Workshop 2 - Fluid Bonding and the Health/Safety of Erotic Communities

Workshop 2 - Fluid Bonding and the Health/Safety of Erotic Communities

This workshop discusses how changes to fluid-bonding agreements can impact individuals in an erotic community, the community’s notification and negotiation processes, screening protocols, and reactions to disease outbreaks and breaches in agreement.  A general introduction to the topic will be followed by open discussion, with a few anecdotes to break the ice if necessary.

Why is the practice of safer sex important to an erotic community?

The protection of each participant is proportional to the health of the community.  In practicing safer sex, a participant in an erotic community protects other participants from pathogens that might be inadvertently stored in this participant’s body.  Physical safety is conducive of emotional safety too.

Fluid-bonding is the practice of exchanging deep and not-so-deep body fluids with sexual and erotic partners, and the emotional bonding that this implies.  On the pair level, fluid bonding can be viewed as a trading of risk for pleasure and intimacy.  In a given erotic community, it is more complicated; there are implications, both positive and negative, to each participant and to the community as a whole.   In general, one might say that fluid bonding contributes to the health of a community to the extent that it is based on rules that are defined quite explicitly and followed quite closely.

Workshop Design by Serena Anderlini and Murray Schechter