¡Quédate (informada) en casa! Análisis foucaultiano de las respuestas digitales LGTBIQA+ frente a la COVID-19 y la memoria cultural del activismo contra la pandemia del VIH-SIDA

MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 ¡Quédate (informada) en casa! Análisis foucaultiano de las respuestas digitales LGTBIQA+ frente a la COVID19 y la memoria cultural del activismo contra la pandemia del VIH-SIDA Stay (Informed) at Home! A Foucauldian Analysis of the Digital LGBTQIA+ Responses to COVID-19 and the Cultural Memory of the HIV-AIDS Pandemic Activism JUANJO BERMÚDEZ DE CASTRO Universidad de las Islas Baleares. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Edificio Ramón Llull. Carretera de Valldemossa Km. 7,5 07122 Palma, Islas Baleares j.bermudezcast[email protected] ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2608-3575 Recibido/Received: 30/12/2023. Aceptado/Accepted: 05/03/2024. Cómo citar/How to cite: Bermúdez de Castro, Juanjo (2024). Stay (Informed) at Home! Digital LGBTQIA+ Community-Based Responses to COVID-19 and the Cultural Memory of AIDS Pandemic Activism. MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24197/mcreilq.1.2024.41-64 Artículo de acceso abierto distribuido bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución 4.0 Internacional (CC-BY 4.0). / Open access article under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Resumen: Siguiendo un enfoque foucaultiano, este artículo analiza el modo en que las aplicaciones de citas LGTBIQA+ implementaron medidas de cuidado e información colectivas durante los primeros días de la crisis sanitaria de la COVID-19 de forma similar a las aprendidas durante la lucha conjunta en la emergencia del VIH-SIDA. Sin olvidar que su principal preocupación era mantener a sus usuarios en las aplicaciones el mayor tiempo posible por razones económicas, las aplicaciones de ligue Grindr, Scruff, Wapx y MachoBB proporcionaron a la comunidad LGTBIQA+ toda una serie de servicios de apoyo y protección contra la COVID-19: facilitando socialización digital para compartir preocupaciones y estados de ánimo; ofreciendo asistencia psicológica profesional gratuita; recomendando fuentes de ayuda para las personas LGBTIQA+ mayores que quedaron aisladas; proporcionando información sobre la COVID-19 y medidas especiales de protección para personas seropositivas; organizando eventos digitales y fiestas de baile virtuales; y brindando apoyo emocional y asesoramiento a personas usuarias de chemsex. A mayor escala, cuando el VIH-SIDA irrumpió a principios de los ochenta, les activistas respondieron rápidamente creando centros de atención y educación, y emprendiendo iniciativas 42 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 que daban apoyo y combatían el estigma. Utilizando como eje vertebrador y metodológico la conceptualización de Foucault de la biovigilancia, la ética y la política de resistencia, este artículo analiza cómo las aplicaciones de citas LGBTIQA+ respondieron a la COVID-19 a través de lecciones aprendidas de la lucha inicial contra el VIH-SIDA. Palabras clave: aplicaciones de citas LGTBIQA+; respuestas digitales a la COVID-19; análisis foucaultiano; activismo contra el VIH-SIDA; vigilancia y resistencia. Abstract: Following a Foucauldian approach, this paper analyses how LGTBQIA+ dating apps carried out measures of collective care and information during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis in similar ways to those learned from the joint fight during the emergence of HIV-AIDS. Not forgetting that their main concern was keeping their users on the apps as long as possible for economic reasons, hook-up apps such as Grindr, Scruff, Wapx, and MachoBB provided the LGBTQIA+ community with a series of supporting and protecting services against COVID-19: enabling digital socialization to share worries and feelings; offering free professional psychological assistance; recommending sources of help to isolated LGBTQIA+ elders; providing information about COVID-19 and special protective measures for HIV+ people; organizing digital events and virtual dance parties; and giving emotional support and advice to chemsex users. At a greater scale, when HIV-AIDS first appeared in the early 1980s, activists rapidly responded by creating care and education centres, and undertaking initiatives that gave support and combated the stigma. Drawing on Foucault’s conceptualization of biosurveillance, ethics, and the politics of resistance as backbone and methodological frame, this paper analyses how the LGBTQIA+ dating apps responded to COVID-19 through lessons learned from the early fight against HIV-AIDS. Keywords: LGBTQIA+ dating apps; digital responses to COVID-19; Foucauldian analysis; HIV-AIDS activism; surveillance and resistance. INTRODUCTION It is essentially a psycho-media pandemic, the first epidemic born in the days of new media, and its most widespread effect has been the communication of fear. Few events have impacted a community as directly. Disinformation, rumours, politization, and