This podcast has explicitly adult themes and language. Listener discretion is advised.

[intro music begins]

J: I don't have money to give the New York Times.

I: like I play wordle and their wordle sucks lately.

J: There….wordle has done me so dirty. I had it done and we lost my previous streak. It lost all of my previous stats.Poof! And they were gone. I don't even go to a different page. It's the only non incognito page I have open on my phone the only one and I never like go away from it. I just refreshed it every morning and I refreshed it and, poof! Gone.

I: So I kept all my stats. That is something I didn't lose.

J: Which is good.

I: However, what the fuck is going on with wordle. [laughs]

J: It's like, I get it. And honestly, I'm happy for the word guy because like he made bank. It's really exciting. I just I don't see why the New York Times needed to bring it to a new domain. They could've just like, slapped their name on it and like, left it where it was.

I: But it also “vivid”? Fucking “vivid”! Twoo double letters. I like looked at it for a really long time being like, Well, my sixth try, I will either die or this will be bullshit, and it was bullshit.

J: I'm very sorry for your loss.Also, don't mind me, I totally forgot to do it today. So I'm just going to-

I: Oh, today sucks too.

J: Don't tell me, don't tell me I'm literally doing it right now. You know what? There's something very poetic about talking about COVID and kink and having our open be about wordle. I think that’s valid. My name is James. My pronouns are he/him and the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling above my bed are actual constellations.

I: That's so fun. My name is Iris. I use they/them pronouns. I'm currently surrounded by stuffies right now, which is lovely, and I'm happy to be here.

J: how many here?

I: Atleast two dozen.

J: That's a lot. Wow.

I: I like them a lot.

J: This is kinky queries, a podcast where you send in questions and we work out the kinks. Or more often than not, work in the kinks. Today is…. I actually don't know how to title this with a question. Iris, what are we calling this episode? Like, how has it affected kink? Or kinky during COVID?

I: How has it affected kink? That makes sense as a title because it has affected kink and BDSM a shit ton and in a lot of different ways. And as we are still in this wild pandemic at the moment, it continues to make things interesting and change what the community looks like and also like how people interact with one another.

J: So I guess brief overview The coronavirus 2019 pandemic has affected all parts of life. There's not a lot of exceptions to that, and kink is part of life. Therefore, it totally makes sense that kink has been affected. In terms of how it affected me specifically, both my roommate and I had each won a raffle ticket for a free night at a local dungeon. We had forgotten to use them until like the very last minute. So in January and February of 2020, we had this dungeon for a night to ourselves and we threw like little party in there. I think there's like ten people or something like that, and it was just like hosting a cool, kinky play party and it was just the best. I was beyond happy because we did it like in these two months, we're like, What if we made this a thing? And we had these grand plans for 2020 to have like an event every month and we had things planned out and we had all our friends on kind of a roster. And then the pandemic happened, and all of those dreams died very instantly. And I have not been to an in-person kink space since.

I: Yeah, I had a slightly different experience with the pandemic. So for those who don't know, I have a master's in public health, I got it December of 2019, I finished my program and I was like, “Fuck yeah, I did the whole undergrad straight into grad school. I worked throughout both of them. I'm going to have a social life! This is going to be amazing!”

J: Oh no!!

I: And I do social dancing and I'm hanging out with people. I went on vacation for the first time in fucking years and I'm like, “Yeah, I'm going to get back into the kink community and do all these things!” I also had very grand plans and the pandemic happened…. Oh man, it just it still hurts like shit.

J: And I'm aware that I'm like, incredibly privileged in the sense that I was able to work from home. And so I was very, very lucky. But also the psychological aspect of knowing all this suffering was happening and also physical isolation. I…Do I believe that touch starvation is real? I'm not sure, but if it is, I struggle with it immensely. I think a lot of people can relate to, you know, being very lucky in the pandemic in the sense that there's not any physical health risks, but that there's a lot of isolation and mental health risks.

