These are questions many in the kink community are asking, and this article, focusing on some of our major events, is an attempt to provide some answers.

Bear in mind, however, that it’s only a snapshot at the time of publication. The way the Covid crisis is unfolding, best to assume some things will have changed by the time you’re reading this — and that changes will continue for some time to come.

In the UK and elsewhere, we have seen the speed with which Governments have been increasing measures to slow down infection rates and/or ramp up help to people whose livelihoods have disappeared or are under threat.

For example, while I was putting this article together, the German government introduced a ban on public groups of more than two people, and a couple of days later, the British government followed suit.

Shortly after that, Britain brought in a raft of more stringent coronavirus restrictions, to be backed up by wide-ranging legal powers. This has involved me in a substantial amount of rewriting in an effort to keep this piece up to date.

Bans or limits on public gatherings are now widespread, with venues such as nightclubs obliged to close, which has had an unavoidable impact on fetish events.

Of course, large-scale cancellation or postponement of events affects people way beyond just the party organisers and their potential audiences. I aim to look at the wider impact on the fetish industry in a further article.

But for now, my focus is on the events themselves. And having checked a representative sample of events listed in The Fetishistas Directory from late March onward, I can say that a pretty clear pattern of organiser behaviour has emerged.

Starting with the present and the immediate future: the Covid crisis has led to all events we checked for the last ten days of March being either postponed or just outright cancelled.

Of the events described by their hosts as postponed, some have already been rescheduled for a later date in 2020, while others have yet to be assigned a new date.

But any new dates advertised now can only be best guesses on the part of promoters, whose powers to see into the future are no greater than anybody else’s.

So the best advice is to treat such new dates as provisional, however ‘firm’ they might currently appear. Monitor their status online and seek re-confirmation nearer the time.

Even the largest of our fetish event-hosting companies are only small businesses in the grand scheme of things. They don’t have the resources to insulate themselves from the financial effects of cancellations for very long.

Even the largest of our fetish event-hosting companies are only small businesses in the grand scheme of things, and don’t have the resources to insulate themselves for very long

Relatively few fetish event promoters do such work as their sole or main occupation. The majority do it either as a sideline to a ‘straight’ fulltime job, or as one strand within a broader range of creative and/or business activities.

The fact that most promoters consider themselves to be a part of the kink community and a contributor to community life is reflected in the generally sympathetic tone of  their Covid crisis cancellation and postponement notices.

Many have been along the lines of: We want to party as much as you do, and it breaks our hearts to cancel. But at the present time, safety is more important than partying. We’re sure you’ll understand, and we aim to resume normal service as soon as it’s safe to do so.

However, even fetish event hosts exhibit different levels of empathy and media competence.

On some events we checked, cancellation was perfunctorily announced with a simple ‘Cancelled’ or ‘Cancelled due to coronavirus’ flash across their flyer artwork.

A few events just disappeared with no apology or explanation at all. Most of us would expect better handling of the situation than that.

On top of cancelling or postponing imminent events, organisers with dates scheduled for later in 2020 are having to decide on the best approach to take towards an uncertain future.

Unsurprisingly, some cancellations or date moves have already been announced for April events, including some of the big international gatherings.

In London, for example, Torture Garden has cancelled both its Birthday Balls on April 17 and 18. While in Amsterdam, Wasteland has cancelled its big Rituals party on April 4.

For many of us, it’s the fate of events scheduled for May that we’re most concerned about. Coincidentally this year, three staples of the international fetish calendar all take place over the same few days in May.

Both the German Fetish Ball in Berlin and the Florida Fetish Weekend in Fort Lauderdale are set for the same five days — May 20-24. And on the