This Glory Hole Is In A Museum Now And There’s Nothing You Can Do About It
The door of a thousand dicks.
What is art? Is it merely pretty paintings of ponds or something more complicated and intangible? Is a chair art? Is a selfie art? What about an old door with a hole cut into it so that two men can anonymously touch each other’s dicks? Can a glory hole be art?
The answer to that one is a big fat yes, especially if you’re Western Australian Museum CEO Alec Coles, who is currently defending the Perth institution’s recent acquisition of a historic train station toilet door featuring a glory hole.
Gay activist Neil Buckley saved the dick door from the highway adjacent toilet block in the outer Perth suburb of Gosnells before it was knocked down in 1997. He’s since donated the historic fuck hole to the museum in order to preserve it as an LGBTIQ cultural icon.
Neil (left) and the door he’s definitely fucked through.
WAM CEO Coles is thrilled to welcome the new addition to the museum, telling PerthNow “the LGBTQI community is a very important part of Perth’s society. We often talk about museums as safe places for unsafe ideas. The places you can explore topics that are maybe controversial, sometimes contentious, sometimes even confrontational, but the kind of places they can be explored in a responsible and measured way and hopefully without rancour”.
The move to install the cum tunnel as an exhibit in the museum has appropriately copped a spray of backlash, however, with Liberal Shadow Minister for Culture and the Arts Tony Krsticevic coming out against it. “While it is appropriate for the WA Museum to chronicle the rich and proud LGBTI community as a significant element in the State’s history, such an object is too tacky for display”, he reckons.
Gay beats and glory holes have been an important element of LGBTIQ culture for decades as they often acted as the sole arena for gay or bisexual men to explore their sexuality, which up until 1990 in WA was completely illegal. Known beats were also targets for police and violent homophobes alike with many toilet blocks and bushy alcoves across the country witness to numerous, ghastly beatings of gay men.
So yeah, it is a piece of wood with a hole in it that has seen approximately 40,000 dicks. But why can’t it also be an important part of a community’s complex history and ultimately a piece of art, all at the same time?
The sex hole is art. It is decided.
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Via PerthNow