stigma are fundamental to the configuration of a myth that has devastated an entire generation and that has changed the ways of relating affectively. (Lebovici, 2020, p. 11) It is almost undistinguishable whether this quote refers to the HIVAIDS epidemic or to COVID-19. It was written to introduce the book SIDA about the role of arts and AIDS activism at the end of the 20th century, and the “new medium” that the citation mentions was no other than television. In “Truth and Power,” Foucault asserted that any subject has to be analysed “within a historical framework […] a form of history which can account for the constitution of knowledges, discourses, domains of knowledge […] in their empty sameness throughout the course of history” (1980, p. 129). In his methodologically typical fashion, Foucault Stay (Informed) at Home! 43 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 avoids abstract questions that try to define universal truths, and rather explores how these concepts have functioned at a particular historical moment. This paper’s backbone and methodological approach makes use of Foucault’s thought and work to analyse how some of these so-called “knowledges” that the LGBTQIA+ community acquired in their fight against the HIV-AIDS pandemic in the ‘80s were adapted to the 21st century digital era and proved to be incredibly useful in the community’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. As social activist and manager of an HIV-AIDS support centre in Toronto Gerardo Betancourt assures, “precisely because we have learned as marginalized communities that reacted at the beginning of the AIDS early days, that HIV-AIDS educators – and hookup apps – adapted very fast interventions, programs and counselling to alleviate societal effect pandemic against COVID-19 new infections” (Betancourt, 2020, p. 188). As Preciado and Esposito point out, the terms “community” and “immunity” have the same root, munus, which in Latin means the tax that citizens had to pay to be part of a community, understood as an offering, a gift (Preciado, 2020, p. 2; Esposito, 2013, p. 84). As such, this paper explores how a lot of effective LGBTQIA+ responses to COVID-19 were community-based initiatives grounded in collective responsibility and indebted lessons learned in the fight against HIV-AIDS in the ‘80s. Indeed, when facing COVID-19, “communities have repeatedly proved themselves able to react swiftly and decisively, to come together and quickly assess how to respond, and to act without the shackles of bureaucracy” (Ellis et al, 2022, p. 5). Although this paper begins with an analysis of their similarities, it also explores some of the significant differences between the pandemics of the HIV-AIDS and the COVID-19: the former impacted the LGBTQIA+ community unequally from the outset, generating stigma but also for years a great lack of visibility and political inaction, against which associations had to confront (silence = death). On the contrary, the COVID-19 crisis was characterized by affecting an entire population equally – the main differentiating variable was age, not aspects of sexuality or gender –, by its high visibility, and the more or less rapid and resolute reaction of political authorities. The world came to a standstill, and scientists from most countries dedicated funds and resources to research until the vaccine was eventually created and distributed. Another quintessential difference is the crucial role that social media has now in the 21st century. Virtual spaces that were principally created to share and exchange personal 44 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 information have increased their uses over time, and social mobilization has become one of them. Social networks are now the fastest channel of dissemination of news, calls for action and demonstrations. Indeed, the main body of this article focuses on the rapid digital responses to COVID19 by LGBTQIA+ dating apps that offered their users a series of fast intervention programs including information, support, advice, and direct help, by paying special attention to self-empower vulnerable collectives such as elders, migrants, sex workers, HIV positives and chemsex users. In “Act, Expenditure, Death,” Foucault analysed Plato’s Sympsosium, also known as The Banquet, and stated that “sexual activity was located within the broad parameters of life and death, of time, becoming, and eternity. It became necessary because the individual was fated to die, and in order that he might in a sense escape death” (1985, p. 135). During the first peak period of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, some people broke coronavirus quarantine for casual sex and continued hooking up with strangers who they had met through dating apps. This article, however, demonstrates that LGBTQIA+ dating apps also provided alternatives, information, digital socialization, psychological support, and nonjudgemental sexual health programs about safer sex and safer drugs use for those who broke quarantine during