I: Yeah, at that time, I did not have the privilege of living with a partner and my job I did have to go in for because I helped run a food pantry as part of my job, and so every week I was getting exposed to hundreds of new people and it was just unsafe for me, like the entire time of being in that job was just unsafe. There were so many precautions that I took because it was unsafe for me to engage with those outside of my household. And I put members of my household at risk because that was just my job, and I just didn't have the ability to change aspects or facets of it. We had to have a lot of really big conversations. Me and my partner at the time about like, what does this look like? What are your exposure risks? Are your roommates and housemates prepared for it? Are your other partners OK that we are in contact? When we did eventually open that our little bubble.

J: I'm not polyamorous, but the polyamorous ramifications of this had to be just earthshaking. Like there's so much branching that you'd have to like navigate for.

I: It depends on each molecule and like what everyone felt comfortable with. Luckily, at least the people within my polycule tend to be very good at communication, so we were able to like, figure some of these things out and figure out precautions. Just try and make sure that we are being really communicative about, like what our bubble situation looked like and what were our exposures, whether it was going into grocery stores, if somebody was ordering food. My job was just like a consistent shit show worth of exposure is, to be quite honest. What was available for like outdoor experiences to help mitigate that risk versus indoor interactions, which didn't happen for a really long time.

J: And specifically, you know, aside from the social components of things kink in particular, it's not impossible to do outside, but it's definitely, definitely, definitely not easy, especially when you live in a city. I would argue one of the silver linings of everything going remote, aside from the fact that I deeply, deeply love working from home, would be virtual events. There were events that took place on weeknights that I could not have gone to if they were in-person because I have a job. There were events that happened across the country that I would not have been able to go to, that I was now able to go to because they were all held online.

I: Same with conferences.

J: Yeah, yeah, you definitely have more experience in the conference setting of the BDSM community than I do. So I'm really curious on your experiences with that.

I: Yeah. So like just being able to attend conferences all over where it's just like normally I wouldn't be able to travel to Texas or Tennessee or Chicago or even the West Coast for like all the conferences that I wanted to go to. But having them virtual, and I don't see this going on forever, but having them virtual was just like, cool. I can see some of the presenters that I've heard really great things about, but they are more of a regional presenter and not like a

national presenter. And so that's been really wonderful. To get that exposure of different styles, especially with the rope scene on the West Coast, is very different from the East Coast, is what I've been told.

J: Like my first, getting back into kink in the pandemic was the first week that my roommate was gone. It had been, you know, months and months and months of us not going anywhere. And then she was going to see her parents for a week. It went from being like kind of alone because I can only see one other person to completely alone for a week. I just don't do very well living by myself. This is something I like had learned about myself before the pandemic, too. It's something like any time previously that my roommate had been out of town for an extended period of time. I made sure to book every single day with a thing to go to, and I couldn't do that. So in that week she was gone. I bought a mannequin to practice doing rope work on. And I also ended up watching Jaws because it's one of my favorite movies. And it was like around summer and in Jaws there's that one scene towards the beginning where the sailor guys like, “Prove to me you actually know how to be on a boat!” threw some rope at the marine biologist guy and he's like, “Tie sheep shank for me.” And the knot he ties is not a sheep shank. And I remember what he ties. It's something else. Don't remember what it's called, but I then took the time to learn how to tie a sheep shank. And I spent a lot of the pandemic actually just learning weird and unique ties, both from like sailing and from like camping and like scouting cultures as well as I have like a bunch of chibari textbooks, so I didn't do the bread baking as my pandemic hobby. I would tell people who are, you know, vanilla I'd say, like, Oh, I got really into macramé air quotes around that so [laughs]

I: I love that! I told you about the Fem top group I was a part of in the Boston area, where many people were just like, “Oh, it's book club.” But yeah, like when the conferences, leather competitions, bunches, parties, all of that is wildly changed. A lot of it has gone virtual. A lot of it has just paused and is on hiatus until, like in person feel safer. Some events are just not going to come back, and that's just the reality of it. However, for the ones that are going virtual while I'm a little sick of virtual things at this point, I will say that for people who were unable to access the community previously, that this is a really great opportunity to create that access. And we've seen that on social media. We've seen that within the sex work industry during the pandemic, and we're definitely seeing that in people who could not navigate in-person events. Previously, they were able to navigate these virtual events because they have that accessibility component.

