In March, the New York Post reported that high-end sex party promoters Snctm were pushing through with an orgy in Los Angeles despite the pandemic.

Unfazed by rising numbers of COVID 19 infections throughout much of the United States, the party promoters organized another group sex event in Manhattan in May.

“Snctm events are going on as planned,” a public relations representative told the Post, adding that there would be extra soap and sanitizer on hand at the venue.

Snctm is a sex club based in Beverly Hills, California. The club has been called the world’s most exclusive sex club. Male attendees are required to wear tuxedos. Female attendees wear lingerie or cocktail dresses.

In August, Snctm hosted yet another -albeit smaller – gathering of eight couples “in a secret and regal Manhattan residence.”

The promoters billed the event as “an extremely exclusive, eminently curated, erotic cocktail and dinner series dedicated to the values of intellectual curiosity, erudition, and the voluptuary arts.”

The organizers posted armed security personnel at the door. These were augmented by a Board-certified physician and a medical team that performed rapid COVID 19 testing on attendees.

“Every person, staff and guest alike, will be required to test negative in order to gain admittance,” the party promotions group said in its website.

Orgies in the Time of #MeToo and Coronavirus

How promoters of sex parties intend to continue convincing people that a sex saturnalia is a good idea in the midst of a pandemic is one thing. Managing consent in such gatherings these days is quite another.

Many necessary and intelligent things have been said and written about consent in the #MeToo era. Much of it has assumed sex as an activity between two healthy adults.

That’s a telling deficiency since practically every adult on the planet has fantasized about group sex at one point or another.

Some 95 percent of men and 87 percent of women who participated in one recent study said they’ve had multi-partner sex fantasies.

Many more have turned fantasy into reality. One in 8 men and one in 16 women said they’ve actually participated in an orgy, according to the US National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior.

The Bystander Effect

One could easily assume that the more people are around, the less likely it will be that someone will cross boundaries. Who would do such a thing in the midst of a crowd – and with a deadly virus on the loose, too, right?

You might imagine that people would intervene if and when lines are crossed. Moreover, those same people could serve as witnesses if someone decides to press charges later on.

But some experts say that might not necessarily be the case.

To emphasize their point, they cite the “bystander effect,” which has been a staple of psychology textbooks since the late 1960s.

The term refers to the theory in psychology that the more witnesses there are to a crime, the less likely the victims will receive help.

Perhaps the most illustrative example of this social phenomenon took place during the murder of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese.

Genovese was raped and stabbed to death early one morning in March 1964 in front of her apartment building in New York City.  

Two weeks after the murder, the New York Times published an article claiming that 38 witnesses saw or heard the attack. Some of them were Genovese’s own neighbors. Not a single one of them called the police or came to her rescue.

The case has long since come to symbolize urban apathy in the United States. But psychologists today claim Genovese’s neighbors failed to react because of something called “diffusion of responsibility.”

That is, when there are more people around, each individual person feels less responsible for helping out in an emergency.

Genovese’s neighbors failed to help her not because they were oblivious to the young woman’s horrific situation, but because each one fully expected that somebody else would.

Sensory Overload and Communication

There is also the fact that so much goes on in an orgy that people might not even notice when a violation of consent has occurred. You may be in such a state of sensory overload you might not notice someone who is sick.

You may also fail to understand someone who is communicating a lack of consent. That is especially true if the signal for help is communicated non-verbally.

“Sensory overload happens when you’re getting more input from your five senses than your brain can sort through and process,” say psychologist Dillon Browne and writer Kathryn Watson for Healthline.

“Multiple conversations going on in one room, flashing overhead lights, or a loud party can all produce the symptoms of sensory overload.”

That’s why crimes such as purse snatching and even strong-arm robbery can occur when we are in public places with large crowds around us.

Often, criminals will use the crowd to not only find their victim, but to also make their getaway.

Rape is a terrible thing. No one should ever be subjected to sexual assault, non-consensual sex, or forced sexual activity of any kind. Throw a viral disease into that mix and things can get even more horrifying.

None of this is to suggest that sexual assault is commonplace in orgies – or that people who attend these gatherings are unlikely to care.

In fact, researchers have found that most people who have fulfilled their group sex fantasies say the experience was a positive one.

But navigating consent in a group sex event during a pandemic poses a unique and difficult set of challenges. Members of clubs like Snctm might be able to enforce rapid COVID 19 testing for its events, but what of other groups? 

Getting the Lay of the Land

The question of consent in an orgy is a complicated enough issue by itself. For those new to group sex, Kathryn Klement, an assistant professor of psychology at Bemidji State University, says a good place to start is with a guidebook.

She recommends The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy. That said, you might also want to get a lay of the land before you decide to become the lay of the land.

Try visiting a known establishment or club before you make a decision. Play the role of voyeur and watch what goes on. Read up on the pandemic and how you might at least try to protect people in a large sexual gathering.

“Most people don’t have a script for group sex, so observation can provide you with a mental framework that will help guide you in the future should you decide you want to give it a try,” says Justin Lehmiller of the Kinsey Institute. “This will also give you a sense of the kinds of rules you should establish and the things you might need to take into account before you plan your own orgy.”

For example, should there be guidelines about alcohol and other substances to reduce the risk of non-consensual contact? Would you be able to implement COVID 19 testing at the door the way Snctm does?

Make sure, too, that participants feel empowered to revoke their consent if the need arises. They should know that they will be supported and that their boundaries will be respected.

“Regardless of what type of rules there are, as long as partners are on the same page about what they want to do, and what they don’t want to do, people can enjoy themselves without worrying that someone will just ignorantly blow past a boundary,” says Klement.

What’s your story? Have you, or has someone you know, experienced a situation where boundaries have been ignored? Why not share your thoughts in teh review section below…

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