Queering COVID Safety
It’s been 4 and a half years since COVID 19 changed our lives, and it’s still a factor in how we gather and make decisions about our health. 2SLGBTQIA+ folks were both uniquely endangered and uniquely suited to persist in the acute moments of the pandemic. Some of us were locked down with people who treated us poorly or didn’t acknowledge our identities. We know a disproportionate number of homeless youths are in that situation due to unaccepting family members, and homelessness was and is a big factor in risk of exposure to COVID. But we also often already lived in collective ways that enabled safer gathering. We already had language around consent and risk, and we already engaged in community care! We knew how to resist stigmatizing language and how to consider broader community implications of infrastructural decisions.
When things were first reopening, we talked and thought a lot about the ways in which we engage with risk, consent, and community around COVID 19. Queer communities had some really good tools, and some unique challenges. 2SLGBTQIA+ communities are often really motivated by physical togetherness, and the chance to get that back sometimes led us to leave our disabled and immunocompromised community members behind.
A comic illustrating changing standards of community safety over the years of the COVID pandemic. from comic artist Cat Xia in the Covid Cautious Queers Zine, linked below.
With the summer-long increase in cases due to the enigmatically named FLiRT variant, it may be a good time to look again at ways the queer community is uniquely suited to face the challenges posed by a contagious and sometimes dangerous infection, and to remind ourselves of the ways we can do better for our diverse community.
We take consent seriously. For a long time, queer community has been using the language of consent to talk about all kinds of interactions, and that has made it easier for us to understand ways in which people can and cannot truly consent to risk.
We understand the nuances of consent. If we know someone coming to the party has a sniffle but has tested negative, we can decide from there whether for us, a sniffle is still a risk we don’t want to take, or whether the negative test feels like a comfort. We know that this calculation is different for different people, and that making different decisions from the same information is okay! For some people, it might only feel safe to be indoors with a big group if everyone is masked. We can make that compromise together, or decide to meet outdoors. We might decide we’re going to mask if we’re particularly worried about catching any kind of cold, but not need those around us to mask.
We know the key to consent is having as much information as possible to make the decision that is best for us. This can mean letting people know if we’ve been to big gatherings recently, or if we’ve been feeling a bit under the weather. It can mean asking about preferences for gatherings, or letting people know ahead of time the number of attendees and the kind of space we’re hosting in. Being honest with each other and letting people make their own choices can feel hard - we might be afraid of losing friends or missing out on opportunities. But these communications also make our spaces more inclusive, and build lasting trust.
We understand that stigma isn’t helpful or healthful. Treating people infected with COVID as solely responsible for the burden of their health and wellness ignores the systemic factors that go into contracting illness! Because the queer community knows how systemic failures lead to individual danger, from our history with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, we know to push back on stigmatizing narratives around health and infection. As during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, we know that coming together, taking care of each other, and communicating good science without fear is the key to reducing harm. We know there are ways to safely be with and support each other no matter our health status.
Sometimes we mess up. Especially in the desperate joie de vivre of early “post” COVID social events, queer communities all over dropped the ball on making sure disabled and immunocompromised people could engage safely. It felt like disabled and immunocompromised people were disposable, so long as able bodied queers could party again. But if anyone knows the importance of not disposing of people, it should be the 2SLGBTQIA+ community! We also know that we can be wrong and learn from our mistakes. A call out/call in isn’t an attack, but a chance to grow.
We can adapt to changing risk with nuance.
COVID really looked to be slowing down. Epidemiologists and health professionals were really hopeful that it would turn into a seasonal flu that we could plan for annually, and protect ourselves with vaccines and increased caution at specific time periods. But with the FLIRT variant leading to increased hospitalizations even in the height of summer, and the effects of things like Long COVID still being felt throughout the community, it looks like we might need to stay on our toes.
For some people, this might not mean much of a change - many of us have stayed COVID cautious all these 4.5 long years. We might not have had a choice, or just wanted to take as few risks as we could. For others, this might mean taking note when a lot of our peers are falling sick with long lasting colds or flus, cracking out the tests and/or the N95s, and asking more questions about gatherings before we attend. It doesn’t need to be the end of our world, because we have the skills, and we’ve learned from the past. But we can make the changes we need to to help our communities feel safer and more inclusive, and to keep ourselves healthy!
For more information, here are some blogs, zines, and articles that might be helpful:
Writing and Expression
We’ve Survived Before - a project drawing on the knowledge of queer elders who survived the HIV/AIDS epidemic and applying those skills to COVID 19
Covid Cautious Queers Zine - a collection of art, writing, and comics about being a COVID cautious queer is available at this link for free or by donation
Pride and Rage by Sour Queer Press - a zine about ways the queer community has dropped the ball on inclusivity around the COVID
COVID in queer spaces - an article from 2023 about changing safety expectations, and tying back to the culture of protest in queer community.
The pandemic isn’t over - an article from 2022 in Xtra about changing pandemic norms.
Epidemiology
Your Local Epidemiologist has a substack that has non-hyperbolic and calmly informative updates on COVID and MPOX and other circulating pathogens. (You can click through to the articles without subscribing by hitting “no thanks” below the subscribe button, but here is a link to the most recent review of COVID levels. These are American numbers usually, but relevant to the general climate.)
This website monitors wastewater data where available, and can be a delayed but useful update on general levels in your community.
This CBC article discusses the FLiRT variant and the year-round nature of COVID infections.
