Closed Community: Dealing with the Coronavirus by Bambi

As most people reading this will realize, the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has become a global pandemic affecting the lives of millions of people around the world. An aspect of that impact has been the cancellation of many GLBTQ events—film festivals, Pride events, and the closure of many communities and places where many of RFD’s readers gather to create community.

As you know we’ve been running a gathering guide in our Spring issue annually for a while now listing gatherings from Oregon to China, from Ontario to New Zealand, from New Mexico to Austria, and the list goes on. So first off, although I assume everyone is checking each community’s websites for details how they are handling the COVID-19 crisis, I hope everyone will consider how to best handle the loss of access to community in this difficult time.

Many folks have organized Zoom events—a virtual dance party, a talent show, a heart circle—all done online and involving people from all over. So I commend people’s use of technology to assist in keeping community alive by experimenting how to engage community while “staying in place”.

That leads me to the other aspect of closure of many gathering sites, Faerie sanctuaries limiting or closing themselves off from accepting visitors. As an editor at RFD, I’ve had the opportunity to engage with many members of the larger “gathering” in community and the spaces that host them, and so I have to say I’ve been very impressed with the internal conversations about “safe space”, queer space and sanctuary in a time like this. Many sanctuaries were founded either early in the Radical Faerie history or as a result of the need for safe spaces in the wake of the AIDS crisis. So it’s easy to draw analogies to providing sanctuary now as we did then during the period of HIV/AIDS.

But like many communities faced with this dilemma who decided to limit or close themselves off to gatherings or visitors, I think we have a clear distinction to contend with—HIV was spread in a very narrow and specific way— through unprotected sexual contact, through needle use or via blood transfusion before the blood supple was tested. COVID-19 is a respiratory illness which is easily spread in confined spaces. So people had to make a moral decision about how to maintain a safe space while also being aware of the limits of what a community could realistically provide.

I’ve seen a number of communities draft very useful letters detailing the reasons for limiting access to a property and the reasons events, gatherings and visitation were either limited or cancelled. I’ve seen online a number of people raise the issue of people facing oppression, people needing safe space in this difficult time and raising the issue of privilege versus those who are at the margins and are without. Painting these spaces as cis white male enclaves of privilege while the reality is that most of the spaces we inhabit, use to come together in are often not rich, not wealthy financially but also were never designed to provide services to a large number of people in a pandemic. People can harken back to the days of HIV but the reality is that Faerie sanctuaries especially were then very small microcosms of community they didn’t intend to serve the entire or whole community. By that I mean not words of self-limitation (saying white gay male) but in terms of the audience, the people in the “know”, people who understood what a place was, what it offered and I think most importantly who they knew there. Not ways of winnowing out women, people of color or others.

That we leap ahead forty odd years later those communities have grown, expanded involvement and thus began to include people. So then COVID-19 happens. And poof, they are places of exclusion. Yet I’d like to ask people to honestly ask ourselves about the honest ability of people in small communal settings handling a pandemic we’ve not seen since the 1918 flu pandemic?

So personally, I can fully understand each community making a judgement call about their ability to assist and provide for people in the larger community. I think it’s discerning of our ability as community and it also speaks to the larger conversations about how to deal with this virus—to limit contact, to “stay in place” and to limit exposure to others to both protect yourself but also others as this virus is often asymptomatic But it’s worth discussing how we respond to a in people who may have it. But it points to the crisis, who do we “serve” or as I like to say, who issue of community providing for others.

I ’d like to think that the ethos of many of us is that we come together to learn about ourselves, build affinity with others, create common ground, make friends and find ways to heal, survive, thrive people we actually “know”. It’s hard for some of in this world. I understand us progressives to think that may not be easy for we’re somehow limited everyone in our comin our power to serve but munity and so we have to I also think it’s human, consider ways of finding it’s honest and frankly empathy, options and manifesting ideas to solve community problems.

I think the sad real

It’s hard for some of us progressives to think we’re somehow limited

wise. How quickly would a community or sanctuary fail if it gave in an unlimited way? I want ization for many of us in our power to serve but to believe in the idea of in the Faerie sanctuary movement is that by its nature it’s limited—we don’t have a lot of money,

I also think it’s human, it’s honest and frankly wise. How quickly

bounty but I also have to speak to finding creative ways to find it. So let’s us engage in ways of speakour resources are more would a community or ing about the response cultural than physical and the mainstream GLBTQ community and our ragtag communities often do

sanctuary fail if it gave in an unlimited way? I want to believe in the idea of

to COVID-19 in a variety of ways to maintain our culture, keep some form of GLBTQ space available not engage about combounty but I also have to and dialog about how munity needs or services, so when a crisis like this occurs who do we tell

speak to finding creative ways to find it.

It’s a difficult challenge as a gathering space on but I think it’s one we occasion and provide livshould seek to address as ing space for a delimited we move to shape comnumber of people. munity and finding ways to care for the people Meanwhile, I appreciate the online dance sesin our lives. But I hope we’ll also be mindful and sions, people sharing their personal stories on gentle with ourselves that this process is differsocial media and engaging without the outside ent from when communities were started—they world as deeply and lovingly as possible while were small, more homogenous and the cohort of also staying safe, mindful of others and as ever people were known entities in a way which is not reaching to listen as often we share ideas, dreams so easy to say now with the expansion of numbers and goals but we have to put those into practice and the diversity within those numbers. I pray we first. Stay safe everyone and see you at the next all continue to be playful, honest and mindful of fire circle. what we can take on.

“sanctuary” works when systemically it wasn’t designed to provide for people to call? everyone except to act

Closed Community: Dealing with the Coronavirus

’d like to think that the ethos of many of us is that we come together to learn about ourselves, build affinity with others, create common ground, make friends and find ways to heal, survive, thrive in this world. I understand that may not be easy for everyone in our community and so we have to consider ways of findingempathy, options and manifesting ideas to solve community problems.