J: We could talk about it as accessibility from the standpoint of like, you know, one of the dungeons I like is on the second floor of a building in the elevator, and that building is broken a lot. So if you're in a wheelchair, it's going to be physically hard for you to get to that space. But even outside of that sort of physical inability to get to a space, I would go to a club in my area, which I'm going to stop talking about my location so people can't find me. But I would know people at that group who would drive 3-4 hours to get there for a Saturday night because it was the closest place to where they lived, because where they lived didn't have a scene.

I: Yeah. And like, I'm just remembering before the pandemic started, just like people who are immunocompromised who had to be more careful during the winter months than during the summer months, like, oh, I don't really participate in the scene in-person during these months, as he said, people with physical disabilities. That's a huge issue in every city because most buildings are not made with accessibility in mind. And so if it is a small group gathering in an apartment or a party or a club for places that have clubs and dungeons, that just makes it really difficult.

J: And I agree with you in terms of like the fatigue from virtual events, there's definitely downsides of everything being on screens all day. But at the same time, I don't completely want these virtual spaces to disappear. I've seen hybrid models being pitched as things are slowly starting to like, you know, especially in the warmer months to teasing at the idea of being in-person or testing out being in-person. One of my favorite hybrid models that I've seen at a dungeon I particularly like, they have a lot of like cages. And so the idea was you just put a webcam in one of the cages and have the access to the Zoom link. You have to pay the same as you would like to have a ticket at the space, what you basically just get to sort of spectate from the perspective of being in one of their cages, which was, I thought, very novel and sort of a visually enhancing kind of mechanic as well that sticks with the theme to sort of balance in-person and virtual as well, though, of course, with conferences when it's not a party, when it's just like people talking, I… I feel like that's easy enough to like have a link to in addition to being in-person.

I: It depends on the conference. Most conferences that I have attended have parties that are a part of them. And so like that aspect is missed. If there's a leather competition as part of the conference, like, that's very much an in-person experience to some degree. I like to think of it as an in-person experience. I know that leather competitions are coming back some in-person, some are attempting to be virtual. But also it depends on like what kind of thing, what kind of seminar you're attending like, is it a polyamory 101 or like a negotiation 101? Or are we talking about like Edge Play? Or rose flogging? Where like that in-person experience can be really helpful to see from like multiple different points of view what is happening in a demonstration which is difficult when it's virtual.

J: Also, in terms of the social aspect, and I went to a couple like kink socials as it were where it wasn't like, you know, people playing virtually, but like just talking and getting to know it just like a virtual munch, basically. Yeah. And like, they were super fun, and I'm really glad I went because previous in-person munchies, if I didn't know anyone there, just just like as a jumping off point, I was always really nervous to go and that kind of prevented me from going. So this was just easier to go in completely, not knowing anyone. However, it is really hard to talk to strangers over a video call, and it's it can be very awkward when you have to do the breakout rooms and it's like, I don't know anyone here and you have to do the kind of breakout rooms because you can't all have conversations at the same time if you're in a big video call.l It’s just…the technology does not work. While the virtual events have brought a lot of accessibility and a lot of new ideas too. What you were saying in terms of like the 101 classes and stuff, I know a couple of creators specifically were like, “Hey, I've got all these classes. Not only can you come watch live and, you know, ask questions in real time, but I've got a recording. So now, like if you couldn't attend at that time, you can pay and watch it later on.” Again, great for accessibility, but there's obviously a lot of technical limitations that just it's not the same as being in-person.

I: Well, there's also the comfort level of being able to do that or the privilege to be able to be like, “Yeah, I have recordings of myself talking about X or doing X and that being freely available” to some extent, and that could potentially out somebody. Not everybody has that comfort for that privilege to do that. I am lucky in that I personally do not care. If anybody else questions, like I'm very accessible and very happy to talk about these things, and I do talk about them within my work life, and I have been privileged enough to be able to be open and out to my family about these things. But I am very aware that is not the majority of experiences and that people have been fired. People have lost custody of children, had so many different experiences where this is a hidden identity or a hidden experience. And so it's just really dependent.

