Moral Exposures, Public Appearances: Contested Presences of Non-Normative Sex in Pandemic Berlin

Abstract

Since its reunification, Berlin has regained its reputation as a sexually liberal European metropolis, offering spaces and infrastructures for non-normative sex to become present in the cityscape. However, with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany and the concomitant measures to contain its spread, sexual practices and their open display have become highly contested and subject to increased regulation. In this article, we attend to sex work and casual sex among gay men, who, both historically and at present, have been placed under particular public scrutiny and moralised (health) governance. Yet, non-normative sex did not vanish from the city during the pandemic, but (re-)appeared in the form of both moralising media exposure and politically motivated public appearances. Attending to the intersections and divergences within these shifting presences of casual gay sex and sex work, we highlight how the biopolitical governance of pandemic sex has been evaded, contested and incorporated into efforts to normalise certain sexual activities. We therefore conclude that the pandemic had ambivalent effects on non-normative sexual practices in Berlin. It contributed to a further politicisation in the fight for their place in the city and to the (re-)emergence of normative assumptions about the respectable sexual subject for and within communities centred around non-normative sexual practices.