the pandemic. On the other side of the spectrum, the dangers of big data and surveillance are currently overwhelming, with alarming consequences, such as the illegal selling of users’ personal data for political or discriminatory purposes. The second section of this paper begins by acknowledging the disadvantages of this surveillance on the Internet and social media era as a 21st century digital version of Foucault’s Panopticism in the form of Poster’s Super Cyber Panopticon (Foucault, 1975a; Poster, 1995). As in the early days of HIV-AIDS, during COVID-19 our sexual activity and daily life was again regulated and restricted by health institutions and government policies. This situation is analysed in the light of Foucault’s “We ‘Other Victorians,’” where he explored the way in which “sex is put into discourse” and confirmed how power – such as governments in both the 80s and in 2020 – channels it “in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behaviour, the paths that give access to the rare or scarcely perceivable forms of desire, how it penetrates and controls everyday pleasure” (1978, p. 11). Thus, it will also be taken into account the biosurveillance culture these apps are part of, and the fact that their interests are based on the number of connected users, since their profits come from the companies that post the adds that appear within the Stay (Informed) at Home! 45 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 apps as well as users’ premium subscriptions to them, meaning that keeping their users connected as long as possible was also an economic strategy. 1. PANDEMIC SIMILARITIES: CONCEPTUALIZATION, REPRESENTATION, AND RESPONSES 1. 1. Pre-Pandemic Sexual Liberation Times: the 1970s and the 2010s Although it has been proved that different viral sequences of HIV were found in humans in 1959 and already in 1908 (Worobey et al, 2008, p. 661-664; Quammen, 2020, p. 466), it was not until March 1981 when HIV virus woke up from decades of lethargy, emerged in the form of AIDS in New York and California, and spread worldwide. As Patton asserts, “It was almost immediately clear that AIDS hysteria endangered civil liberties and the quest for sexual liberation, whatever that might come to mean” (1988, p. 105). The sexual freedom enjoyed in the US in the late ‘60s and ‘70s was suddenly questioned, attacked, and regulated by ignorance, the fear to be infected, and by government authorities. In 1985 the San Francisco city council proposed to close down all bathhouses, as in the AIDS early days it was thought that poppers might be responsible for the spread of the epidemic. As Crimp affirms, AIDS was politically and medically conceptualised as a gay disease, and “precious time was wasted giving megadoses of poppers to mice… allowing HIV to be injected into the veins of vast numbers of drugs users, as well as of haemophiliacs and other people requiring blood transfusions” (1988, p. 6). Similarly to the sexual freedom enjoyed in the 1970s before the HIVAIDS pandemic exploded in June 1981, there was also a climate of sexual liberation in the 2010s before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, due to the possibilites opened by the new hookup apps (Grindr was launched in 2009), the avilability of PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis)1, the effectiveness of anti-retroviral therapies, and the recognition that “undetectable = untransmittable”. In the global North, HIV was eventually conceptualised as a chronic but non-lethal disease 1 PrEP was approved by the FDA in 2012, and by the European Medicines Agency in 2016. From 2104 to 2017, PrEP use among gay and bisexual men shot from 6% to 35% in twenty major U.S. cities (Arana, 2020). In November 1, 2019, PrEP was approved and funded in Spain by the National Health System (Mascort, 2020). 46 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 (Preciado, 2020), as “it now concerns ways of living rather than certain death” (Dean, 2015, p. 227). Betancourt uses the term “state of emergency” to refer to the situation in the early ‘80s when nobody knew exactly what the virus was that was killing people (2020). Due to COVID-19, by April 2020, more than half of the world’s population, 3.9 billion people, were similarly living under some sort of state or emergency and/or lockdown, and our sexual and civil freedoms were again likewise regulated by fear of contagion and by political institutions. In “The Great Confinement,” Foucault approached the locking up of people “designated” as mad/idle in the 17th century, and described confinement as a “police matter” claiming that “what made it necessary was an imperative of labour […] it is in this context that the obligation to work assumes its meaning […] it will serve as askesis, as punishment” (1965, p. 46, 55). The COVID-19 lockdowns’ link to consumption and production are the 21st century version of that use of confinement as a captive force. During the lockdowns, teleworking and online buying were imposed as a prevention measure, thus maintaining the status quo of capitalism and consumerism by obliging overworked cyclists to ride through the empty streets to deliver food orders and Amazon packages. In “The Body of the Condemned,” Foucault also approaches this topic of “political economy,” claiming that if the system does not make “use of violence or bloody punishment, even when they use ‘lenient’ methods of confinement and correction, it is always the body that is at issue – the body and its forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission” (1975b, p. 25). 