J: I'm sorry, I should have clarified the creators I was talking about specifically were like professional dominatrixes, where like, that's their full time job. And as someone who I don't want people listening to this podcast to know my last name, I don't want my employer to ever find out about this. If my parents find out about this, I think I will just perish. I think that's just what happens.

I: That's what I get to adopt you. I’m your parents now. Come here son!

J: No, no, I'm I'm here, so I'm very independent of my parents and don't much need them, but I would like to stay in the will. Anyway,the point is more like, I'm in that same boat where like when it came to virtual events, if something was getting recorded, I turn off my camera. If something wasn't getting recorded, that's different and I like allowed myself to have that air of an amenity and like, you know, I don't give my real name all that sort of stuff. Definitely. There's different perspectives and just the act of recording things. People act differently when they know they're being filmed, you know.

I: It's changed a lot. I really appreciate that you brought it like, that's like professional dominants doing that work because I think some of the research that we did and like have in our document talking about like what the sex work industry looks like, how much a negotiation has changed, What professional dominants, specifically what they've been doing around COVID vaccines and COVID testing has been really interesting.

J: Yeah, I you found a Rolling Stones article, which we'll link in the description of this episode as-

I: There were so many articles that are like saying the exact same thing. I just thought, like this Rolling Stone article had the best quotes in it.

J: Nice. OK,. We’ll post in the episode description as well as on our Twitter, but I was so fascinated with these quotes, people. Yeah, please, please say more.

I: I want to start off with like one additional benefit. I think this is an additional benefit from the pandemic is the ability to talk about health as part of negotiation. And we talked about that briefly in our negotiation episode and our consent episode, and I just want to bring it up again. That like this is allowed people to talk about, like any potentially particular health risks with their exposures look like what their vaccination status is when the last time they got tested, like all these really important things, whether they have comorbidities….

J: I’m just going to jump on top of that and say, like, yeah, even actually outside of kink, I really, really love that, this is silver linings, covid is objectively a horrifying, horrible thing, and I wish it didn't happen. However, looking at the silver lining, I absolutely adore the fact that society is just way more consent focused now. It's like, Can I take off my mask in your car? Like, Can I hug you? That's that's been one of the biggest ones for me. I love hugs, but like unwelcome touch is really not great for me. So the fact that people don't just assume they can give you a handshake, they don't. They don't just assume that it's OK to hug you. They ask first, which in the kink community that's like consent 101. But for some reason in the mainstream world, it is not. Most people do not think about that, which I think has been a societal problem for a very long time. So a really positive silver lining is not only are we now talking about health in consent, but it's also just consent is being asked in everyday conversations, which I think is really important.

I: Right. And whether that is through like signage and saying that you cannot enter the space without a mask over your nose and mouth to like these in-person conversations that we're talking about, like we're having this huge cultural shift to be more consent oriented, which is amazing, in my opinion, and as you said, a silver lining to a really horrific event that we are currently living through. But yeah, no, it has really emphasized boundaries, and that is what really came up in this particular article, not just being like, these are my boundaries, but also like, these are my boundaries and if you don't respect them like great, I am no longer your dominant or we can't have this interaction anymore. Like, you can get tested every day for as long as you want, but my boundary is that you need to be vaccinated, and one of the quotes that came up really spoke to: I am not forcing you to get vaccinated. That is a choice upon yourself and a lot of dominants giving research and resources to submissives or potential submissives around the vaccine. What the testing looks like, all the history that went into creating the COVID 19 vaccine and having them make that decision for themselves, like, yes, you will get to be able to enjoy this lovely dominant, but your dominant is not forcing you to do this, this is their boundary that they're asking you to respect and you get to make the decision and you have the bodily autonomy specifically to make this decision about putting substance in your body.

J: Yeah, I think that's really important. But it's I think both sides of that are incredibly important that like let the client or the whoever working with this dominant has that right to body autonomy, but also the dominant has a right to choose their own clientele. Adjacent vein, like if they set a price and you can't beat that price, it's not their job to like, make an exception for you. They have listed a parameter. If you can't meet it, you don't work with them. That applies to not just sex workers, but literally all workers. The client definitely has the right to not put a substance in their body if they don't want to. But the act of doing so, you know, no shirt, no shoes, no service. You don't have to wear a shirt if you don't want to, but you don't come into the restaurant if you're not wearing a shirt.

