I see a lot of people talking about the drama around the COVID-cautious lesbian bar today, and I'm of two minds about it:

1) airing disagreements among queer women and fems for men and cishets to gawk and laugh at is a really fucking shitty thing to do

2) the majority of COVID-cautious spaces and circles are, in fact, packed to the brim with People Like That, which is why I steer clear of them nowadays

@YKantRachelRead covid-cautious lesbian bar? they make those?

@patchuun yep! there's one in Massachusetts that recently made the news because the sole owner has the problem of "needing to pay rent or close the place down," so they made one night a week masks-optional and people can't be normal about it

@YKantRachelRead mmm, I see. I do get why people would be upset about that but if it's between that and the place having to shut down then it's understandable they'd make that decision. sucks that it came to that though; sign of the times I suppose :/

@patchuun yeah 😭😭 my thought was that I've seen this sort of problem play out a ton in COVID-cautious spaces. people complain that there's no mask-required social venues or events, and then don't show up to them when they do happen because it's too high of a COVID risk.

@YKantRachelRead genuinely a horrifying article. Read more like a drama youtuber than journalism. Disgusted and depressed me

@YKantRachelRead @patchuun i wish i could have that problem lol

@YKantRachelRead yeah, "if you build it, they will come" really isn't a given unfortunately. I also really hope I'm wrong about this but I can't help but suspect the number of people who even /are/ covid-cautious is steadily bleeding, month by month, year by year, as people just kind of give up on it

@YKantRachelRead constantly making snide little digs mocking the subjects of the article. gross behavior

@YKantRachelRead I mean, this was definitely unambiguously true in like, 2023. but I would hope that people who were still masking in 2025 are still masking in 2026 and beyond at least? but... :/

@anarchautistic @YKantRachelRead something tells me I should in fact not let curiosity kill the cat and seek out this article rn lol

@anarchautistic right?! "look at these silly masking queers and their petty drama"

@patchuun yep, I saw way more people actively dropping precautions back in 2022-2023 than now, but I'm sure it's still happening 😞

@YKantRachelRead ...okay, with additional context I do think it would have been nice if they'd picked a different day of the week to be masks-optional than Saturday though >.>
I can definitely see why that would alienate their core demographic

@YKantRachelRead it also raises further questions though: were Saturdays already their busiest days in the first place? I would imagine so. how much business did they get on the average Saturday compared to any other day of the week? will they end up losing more customers than they gain, due to the loss of previous regulars who no longer want to show up on Saturdays?

@YKantRachelRead I understand why people initially flipped out @ the sole remaining co-founder, the insta text post that announced the masks-optional day was infuriatingly glib (the "it's with love to our immunocompromised divas" post)

Me personally, I have a hard time trusting "masks mandatory" spaces because every time I've been to one there have been people flagrantly unmasking, no discipline, surgicals, etc.

@YKantRachelRead yeah now I'm more-or-less up to speed and my takeaway is literally everything about this situation sucks. I don't like the masks-optional Saturdays, don't like the way people behaved in response to it, don't like the so-called """journalism""". It's bleak!

@YKantRachelRead I'm so over the "just say you hate xyz" "hope this helps" holier-than-thou passive-aggression in nominally progressive online communities, it's so toxic and unhelpful

@patchuun agreed, on all counts

@letsbeworms @YKantRachelRead re: data about current infection levels, see pmc19.com

@patchuun @YKantRachelRead you shouldn't. There's a bit where they put scare quotes around somebody's name

@anarchautistic @YKantRachelRead too late. it was, indeed, awful x3