1. 2. Media, AIDS, and COVID-19: Panic, Homophobia, and Xenophobia In 1985, Altman stated that for most people the reality of AIDS had meant fear of contagion rather experience of loss, and accused media of creating panic and spreading ignorance. Crimp asserted that “there were, on the one hand, the scientific facts about AIDS and, on the other hand, ignorance or misrepresentation of those facts” (1988, p. 3). According to Sturken, the media in the US associated AIDS “with practices regarded as deviant (homosexuality, drug use, promiscuity),” and portrayed photographs of signs of the disease such as grotesque lesions and emaciated bodies which not only created categories of deviance but also spread panic (1997, p. 145, 152). Reflecting on how the mainstream media Stay (Informed) at Home! 47 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 informed the general population about AIDS in the ‘80s, Sontag exposed the military metaphors they used (1988, p. 11), which were similarly omnipresent in 2020 in the “war” to “combat” and “defeat” COVID-19. Lebovici also condemned how the media stigmatised populations with AIDS – the so-called five H’s: homosexuals, heroin addicts, haemophiliacs, Haitians, and hookers (sex workers) – and wondered how to make visible a crisis that hit politically invisible communities (2020, p. 24). Television is a paradoxical place that is contemplated in private but whose duty and responsibility are public. Lebovici criticised that in the ’80s, people with AIDS were watching TV programs that talked about AIDS but without addressing them (2020, p. 33). Similarly, during the COVID-19 crisis, the initial television reaction was to report how the disease was annihilating an entire generation of elders but without talking “to” those still alive COVID-19 infected ones at hospitals. Lebovici claimed that “the politics of AIDS and COVID-19 draw attention to the dispersion of flows of power through all the cracks and fissures of the social system” (2020, p. 30), which Foucault called “the microphysics of power” (Epstein, 1996, p. 4). According to Patton, AIDS was another phenomenon understandable “through the existing analysis of government neglect, of poverty, and of lack of access to health care” (1990, p. 11). If AIDS brought about fear, stigma, and homophobia, the initial social response to COVID-19 that also broke the social fabric, besides fear and stigma, was xenophobia. Zizek talks about “explosions of racism” (2020a, p. 21), and Butler refers to it as “panicked xenophobia” (2020, p. 62). The fact that COVID-19 was sometimes called “the Chinese Virus” did not help but increased the animosity towards an entire population, a xenophobic phenomenon very easy to ignite in times of crisis as history proves. The mechanisms of social response to perceived threats usually include attacks on minorities, and it is quite revealing to explore how COVID-19 specifically affected the LGBTQIA+ community: firstly, many LGBTQIA+ people were forced to remain in or move back to unsafe situations in family environments with relatives who may be LGBTIphobic; the closure of LGBTQIA+ bars and clubs did not only involve not socializing or dating, but these places have traditionally been safe spaces where LGBTQIA+ people can be free from judgement; LGBTQIA+ elders were at a higher risk of having no offspring who could get them supplies or medications in lockdown or emergency situations. Butler argues that “the virus alone does not discriminate, but we humans surely do: radical 48 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 inequality, xenophobia, violence against women, queer, and trans people, and the capitalist exploitation find ways to reproduce and strengthen themselves within the pandemic zones” (2020). A particularly noteworthy example concerns the surveillance and stigmatisation of a young South Korean gay man who, in May 2020, visited a series of bars in Seoul, and the following day he tested positive for COVID-19. South Korean authorities tracked his movements, the media reports specifically identified the bars as gay places, and queer Koreans and their lifestyle were blamed for new cases of COVID-19 (Gitzen, 2020). Being gay is not illegal in Korea, but sexual minorities face widespread social stigma and discrimination. Many keep their identities and orientations in secret, as being outed can cost them their jobs. In this case, the media guided national anger and fear of COVID-19 towards LGBTQIA+ people and made them “a target of hatred” (Hyun-Ju, 2020). In times of crisis, minorities are always blamed and attacked, and this time was no different. In fact, in countries such as South Korea there were calls in the mainstream media to close down LGBTIQA+ dating apps to stop the clientele from “spreading” the disease (Gitzen, 2020) – echoing the closing down of bathhouses in the 80s –, when no similar demand was made to close down heterosexual dating apps. 2. DIGITAL SOLUTIONS: INTERVENTIONS ON/BY LGBTQIA+ DATING APPS IN COVID-19 TIMES 2. 