Love is such a powerful force. It’s there for everyone to embrace-that kind of unconditional love for all of humankind. That is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others, to take risks for what they believe in.

– Coretta Scott King

I want to talk about love.
And bathhouses
You could say, I fell in love at the bathhouse, which some might consider quite pedestrian, as bathhouses are for anonymous fucking and all.
But I fell in love with myself and community activism at the bathhouse. I fell in love with my own body in those spaces, and I became deeply committed to community because of my volunteer work planning bathhouse events. I fell in love with the movement to make all our relationships, sexual and otherwise, better.
You might be asking, which movement exactly? And I would reply ‘The Queer Movement.’ I know, the mainstream idea of the queer movement is about equal rights and access, to be seen as acceptable within individuals’ minds and systems that perpetuate the status quo. But the essence of 2Spirit, Queer and Trans movements, and bathhouses as part of that movement, is love. The freedom to give it and receive it, as we are and how we want.
And I know, you know this.
Because after the last two years, whether you are a privileged, queer, polyamourous, Brown settler on Turtle Island like myself, or you are any gender or any sexuality and reside on Indigenous land, we are all looking to feel loved. And might I add, touched.
Today, in times when we’ve been deprived of touch, when police are being called to be defunded and war is being waged (again), now more than ever, we need places to love freely.
Volunteering for the Toronto Women’s Bathhouse Committee and the Pussy Palace events, or the Pleasure Palace as it was later renamed, was a time when committee members and volunteers worked on more than events that orchestrated public sex. We worked to honour the presence of gender and racially diverse bodies in those spaces and, above all, to co-create spaces for connection, community care and love.
How did my work on a bathhouse committee teach me about love in activism? How did it sway me from the narrow understandings of the fight for freedom through feminist, anti-oppression lenses or mere academic pedagogy?
People, touch and lap dancing.
Allow me to start with ‘people.’ Back in 2006, a Black femme lesbian mentor of mine invited me to get involved with the committee to plan the first-ever BIPOC bathhouse.
Queer communities have a long history with mentorship (and bathhouses!) and my suspicion is, it’s because we need them. We don’t have enough diverse and positive 2SLGBTQ spaces, role models and representations in the world. When my mentor invited me to the organizing space of the Toronto Women’s Bathhouse Committee, she empowered my ability to make the link between fighting oppression and generating our own political sites of pleasure, literally.
Another thing I want to name about how people helped drive a force of love and sexual freedom is, the community itself.
My need to belong is just as strong as it was when I was organizing bathhouse events. And it looks different now, as life stages go. Back then, I knew a lot of people. And we all wanted to be seen as desirable. As Black, Indigenous, women and trans folk of colour, we didn’t want to explain our beauty anymore, nor our human need to be who we are, as we are. And loved because of that. So, what better way to make more solid that intention than to throw a party?
But not just any type of party. One where consent ruled, BIPOC people dictated the guidelines, and touch and respect were paramount. And if it tickled our fancy, we could fall in love for 15 minutes on the dance floor or bring that body home for coffee in the morning. By attending and volunteering, the community itself built spaces where radical sex and love could thrive.
We need healthy connection and consensual touch more than ever. Touch helps us grow empathy in the brain, it releases oxytocin, it strengthens bonds in all relationships and it just feels good, when it’s right. Touch can be a pillar of connection and love.
The final point I would like to make about the relevancy of queer histories through my work in Toronto bathhouses, is about lap dancing. I did mention I fell in love with my own damn self, didn’t I?
I’ve never danced for money. I’ve only ever danced in private spaces with lovers or as a volunteer for attendees at Pleasure Palace events. And there are several things that volunteer lap dancing did for me (and hopefully for others, wink, wink).
Lap dancing at bathhouse events helped me love my squishy, Brown, size 12 body. I never believed I could be a dancer at mainstream strip clubs, but among ‘my people,’ where there existed safer space guidelines, and celebration of all bodies and identities, I could dance to my heart’s content. Through lap dancing for folks at the bathhouse, I saw my sexuality and body more positively.
So, love was all over that historical work in queer community. While I was only part of a fraction of time the committee work happened, and I didn’t make a penny from it nor was it something I could put on my resume, it fostered love of self, community and love in my activist work today.
And today, I’m a 43-year-old mom, who’s partnered and still poly, still queer and been touch-deprived like most of us these past two years.
And my need to feel touch, to give love and receive it, continues to pulsate as strongly as an organ after orgasm.

Deb Singh is a Counselor and Activist at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre Multicultural Women Against Rape (TRCCMWAR) and the President of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres (OCRCC). As a cisgender, queer, settler of colour on Turtle Island, located in Tkaronto, Deb has spent two decades making connections with political movements and our human needs for kindness and love. Her first true love is writing and she finds comfort sitting by a lake.