Sex, COVID-19, and Racism: Part 1

I (Jeremiah) am the Executive Director of a nonprofit called the New England Association for Family and Systemic Therapy (NEAFAST). We’re currently asking our members, primarily couples and family therapists, to write about what they’re observing during COVID-19. I contributed by describing how COVID-19 is warping our relationship with the space around us, including our relationships with others.

The psychological principle driving COVID-19 is Schrodinger’s Effect: By wearing a mask, we assume that everyone has COVID-19, regardless of whether we actually have it.

Nobody is safe, and wearing a mask has become a way to communicate to others that we’re compassionate, thoughtful, and safe in a time of national anxiety. Our brains use objects like these to classify who’s safe and who isn’t.

Julia and I love to walk, both around our neighborhood in Boston, and on more sustained hikes throughout Massachusetts. We both carry our masks, but generally don’t wear them if there’s nobody within six feet of us.

Whenever we see someone ahead, even if they’re 50 yards away, we put the masks on. Danger. This person may have COVID-19. This person might also shame us if we don’t put our masks on.

For now, it seems like enough folks (at least in Massachusetts) have bought into the idea that wearing a mask is a sign of public health and compassion toward others.

But regardless of what value you put on wearing a mask (such as “I’m doing this to flatten the curve and help out hospital workers”), when I am wearing a mask, I am othering the folks that walk by me:

I am safe. I don’t know if you’re safe, so I assume that you’re not.

Schrodinger’s Effect.

This process, especially when played out over a long time, has devastating relational consequences. These relational consequences are actually the result of complex physiological processes that impact how we engage with other people.

Schrodinger’s Effect requires the activation of our sympathetic nervous system. Whenever we are in a stressful or perceived/actual unsafe situation, our brain triggers a complex physiological response system, generally resulting in us fleeing a situation, staying in and fighting, or freezing.

The goal of the sympathetic nervous system is to keep us alive. Sometimes, our brains identify danger in a rational way, such as when physical harm or name calling is happening to our bodies. More often than not, our sympathetic nervous system jumps into overdrive and perceives things as way more stressful than they actually are. More in this later in the blog series.

Our sympathetic nervous system is not relational:

  • Fleeing results in avoidance; I’ve noticed, for instance, that whenever I put my mask on, I also don’t make eye contact with the person who passes me. Avoidance prohibits me from engaging in the relationships and conversations that I want to.

  • Fighting results in aggressiveness. I take a stand on something, but the way I do it doesn’t invite others to participate or collaborate with me. Those that do collaborate with me reinforce the othering of those who I don’t trust.

  • Freezing results in inactivity. Freezing may seem relational—other people take care of me or make decisions for me. But I don’t communicate what my actual needs are. The relationship that forms is parent-child rather than peer-peer.

Being relational requires us to access our parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system slows the heart rate, reduces our energy, and relaxes our muscles. These physiological features result in more effective conversations with other folks, as relationship researcher John Gottman notes with his principle of “soft startup”, because it allows us to concretely communicate our thoughts and ideas, hear what the other person is saying, and empathically engage and dialogue between two different perspectives.

Sex also exists in the parasympathetic nervous system. Physiological and psychological arousal both require us to be in states of rest. Erections are all about getting blood to flow to your penis, and the tightening of sphincter and pelvis muscles that happen during anxiety (as well as cardiovascular issues) inhibit blood flow. Psychological arousal and desire generally requires a sense of perceived safety and control.

The physiological process that happens around the relational elements of wearing/not wearing a mask is the physiological process that drives racism.

In the next three blog posts, I want to connect the dots between Schrodinger’s Effect, COVID-19, and racism. I’ll frame racism through Schrodinger’s Effect—we keep people of color disenfranchised by telling communal and national stories that they are dangerous.

For now, I invite you to pay attention to what happens when you take a walk or go out during COVID-19. Ask yourself these questions:

  1. What relationship do you have with your mask? What makes you choose to wear it/not wear it?

  2. What is the internal dialogue that happens when you see people who are wearing a mask? Aren’t wearing a mask? What emotions and assumptions get placed onto these folks?

  3. How do you find yourself engaging relationally with other people when your mask is on? How does that differ from the way that you engage with folks when your mask isn’t on?

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Sex, COVID-19, and Racism: Part 2