1. Digital Cooperation vs. Big Data & Surveillance In “Panopticism,” Foucault acknowledged the potential of collective resistance as the only form able to defeat power. According to him, “Discipline fixes (…) it dissipates compact groupings of individuals (…) it must neutralise the effects of counterpower that spring from them and which form a resistance to the power” (1975a: 219-220). Crimp, in AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism, documented how LGBTQIA+ communities and activists rapidly combined forces and joined the struggle in order to provide an organised response to AIDS (1988). Sturken identified in both LGBTQIA+ and AIDS activism the legacy of the civil rights movement strategies (1997, p. 147). It is a fact that the AIDS epidemic required powerful alliances to intervene in the public domain and demand different political, medical, and media policies. Similarly, regarding COVID-19, cooperation and organised local interventions also Stay (Informed) at Home! 49 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 proved to be efficient responses to the disease and its stigmatization. An example of these local interventions is that which emerged against the rise of homophobia in South Korea in May 2020. Queer Action Against COVID-19 was a coalition of 23 groups to protect and respect the privacy of Korea’s queer communities. “What we need now is not hatred and discrimination, but realizing that our safety is tied together, and we should all come in solidarity for that,” the association of groups declared (Wright, 2020). In 2001, the digital revolution had just started, but in the third decade of the 21st century, as Crooks asserts, “many of our online interactions do not occur through internet platforms but are created by the platform design” (2013, p. 1). In 2024 people who use hook-up apps negotiate the nature of their relations online, after which they may become materialised, or not. Zizek asserts that, since the emergence of COVID-19, we are returning to the literal meaning of the term “viral,” as now a “viral infection” works in both directions: the real and the virtual (2020, p. 26). Indeed, the digital era has brought along new forms of surveillance by technological devices and social media that provide big data about our personal lives to database companies, which most people consider the price to pay for staying connected. Regarding this biosurveillance and digital control, Preciado affirms that COVID-19 has legitimised and extended these state practices “normalising” them and making them necessary to maintain the idea of immunity (2020, p. 8). It was during the COVID-19 lockdown that Bentham’s panopticon prison model analysed by Foucault in “Panopticism” (1975a, p. 195-228) became more materialised than ever. On the occasions when people went out to the empty streets to buy supplies or medications, they were watched from windows and balconies by neighbours, who adopted the role of vigilantes and shouted at them or called the authorities if they thought that those on the street were breaking the quarantine for no reason. Thus, during the COVID-19 lockdown, prisoners became also jailers in a physical sense, in addition to the fact that we were all already digital prisoners and vigilantes in line with the super-/cyber-panopticism proposed by Poster, whereby databases and social media produce subjects who are willing participants in their own surveillance (1995, p. 78-94). It is significant that, with respect to curtailment of liberties, COVID-19 mortality and morbidity rates were initially higher in countries where governments were reluctant to infringe on people’s freedom of movement, such as in the US and the UK. Han points out that, in Asia, epidemics are not so much combatted by 56 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 perspective. The second digital intervention by Energy Control recommended that going out and practicing chemsex in the pandemic situation was risky, so “take this opportunity to give yourself a break, and when everything relaxes, we will celebrate” (Chem-Safe, 2020a). That said, this initiative followed the non-judgemental protocol of professionals in the field, and provided suitable advice in case chemsex users were not able to quit their practices, such as: “if you snort, crush the substance well and wash your nostrils when you are done. You could create wounds that make it easier for the COVID-19 to enter your system,” or “avoid using your mobile to do lines on it. Telephones are