There needs to be a better tag than amenity=swingerclub for sex-on-premise-venue?

General talk Tagging general discussion
1

Wikipedia cites Victoria, Australia’s legal definition of “sex on premises venue” to mean “any venue where a person is required to pay an admission fee or charge to enter the venue for the purpose of engaging in sexual activities with another person who has also entered the venue on the same terms and who did not receive any form of payment or reward, whether directly or indirectly, for engaging in sexual activities”.

That would include “gay bath house”, “gay sauna” or whatever euphemism for a homosexual sex on premises venue. That would include “on-premise” swinger clubs. That would exclude “off-premise” swinger clubs (which do not allow sexual activity on-site and look more like bars or nightclubs). That would also exclude most of the other [[:Category:For adults only]] suspects like the amenity:brothel, amenity:love_hotel, amenity:stripclub and shop:erotic tags…

As I raised this question in What tags and keys apply to a sex-on-premises venue (SOPV)? - OSM Help and got no response at all, I’m tempted to propose as a tag:

Tag:amenity-sex_on_premise_venue

with complementary keys:

  • Key:gay=welcome/yes
  • Key:lgbtq=*
  • Key:fetish)=*
    to mirror the keys currently used on tag:amenity=swingerclub.

See Sex on premises venue - Wikipedia for an overview of the terminology. The rationale for referring to these as SPoV instead of swingerclub is that the term “swinger” has been appropriated and co-opted by one specific subgroup; opposite-sex couples looking to swap partners. That means that other groups, such as gey men, gay women or single prople, really don’t identify with the “swinger” label, even if they are sexually active.

The end result I’ve been seeing on OpenStreetMap typically looks like this: There are two Toronto businesses about a block apart; one (Oasis Aqualounge) panders to opposite-sex lifestyle couples and is correctly tagged as “amenity=swingerclub”. On the next block, the other (Spa Excess) caters exclusively to gay males. Both are sex-on-premise venues, but Spa Excess gets tagged as “amenity=swimming_pool, amenity1=sauna” or something similar.

Effectively, if the gay SPoV is on Open Street Map at all, it’s being tagged with what are basically euphemisms which aren’t very helpful to the voyager. Tag:amenity=public_bath (with Key:bath_type=) or Tag:leisure=sauna (with Key:sauna=") should be being used in their normal, vanilla definitions so that the reader doesn’t get directed to a sex-on-premise venue if they’re just looking to take a bath. Yes, one of these establishments might have a swimming pool, but that’s no reason to remove it from its primary categorisation and plop it into amenity=swimming_pool with all of the city-operated fitness venues.

2

Wikipedia cites Victoria, Australia’s legal definition of “sex on premises venue” to mean “any venue where a person is required to pay an admission fee or charge to enter the venue for the purpose of engaging in sexual activities with another person who has also entered the venue on the same terms and who did not receive any form of payment or reward, whether directly or indirectly, for engaging in sexual activities”.

How does it matter if admission fee has to be paid? If admission were free it would not qualify? What if for admission one had to be a member of an association (i.e. you’d pay e.g. an annual fee, regardless of visiting the place), or if admission was free, would that be a completely different kind of place?

3

Dunno, but I’d suspect the only point they’re making in mentioning admission fees is that a sex-on-premises venue is a commercial business.

4

Apparently not many mappers interested in this issue if already your first attempt had failed … nevertheless these clubs are legal business and I can’t see any reason why there should not be a reasonable tag for them, if they are neither brothels nor generally swingerclubs (although part of the latter would belong to this group of establishments as you have mentioned already). I am not really familiar with this issue but any existing establishment should be well worth mapping.

I remember that in Germany establishments like “Sauna-Club” or "FKK-Club* (=nudist club) popped up at every corner in the liberal 80s and although most of them offered professional sex services there were also some operated on the base of “sex on the premises venue”. I had a quick check today and it seems most of these clubs have vanished over the years - apparently this is a dying business segment. Again I wouldn’t know if there is a clear distinction between establishments offering pure “sex on the premises venue” and those where professional sex services are offered or if there are also establishments offering both.

What you can do is:

  • write a proposal for a suitable tag if you want the tag officially to be established
  • forget about the proposal and just use the tag which is well in accordance with the general guidelines whereas in this case you might be the only person to do so

Btw: I personally don’t think that amenity=sex_on_the_premises_venue is a good tag although it describes the purpose quite well. Maybe you should go for amenity=sopv instead? It seems to be a well documented abbreviation, at least when searching the internet.