I: Exactly that. And so like, that particular article gave a lot of different perspectives and stories that dominants were giving, and it very much talked about a lot of how the BDSM culture is. Especially like the pro dom aspect of it was just completely devastated by the pandemic that a lot of people, not just losing income, they lost their livelihoods. They had to like, change so many different aspects of what their life looks like.

J: One that I have met through, like various parties and workshops, she used to have two dungeons in the city I'm in and she had to downsize. And now there is only one, like she literally had to sell an entire building space because of the pandemic. Absolutely. Livelihoods completely changed or destroyed. People have to leave the industry to find other work or completely revamp how they do their jobs.

I: Exactly. And it's also changed the industry in a lot of ways, like some of the articles that I was reading very much focused on the change to virtual domination and also like this huge surge in some sex work, partially because a lot of individuals lost their jobs and lost their livelihoods. Whether they were a pro domme previously or not, like a lot of people, went into the sex work industry. And we've seen that with OnlyFans. We're seeing that currently with foot fetishization being like the new side hustle currently over the last couple of months, which I think is amazing and it's been lovely to see the foot fetish culture. But we're changing to this like this virtual aspect. And then a lot of pro dommes had to change their tactics with like, “Oh, I need to have a virtual presence.” What does that look like? What is my comfort level around this and what is successful and what is not because it is a lot of work to have that virtual presence and to be able to do that work of virtually like it seems impossible from my perspective to be able to do all the things that I'm seeing pro dommes doing. And it's just amazing and it's wonderful. But a heck of a lot of effort went into making that happen.

J: Absolutely. Especially with looking at sex work with a long lens. This is an industry that has been around as long as civilizations have been around, and there were pro dommes that had no need to be online because they were so successful in person and had been doing this for like 10-20 years. And now all of a sudden they immediately had to, you know, at the drop of a hat, be online or lose their entire way of life. It's the amount of work and the speed at which that work was done is unfathomable.

I: And then it also exacerbated a lot of issues that we've been seeing online before the pandemic, especially with FOSTA SESTA and where content could be and where could it be and how different sex workers were able to promote themselves. On what platforms did that exist, where tend to flourish and where was content being taken down? Or were they getting their accounts suspended or even banned?

J: What was fascinating was this was maybe six months ago. I don't remember exactly when OnlyFans, which is the site that was made popular pretty exclusively by sex workers, started to say, OK, we're going to ban sex work from our platform like a bunch of idiots. And then sex workers started leaving and the website was not making any money. And they rolled back on that pretty quickly. From what I saw, but like and it wasn't that they did it for no reason. It's the FOSTA SESTA situation, as well as credit card companies saying, “We don't want to let people use our credit card on your website.” But actually, speaking of OnlyFans, I would say the again, the scale and speed with which people went online is baffling. But also, I find some positives from that perspective of the idea of doing online sex work just from a safety perspective, because there's an inherent physical risk of doing sex work in person. Just people are violent, and it's something actually funny enough my therapist said to me, is that exploring kink online has a lot of benefits because if you want a safe word, you do it instantly because you can just close the screen. It's a lot harder to do that in person, obviously. So there's a lot of built in safety to a degree, not obviously, there's a loss of an amenity, which is a loss of safety in a different regard. But in terms of physical safety, there's definitely like a component to that with online sex work.

I: In general, at least within the United States, I can say confidently all sex work is unsafe for the sex worker. There is no safe component to it because there are so many people who abuse it, who take advantage of it and who hurt sex workers every single day. When the pandemic began, and one of the munchies that I highly enjoy went virtual one of the individuals who is a sex worker, talked about their experience of how, like, yes, all the in-person stuff has just completely disappeared. They've lost a ton of clientele. They've had already been impacted heavily by FOSTA SESTA and the individuals who they were like had told, I don't want to do things with you anymore. You've made me feel unsafe, whatever the situation was. We'\re starting to reach back out to them being like, “Hey, desperate times, you know?” And it's just like, That's so terrifying. Like, that experience is not universal to all sex workers, but I know several who did have that experience when the pandemic began as well. Virtual sex work definitely makes it safer, but it's not necessarily safe.

