Intersections of Sexuality and a Viral Pandemic

Today marks our company’s first cancelled sex-ed classes of the Coronavirus outbreak. 

We are working to figure out, along with our client schools and the rest of Los Angeles, what we can do to help prevent the spread of illness and care for our communities—below are a few early thoughts; feel free to share yours.

As an organization explicitly committed to health, justice, equity, and positive relationships, More Than Sex-Ed is examining how these values can inform our current crisis; we often tell our students that our class mainly teaches “how to be a good human to other humans”, and that lesson has never seemed more important.

1. Wash your hands

Obviously. 

Not only is this the best way to prevent the spread of the virus, it’s also a great hygiene practice for before and after masturbation, which can help reduce stress and anxiety related to our current national crisis. 

2. Stock up on essentials—and if you have means, share them with those who don’t

Make sure your supplies include menstrual care products for any people in your household who menstruate; these items are always in high demand at food banks and homeless shelters, so please consider donating them. 

If you use condoms and/or contraception, make sure you have an adequate supply!  It’s also a great idea to get emergency contraception, aka plan B, aka the morning after pill, in case you or someone you know might forget a pill or run out of contraception or have a condom break sometime in the foreseeable future.

3. Speaking of condoms

No, people are not actually using them as a substitute for latex gloves to push elevator buttons, although it’s not a terrible idea. 

This rumor began circulating after Durex condoms shared the image in a pretty clever piece of—ahem—viral marketing. 

Whatever level of precautions you choose to take when touching inanimate objects is a personal choice, but when it comes to sex, best practices are definitely to use a condom or barrier method for EVERY sex act, EVERY time—and YES THIS INCLUDES ORAL SEX.  Many people falsely believe that oral sex is a safe behavior, but pre-ejaculate, semen, and vaginal fluids can all transmit infections, including HIV.  Yes, even if the receptive partner spits instead of swallows.

4. Human contact

We all need this, and I’m not just talking about sexual gratification, and unfortunately this isn’t available on the shelves in stores anywhere. 

Social distancing may be the most emotionally difficult mitigation practice to implement, but also the most effective.  Resist the urge to hug whenever possible.  I’m sorry.

Be intentional about showing people you care in other ways.  Text your friends to let them know you’re thinking about them.  Skype, face-time, zoom, or google-hangout with those people you’ve been trying to get together with forever but you’re just so busy.  Ask people how they’re doing and really listen to understand, not just respond. 

5. Avoid telling people what they “should” be doing in response to this pandemic

Yes, I’m fully aware of the irony in this statement. 

Yes, we can practice both irony AND thinking!

People have different feelings and different needs, and the line between prepared and panicked is in different places for different people.  If you need to stop reading and talking about COVID-19 for a while for the sake of your mental health, you have every right to set that boundary.  And just like in any other circumstance, pandemic or otherwise, we all have the responsibility to respect other people’s boundaries.

Please follow the advice of the CDC and the WHO, and take care of each other; we are just a local sex-ed nonprofit doing the best we think we can in the face of uncertainty, like so many of you.  Unfortunately this is not the first time the United States government has abdicated its responsibility to protect public health, leaving individuals and communities to fend for themselves—which always hurts the most vulnerable in a population most.  Members of the LGBTQ community and their loved ones—who are old enough—remember another crisis when hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, not due to a virus, but due to social stigma, prejudice, indifference, and the idea that some lives have more worth than others.  We can all help fight these poisonous attitudes and protect those at greatest risk; as we tell our students in sex-ed, all people have equal rights to information, respect, care, and support.