I’d say it would not make a difference if you pay an admission fee on the spot or as some kind of annual membership fee - both services would qualify for a commercial “SOPV” imho. Whereas if admission would generally be free, it could only be some kind of a private thing not open to the public because: no money … no honey … :grinning:

5

Dunno, but I’d suspect the only point they’re making in mentioning admission fees is that a sex-on-premises venue is a commercial business.

one could open such a place, ask for admission fee, and still not cover fully the costs (on purpose), i.e. be non-commercial and ask for admission fee.

1 Like
6

I’d expect there is little response as the number of POI’s affected is small. A large city might have one gay sauna and one or two swinger clubs for a million people. A one-time event wouldn’t get a map marker, nor would something which isn’t operating openly at a known, published and permanent location.

If the opposite-sex “lifestyle couples” already have their tag (amenity=swingclub) it’s primarily venues aimed at other groups - such as the gay community - which are falling through the cracks.

The 60’s (introduction of the Pill) and 70’s (Roe vs. Wade, et al) were “liberal” compared to the years which preceded them. I wouldn’t qualify the 80’s as “liberal” as I remember those years as being at the heart of a full-scale AIDS panic. HIV/AIDS first got widespread Western media coverage circa-1982, the first test for the virus circa-1986 and the first effective prescription drugs (which don’t cure AIDS) in 1995 or so. There was a lot of bad blood at the time and a fair amount of fear and uncertainty.

I wouldn’t doubt that these are increasingly dying out now. Where they previous generation met largely in bricks-and-mortar venues, the next generation is increasingly hooking up online. Many big-city businesses have closed as gentrification pushes inner-city rents skyward. Add the long list of venues (not just SOPV’s but also nightclubs, bars and the like) that didn’t make it through the COVID pandemic (or the two or three years of social distancing and sporadic masking and lockdowns which went with it) and this gets sparse.

The proposal process does look a bit complex and the tag is somewhat “niche” in terms of the number of affected listings.

I think the abbreviated form, tag:amenity=spov is reasonable, but is likely only worth creating if it can and will be documented somewhere. The use of an acronym does not make it immediately obvious what an SOPV is or does. Presumably the associated subtags would be similar to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dswingerclub which suggests:

  • Key:gay=welcome/yes
  • Key:lgbtq=*
  • Key:fetish=*

except that swingerclub might have a use for a subtag to indicate on_premise vs. off_premise, while SOPV might need to use gender tags like male=only as some SOPV’s are aimed at single gay people.

7

To me, the current system is quite good. It does describe the premise as what it is: a swinger club. I’d rather change the inappropriatly tagged “vanilla” premises.

1 Like
9

It rather seems that Google has a problem, not OSM.

10

I didn’t now until now, but when doing a bit of research in the internet I picked up the information that swingerclubs in general are for heterosexual people, mostly couples. Someone looking for a gay venue will surely not check establishments called swingerclub imho.

I also noted that here in Germany gay clubs usually are covered by the term Sauna-Club or similar which corresponds to the annotation of @carlb on how these places are usually tagged in OSM.

Considering the available tag for sopv establishments one has to notice that this one is excluding a certain group of people by just ignoring them. That’s why I support a completely neutral tag like amenity=sopv which can be further defined by appropriate subtags as proposed by carlb.

This is true and admitting that I am not an expert for the necessary steps I know at least that some of the existing wiki pages for single tags have been created without a preceding proposal. I wonder if someone else could give you a hint on how to go ahead in this matter.

1 Like
11

The 60’s (introduction of the Pill) and 70’s (Roe vs. Wade, et al) were “liberal” compared to the years which preceded them. I wouldn’t qualify the 80’s as “liberal” as I remember those years as being at the heart of a full-scale AIDS panic.

yeah, but some people kept living in the seventies for some time, punk was still a thing and compared to today, it isn’t a complete misclassification

12

I think the abbreviated form, tag:amenity=spov is reasonable, but is likely only worth creating if it can and will be documented somewhere. The use of an acronym does not make it immediately obvious what an SOPV is or does.

I don’t follow this reasoning, shouldn’t we avoid an abbreviation if it does not make it obvious for what the tag stands?

13

For sure it is generally better to use complete words as values but in some cases an abbreviation may do better - compare the value “psv” for instance.

14

I would question that using “psv” is better than a tag identifier that someone can understand. Maybe it is a common abbreviation in the UK, but all others will have to look it up to even get a rough idea what it could be about.

15

If a thing is a type of business, then yes, it should get it’s own tagging scheme. :+1:

Agreed about “swinger” meaning “different sex people swapping partners”, rather than a generic “sex on premises”. My preference is for fully spelled out tags (e.g. amentiy=sex_on_premesis_venue), so data consumers can ”read” it easily.

with complementary keys:

  • Key:gay=welcome/yes
  • Key:lgbtq=*

I’d suggest not using the gay tag and instead preferring lgbtq. You can further specify with lgbtq:men=primary etc.

2 Likes