J: Yeah. My apologies. If I misspoke there in the same way that like, there's no such thing as 100% safe sex, it's safer sex practices. Yeah, safer sex work. Not blatantly safe. My apologies.

I: No worries. But another thing that came from this, and especially like with the OnlyFans surge that happened during the pandemic, I would say that there's like a lot less stigma around sex work, at least with our generation. I can't confidently say that for every generation, but the number of people who are supportive of partners doing sex work is amazing. The number of people who are open about like, yes, I did sex work during this period of time or I continue to do sex work or I know someone who does sex work like that has gone up dramatically, and I am really hopeful that that will have an impact on legislation in the future that will create better safety for sex workers moving forward.

J: The pandemic has created a lot of access in the sense that, like people in rural locations, have access to virtual conferences around… around the country, around the globe, I went to a conference. It was taking place in Germany. I've never been to Germany in my life, but I was able to do that and it's created that access and that ability to learn. It's also created a lot of complications as well, and there's definitely been an element of isolation and things that have been lost. I've seen a lot of dungeons go under because they literally just can't afford the rent anymore. Like you said, there's a lot of things that will not come back.

I: Or there will be a lot of work to try and build new spaces that didn't previously exist before. As we're seeing more and more people interested in the community over time that had this increased access. What does the community look like with this new surgence of interest and potentially new surgence of bodies who want to participate?

J: Yeah, that's also an open question, which could be really exciting, actually, and something I kind of wanted to touch on is, I guess, the future of these sort of things. Now there's all these people learning the language and starting to gain interest. What is increased attendance look like? What is increased amount of funds look like for the kink community? Like, there's a lot of exciting growth potential. And like you mentioned, with more acceptance comes less stringent legislation, which is very exciting. Theoretically, we can all just be like…

I: I just did the whole maybe hand thing because I'm just sitting over here and my reproductive health worlds being like, “Yeah, sometimes”

J: I'm long enough time like…

I: Oh yeah. As the increase of abortion acceptance occurs, the more and more stringent legislation we're seeing, so it's just really dependent. I am hopeful because I am an optimist, but also there is that realistic component of what we're seeing in reality, what we're seeing in policy and legislation. It depends and it changes. And unfortunately, we live in a… I live in a prudish country and-

J: We live in the same country.

I: But, I know…

J: You can you can say that.

I: You already hinted at where you live. I don't care about people knowing where I live, as long as they don't bother me. We, both of us, live in a country that is prudish and is very against sex, except when you look at media. Because then sex sells.

J: Well, the country was founded by Puritans. Not surprising.

I: It's not surprising. It's just it's frustrating when people are doing things that bring joy, that bring happiness, especially when they're consensual and negotiated, like why are you getting in the middle of that? And I could go into a huge rant about like the history of legislation against the BDSM community, but that should be an episode for another day.

J: I think that would be a very good episode actually. But yeah, so I guess closing thoughts would be that like the the COVID 19 pandemic changed the game for everything, kink included. And just like with everything else, there were a lot of downsides. But it's not all negative. There's silver linings. There's positive aspects. We can technically say this podcast is a product of a pandemic, so…

That is fair. Yeah, I think it's just ever evolving. We're going to continue to see changes and different things happening. And while it's March of 2022 this podcast might no longer be applicable three months from now, for all we know and what we're talking about COVID because it's constantly changing and fluctuating. So only time will tell what happens in the future. But I'm hopeful and I'm excited to see what happens, and I hope the people continue to play safe, have fun, and negotiate around like what their health is and how they want to participate in the scene.

J: Thanks so much for listening. As we talk about why wouldn't say our favorite things this episode, but some some important things that relate to our favorite things. And if you've got a kinky question, send us your queries at kinky queeries @ gmail.com or follow us on Twitter at kinky queries. That's k i n k y q u e e r i e s, and we should have our next episode ready for your eager ears in two weeks. That'll be March 22nd, 2022. Not quite as exciting as February 22nd, 2022, but it's it's still get there.

I: It's still good.

J: I'm a big fan. I like our thoughtful episodes and feels really nice.

I: Yeah.