in permanent contact with our hands and can be a good place for the COVID-19 virus to be.” The program also warned that “adherence to retroviral treatment is essential to make HIV undetectable. So if you are HIV-positive, do not forget your medications if you go to a chemsex party” (Chem-safe, 2020a). Such understanding advice that does not condemn nor judge the lifestyle of chemsex users is key to ensure health professionals’ messages be listened to in an effective way that prevents new COVID-19 infections, as well as increases in viral load of those who are HIV-positive. Finally, the third of chem-safe.org’s digital initiatives, designed in collaboration with Carlos III Institute of Health in Madrid, was a survey called “Méthysos Study: Drugs, Sex, Health, How Do You Live It?,” which was also carried out through Grindr, Scruff, Macho BB, and Wapx (Chem-Safe, 2020b; Guerras et al., 2021). In summary, not forgetting that LGBTQIA+ apps provide the virtual place where chemsex parties are negotiated, during the COVID-19 quarantine, these apps cooperated with anti-drugs associations and focused on preventing lockdown from potentially pushing their users to chemsex as a way of dealing with frustration and stress. As Stuart recommended in his analysis of chemsex in COVID-19 times, “be vigilantly kind and mindful when hooking up for chemsex because some of our partners are less resilient to COVID-19” (2020). And he added that those who do not practice chemsex within the gay community should “please feel compassion, not shame, for those who cannot or will not distance” (Stuart, 2020). CONCLUSIONS: FOUCAULDIAN “SUBJUGATED KNOWLEDGES” In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault described what he called subjugated knowledges as “a whole series of knowledges that have Stay (Informed) at Home! 57 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 traditionally been disqualified… the knowledge of the psychiatrised, the patient” (1976/2003, p. 7-8). The queer knowledges that have been approached and referred to in this article, the knowledges of people with AIDS, HIV-positive individuals, chemsex and other drugs users, sex workers, migrants, risk groups, infected people, trans and queer persons, stigmatised communities, along with the current digital responses to COVID-19 on/by LGBTQIA+ hookup apps in 2020, all of them are indeed part of these subjugated knowledges that Foucault alluded to. In fact, in Queer Terror, Schotten detailed how Foucault was “unearthing knowledges from below in an attempt of disrupting hegemonic totalitarian theories” (2018, p. 74) that today configure the common doxa imposed by the dictates of mainstream media and demagogical and despotic politicians. The first part of this article aimed to establish a parallel between COVID-19 and AIDS-HIV, and how both pandemics have been handled by exposing, as Preciado claims, the management of life and death of vulnerable communities in a determined period (2020). The second part explored how the organisations of citizens that emerged in the fight against AIDS in the ‘80s taught us to form coalitions to prevent COVID-19 infections within our LGBTQIA+ community, this time through the digital devices and apps that we make use of daily in the 21st century. However, it was also considered that the same technologies used to keep the queer community informed and protected are also used to surveil it. The battle between resistance and regulation takes place in the same virtual territory. Referring to those who have died of COVID-19, Butler re-inscribed the distinction between “grievable and ungrievable lives,” evidencing “those whose lives should be protected against death at all costs and those whose lives are considered not worth safeguarding against illness and death” (2020). Indeed, the same words can be said about HIV-AIDS in the ‘80s. iIn “Politics and Ethics,” Foucault defended collective resistance by asserting that Ethics is a practice; ethos is a manner of being [...] it does not consist in saying merely “I protest,” but in making of that attitude a political phenomenon that is as substantial as possible, and one which those who govern, here or there, will sooner or later be obliged to taken into account. (1984, p. 377) 58 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 In 2020, screens became the only medium allowed to keep us connected. Social organizations united under a pink triangle joined forces to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on the LGBTQIA+ community through the hookup apps they used. These coalitions emulated in the digital age the way yesterday similar coalitions combatted the HIV-AIDS pandemic. In viral times, the boundaries between times and spaces blurred, and those queer struggles of the past were revived to take action in the present. BIBLIOGRAPHY Altman, Dennis (1985). AIDS: In the Mind of America. Doubleday. Arana, Gabriel (2020). PrEP: The Story of a Sexual Revolution. Them March 16. https://www.them.us/story/prep-the-story-of-a-sexualrevolution#:~:text=The%20Federal%20Drug%20Administration%2 0first,with%20men%20and%20transgender%20people Betancourt, Gerardo (2020). Code Blue! Implementing a COVID-19 Response, Supported by an HIV Community Program: Communities without Borders, a Spanish Speaking Intervention in Toronto, Canada. Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services 19(2), 188-191. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15381501.2020.1768194 Bordowitz, Gregg (1988). Picture a Coalition. October 43. AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism, 182-196. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3397573 British HIV Association (2020). Comment from BHIVA and THT on UK Government Guidance on Coronavirus (COVID-19), Social Distancing to Protect Vulnerable Adults and Shielding to Protect Extremely Vulnerable Adults. bhiva.org. March 23, 2020. https://www.bhiva.org/comment-from-BHIVA-and-THT-on-UKGovernment-guidance-on-Coronavirus-COVID-19 Butler, Judith (2020). Capitalism Has Its Limits. Verso. March 30, 2020. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4603-capitalism-has-its-limits Stay (Informed) at Home! 59 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 Chem-Safe (2020a). Chemsex, fiestas y drogas en tiempos de coronavirus. Chem-safe.org March 14, 2020. https://www.chemsafe.org/chemsex-fiestas-y-drogas-en-tiempos-de-coronavirus/ Chem-Safe (2020b). Estudio Méthysos. Chem-safe.org June 12, 2020. https://twitter.com/ec_es/status/1271502529810116609? lang=bg Crimp, Douglas (ed.) (1988). AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. MIT Press. Crooks, Roderic N. (2013). The Rainbow Flag and the Green Carnation: Grindr in the Gay Village. Fist Monday 18(11), 1-25. Dean, Tim (2015). Mediated Intimacies: Raw Sex, Truvada, and the Biopolitics of Chemoprophylaxis. Sexualities 18 (1/2), 224-246. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460715569137 Ellis Paine, Angela, Wilson, Mandy, McCabe, Angus y MacMillan, Rob. 2022. One pandemic, many responses: How community responses to COVID-19 developed and why they varied. Local Trust. Sheffield Hallam University. https://localtrust.org.uk/insights/research/one-pandemic-manyresponses/ Energy Control (1997). Información, asesoramiento y análisis de sustancias para la gestión de placeres y riesgos. Energycontrol.org. https://energycontrol.org/ Epstein, Steven (1996). Impure Science. AIDS Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. University of California Press. Esposito, Roberto (2013). Community, Immunity, Bioplitics. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 18(3), 83-90. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2013.834666 Fernández-Dávila, Percy (2018). Chemsex en España: Reflexiones sobre buena praxis y lecciones aprendidas. Revista Multidisciplinar del SIDA 6(13), pp. 57-62. 60 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 Foucault, Michel (1965). The Great Confinement. In Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (pp. 38-64). Tavistock. Foucault, Michel (1975a). Panopticism. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (pp. 195-228). Random House. Foucault, Michel (1975b). The Body of the Condemned. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (pp. 3-31). Random House. Foucault, Michel (1978). We “Other Victorians”. In The History of Sexuality, Volume I: The Will to Knowledge (pp. 3-12). Pantheon. Foucault, Michel (1980). Truth and Power. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. 1972-77 (pp. 121-145). Harvester. Foucault, Michel (1984). Politics and Ethics: An Interview. In Paul Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader (pp. 373-380). Pantheon. Foucault, Michel (1985). Act, Expenditure, Death. In The History of Sexuality, Volume II: The Use of Pleasure (pp. 135-139). Random House. Foucault, Michel (2003). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975-76. Translated by David Macey. Picador. Originally published in 1976. Garrido, Jorge (2020). El chemsex desde dentro. Entrevista a Jorge Garrido. In Gabriel Martín, Gay Sex: Manual sobre sexualidad y autoestima erótica para hombres homosexuales (pp. 308-312). Roca Editorial. Gitzen, Timothy (2020). Tracing Homophobia in South Korea’s Coronavirus Surveillance Program. The Conversation, June 18. https://theconversation.com/tracing-homophobia-in-south-koreascoronavirus-surveillance-program-139428 Grindr (2020). Getting Off and Staying Safe. Grindr.com June 25, https://www.instagram.com/p/CB3YwXanpD0/? img_index=1 Stay (Informed) at Home! 61 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 Grinder (2023a). Unwrapped 2023. The Gay Year in Review. Grindr.com https://www.unwrapped.grindr.com/ Grindr (2023b). Grindr Help Center. Community Resources. Sexual Health. Grindr.com. https://help.grindr.com/hc/enus/sections/360010907114-Sexual-health Guerras, Juan Miguel, Hoyos, Juan, De la Fuente, Luis, Donat, Marta, Pulido, José, Sordo, Luis, García de Olalla, Patricia y Belza, María José. Grupo Proyecto Methysos (2022). Awareness and Use of HIV Self-Testing Among Men Who Have Sex With Men Remains Low in Spain 2 Years After Its Authorization. Public Health. Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention 10, June 17, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.888059 Han, Byung-Chul (2020). La emergencia viral y el mundo de mañana. El País, March 22. https://elpais.com/ideas/2020-03-21/la-emergenciaviral-y-el-mundo-de-manana-byung-chul-han-el-filosofosurcoreano-que-piensa-desde-berlin.html Hyun-Ju, Ock. (2020). Korea’s media’s focus on ‘gay Club in COVID-19 case further stigmatizes LGBT people. The Korean Herald, May 8. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php? ud=20200508000751 Khan, Andrew (2020). Coronavirus Diaries: The Guys are Wild on Grindr Right Now. Slate, March 19. https://slate.com/humaninterest/2020/03/grindr-during-coronavirus-pandemic.html Lebovici, Elisabeth (2020). SIDA. Et al series, vol. 4. Edit. by Pablo Martínez and trans. by Cristina Zelich. Arcadia and MACBA. Originally published in 2017. MachoBB (2020). Important Notice about the COVID-19 Crisis. MachoBB’s blog. March 20. https://blog.machobb.com/2020/03/20/importante-notice-regardingcovid-19-crisis/ MachoBB (2023). MachoBB.com. Free gay dating app and gay chat for backpackers with no awkward questions, no censorship and no time wasters. MachoBB.com, https://www.machobb.com/en 62 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 Mascort, Juan José, Castillo, Ricard, Alastrué, Irene, Zarcó, José, Aguado, C., Rodríguez, B., Fransi, L. y Ramón, J. L. Profilaxis pre-exposición de la infección por el VIH y Atención Primaria (AP). Atención Primaria 52(3). https://doi.org/j.aprim.2020.02.001 Patton, Cindy (1988). AIDS: Lessons from the Gay Community. Feminist Review 30 (Autumn), 105-111. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.1988.46 Patton, Cindy (1990). Inventing AIDS. Routledge. Poster, Mark (1995). The Second Media Age. Polity Press. Preciado, Paul (2020). COVID-19: Aprendiendo del virus. El País, March 28. https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/03/27/opinion/1585316952_026489.ht ml Quammen, David (2020). Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. 3rd ed. Penguin. Schotten, C. Heike (2018). Queer Terror: Life, Death, and Desire in the Settler Colony. Columbia University Press. Scruff. 2020. Scruff Hosting Contest Official Rules. Scruff.com, April 25. https://www.scruff.com/en/hosting Sontag, Susan 1988. AIDS and Its Metaphors. Allen and Allen. Soria, María Luisa 2020. Toxicological aspects of chemsex. Spanish Journal of Legal Medicine, 47(2), 74-80. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.remle.2020.05.013 Stephenson, Rob, Chavanduka, Tanaka, Rosso, Matthew T., Sullivan, Stephen, Pitter, Renée, Hunter, Alexis y Rogers, Erin (2020). Sex in the Time of COVID-19: Results of an Online Survey of Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men’s Experience of Sex and HIV Prevention During the US COVID-19 Epidemic. AIDS and Behavior, 25, pp. 40-48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-02003024-8 Stay (Informed) at Home! 63 MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 StopSida (2020). Necesidades de la comunidad LGTB+ a raíz del COVID19. Stop Sida: más morbo menos riesgo. April 10. https://masmorbomenosriesgo.es/2020/04/09/necesidades-lgtbcovid19/ Stuart, David (2019). Chemsex: origins of the word, a history of the phenomenon and a respect to the culture. Drugs and Alcohol Today, 19(1), 3-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/DAT-10-2018-0058 Stuart, David (2020). What does the coronavirus (COVID-19) mean in regard to chemsex? AFEW International, March 19. https://afew.org/what-does-coronavirus-covid-19-mean-in-regard-tochemsex-david-stuart/ Sturken, Marita (1997). Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tracer, Daniel (2013). Will Scruff Be the Only App to Be TransInclusive?” Queerty, July 17. http://www.queerty.com/scruff-firstapp-to-be-trans-inclusive-20130717 Wapx (2020). Media Kit. Wapo & Wapa. Wapo.dating. https://wapo.dating/downloads/wapx_mediakit_2020.pdf Wapx (2023). Wapo & Wapa. Wapo.dating http://wapaapp.com/index_es.html Worobey, Michael, Gemmel, Marlea, Tewen, Dirk E., Haselkorn, Tamara, Kunstman, Kevin, Bunce, Michael, Muyembe, Jean-Jacques, Kabongo, Jean-Marie, Kalengayi, Raphäel, Van Marck, Eric; Gilbert, M. Thomas P. y Wolinsky, Steven (2008) Direct Evidence of Extensive Diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960. Nature, 455, 661664. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07390 Wright, John (2020). Gays in South Korea Fear Backlash After New COVID-19 Outbreak Linked to LGBT Nightclubs. Towleroad, May 8. https://www.towleroad.com/2020/05/gays-in-south-korea-fearbacklash-after-new-covid-19-outbreak-linked-to-lgbt-nightclubs/ 64 Juanjo Bermúdez de Castro MariCorners: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares LGTBIA+ y Queer, 1(1), 41-64 ISSN 3020-9552 Zizek, Slavoj (2020). Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World. OR Books.