of blackmail that affects mostly the police. It is clear that those in power trade money with others to silence the facts on something. The ideology results to corruption and inequality that exists in the criminal justice system. Lastly, it is important to conduct future extensive study on Humphreys study to highlight the ethical problems to enable sociology researchers to observe responsibility for the well-being of their subjects.
Some of the problems depicted by the author include the ethics behind tracking tearoom participants. It is clear that Humphreys depict regret in the final analysis for conducting the study since he should have interviewed willing candidates. The author succeeds to use deception to locate and interview participants at their detriment. Humphreys suggest that Americans appear delicate on sex related issues such as tearoom sex since people observe sex as a private and not a public affair. I do not agree with Humphreys that modern tearooms appear as bordellos of yesteryears. The author has a bias attitude towards same sex individuals while he confessed to have the same tendency years later.
In summary, Humphreys study provides the audience with an interesting discussion often ignored by the mainstream. The article presents a valid criticism while the positive outcomes are more than the disadvantages. There must be more positive and negative issues on the Tea Room . Trade and the issue can require future extensive study. In my own opinion the work is beneficial and deserves credit. I think the writer chose the topic due to his own sexual preferences.
References
Green, J., & Lotz, R. (2013). Black Europe. Holste-Oldendorf, Germany?: Bear Family Productions.
Campbell, H. (2014). The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes. Auckland: The Floating Press.
Dias, T., Alves, M., Tomás, G., Socorro, S., Silva, B., & Oliveira, P. (2014). White Tea as a Promising Antioxidant Medium Additive for Sperm Storage at Room Temperature: A Comparative Study with Green Tea. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 608- 617.
