Let’s Call It “Community”

In the Time of COVID, Connection is Vital but Confusing.

If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, it’s that the world has changed since March 2020. One minute we were running around bare-faced in public without a second thought and the next we were giving each other the side-eye for sniffling under a cloth mask. Trust has been lost, as has a sense of what we sometimes call “community.”

In some ways, COVID was an entire planet’s John F. Kennedy Moment. Where were you when you heard about COVID? Where were you when you found out you had COVID? Where were you when you found out a friend or family member had died from COVID? For a while, we bonded over cute mask options and then we quarreled over whether anyone should even wear them. Sometimes the bickering has been fierce, even violent.

And all the while, many of us stayed in our homes avoiding contact with others whenever possible. We developed “germicules” of people we were willing to share air with. We closed or saw our favorite clubs, venues, and businesses close. Our indoor social opportunities were especially impacted. Porn shoots were disrupted, leather titleholder contests were postponed or canceled, what workshops and presentations could go online scrambled to do so. Zoom became a religion and “Can you hear me? We can’t hear you,” its call-and-response.

The earth breathed a sigh of relief while we worked from home. We learned how to bake. We spent a lot of time sitting on our butts in front of glowing screens. We became more skilled at online communication. We gained some weight. We had babies. We forgot how to interact with each other in public. And those of us with good sense and the ability to do so got vaccinated.

Now we’re beginning to emerge from our homes, some of us more cautiously than others. With COVID increasingly feeling like the common cold to those of us who’ve had our medical-needle play experience two to four times so far, it’s becoming easier to contemplate in-person interactions again.

But who are “we?”

Even during the best of times, taking three years off from a social circle means growing in ways independent of that social circle. In the professional and amateur world of sex positivity, that can be a game-changer. The question is, does it change the game for the better or for the worse? Also, what’s the game again? Have we even agreed on that yet? We certainly don’t appear to have agreed on the rules.

As we re-learn how to be civil to one another in public with or without our masks, we begin to wonder what it means to be a group of more than just our vetted gemicule inhabitants again. Some of us have burned some bridges since the pandemic started. Is there a way for us to come together in common cause after a conflagration like the past few years have been? During our semi-isolations, it wasn’t just COVID that put us in conflict with one another. The world has, without exaggeration, become a dumpster fire burning around us. That makes it hard to focus on where we intersect and not where we divert.

Caveat: If you’re a racist, sexist, Nazi, anti-LGBTQ, anti-responsible non-monogamy, anti-Semite, anti-sex work, (etc.) motherfucker, I don’t care how kinky or well-respected you are, you can suck my dick.

That said, how do we go from being apprehensive about being in each other’s presence to being able to consider ourselves members of a “community” again? Not a virtual one, but one that also interacts in meat space.

My guess is that part of our solution is that we need to look back to the times of our sex-positive predecessors and learn from how they came together. Times were, in some ways, simpler then. Few of us made real money in any legal area of “the biz” and those who gathered for lifestyle causes like kink or swing parties tended to know and vet one another within their groups. Those clubs, parties, and bars that didn’t vet had an unspoken understanding of caveat emptor. Everyone knew that what they were doing was marginally legal at best and that discretion was the better part of valor.

We have advantages, some would say disadvantages, that our cultural ancestors did not; namely, the internet and cell phone technology. Love them or hate them, they are everywhere you want to be. The internet, especially, is a fun place to argue, but it can also be used as a method of positive communication and, dare I say it, community building. Event notices, special interest groups, scheduled chats, post-interview transcripts, letters, direct messages, etc. can all be sent via e-communication, and they can be used to make it possible to be reunited with in-person communication.

But we need to keep our eyes on the prize. Otherwise, it’s just tech toys robo-jacking each other off.

Again: If you’re a racist, sexist, Nazi, anti-LGBTQ, anti-responsible non-monogamy, anti-Semite, anti-sex work, (etc.) motherfucker, I don’t care how kinky or well-respected you are, you can suck my dick.

The prize? In my opinion, it’s a world community where we can express and experience our consensual sexualities and relationship models without harassment or repression. This has extra meaning to those of us who indulge or live in the world of kink, alt sexuality, sex work, non-monogamy, and queer sexuality.

Such a world also supports those capable of reproducing but choose not to do so, as well as those who become parents by choice. It accepts intersectionality as a fact, even if it’s still working out the fine details. It refuses to infantilize or neuter the disabled by denying them their right to a sexual life. It welcomes the idea that sexuality and sensuality do not end just because a younger generation can’t deal with the fact their elders still get it on. And yes, it benefits heterosexual, monogamous couples who reproduce within the sanctity of marriage.

This is why I believe that sex-positive communities need to regroup cautiously and with a sense of purpose. Not just because we want to avoid swapping an ever-evolving virus that has been killing and sickening people worldwide. That’s certainly an element, particularly for those of us who remember the AIDS plague years, but there’s more. We have an opportunity to recraft the organizations, groups, clubs, and alliances that we built before COVID forced us to adapt. It is through these collectives that we find and are affirmed by community.

This requires calm heads, honest intentions, clear communication, genuine respect for others, and a dedication to the community in question and its goals and aspirations, so long as they are ethical and legal. Will we find people with these qualities after three years of having other things to do with their time? I believe so, but we must expand how and who we consider leaders and leadership.

For a long time and for obvious reasons, sex-positive leadership has largely resembled leadership in general: white and/or cismale. Some communities have a stronger female influence than others, but overall, it’s a testosterone shower out there. This is not to say that there have not and are not amazing leaders who are or have been white and/or cismen. But like in the world around us, it’s time to share the stage with other members of what we claim to be our community.

I firmly believe that the fate of the sex-positive world, if not the entire world, is very much in the hands of women, BIPOC, queer, and young people with the respectful and appreciated assistance and insights of those for whom experience has worn some tread off their tires if you will. People with some flesh in the game.

And what is the game? It’s the process by which we achieve the prize. And the prize again? Community.