We started by bringing Pride celebrations online: we met the people who don't go to Pride.
When the COVID pandemic shut down Pride events, workshops, festivals, and the places our LGBTQ+ communities congregate, freeQ jumped in...
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freeQ News & Press
The Future is Female and Queer: Women and LGBTQ+ in Tech Launch Sex-Positive Businesses
freeQ and Bloom Community partner to create safer online spaces for LGBTQ+ and sex-positive connections
(ONLINE, September 28, 2021) - Ask any woman what her biggest complaint about dating apps is and she will likely answer: unsolicited dick pics. Ask people outside of cis and whiteness about their experiences on social media, and they will talk about harassment, bullying, and all the -isms. In short, many apps and platforms fail to raise community standards and many are considered unsafe for LGBTQ+ people. CEOs Sarah Massey and Luna Ray want to change that and they are leading a new field of sex-positive tech at freeQ and Bloom Community.
Massey and Ray are both women leaders is sex-positive, kinky, and queer communities developing new technologies to address safety in online connections. Ray ran User Acquisition for Instagram from 700M to past a billion people and believes that the next frontier of software development will be values-led and community-driven. Massey is an East Coast social justice strategist known for making headlines for LGBQT+ rights and leading the Capital Pride Parade on motorcycles. It’s a story of Silicon Valley meeting Washington, DC for a partnership based on bridging the safety gaps left by current social media.
Massey’s platform at freeQ.love offers a virtual video events space with more security and privacy for LGBTQ+ and sex-positive events. Ray’s Bloom Community is sex-positive community and app based around events. The two business leaders were brought together by their sex-positive, kinky clients who saw their potential to team up to be powerhouses. With the Bloom Community app and a freeQ virtual events space, LGBTQ+ and sex-positive event organizers can offer access to audiences outside of IRL events. Businesses are able to nurture audience relationships over space and time.
“Community connections are not only powerful, they are necessary to thriving,” says Massey. “freeQ sets a safer tech stage for people who want to see and be seen in community. You can buy tickets to attend live, interactive queer events at freeQ.love.”
“Bloom is the first sex-positive app that is run as a community with affirmative consent as our leading value, and our meetups reinforce the sense of community and accountability,” says Ray. “You can think of Bloom as a dating app where you can also meet friends, and they are all going to share the values of consent, communication, and respect. People looking to meet sex-positive people and attend events can find it in the app stores as Bloom Community or download it from our website at https://www.joinbloom.community.”
Bloom and freeQ are built by and for the queer communities. Both companies celebrate and center sex-positive and consent culture. Through community standards and reporting processes, users enjoy tech spaces on both platforms curated for their needs as LGBTQ+ and sex-positive people. Bloom works directly with event organizers to offer their audiences access to the app. freeQ offers an online virtual events space for workshops, parties, cons, and so forth.
Bloom Community launched in May of 2021 as a way for people who share sex positive values to meet around community events. Bloom is built for people looking for connection who share Bloom's values (consent, communication, respect). Bloom takes a values-based approach to building social software, directly influenced by sex-positive and queer communities.
freeQ’s live events partnerships range from weekly interview series to monthly workshops, to hosting massive festivals, and everything in between. freeQ is sex-positive, kink-positive, queer, inclusive, and accessible. freeQ launched with its signature event, the Queer Dance Naked Party, in May of 2020. Operating like an online theater, freeQ sells event tickets, markets, stage manages, and can help to produce shows. Partners and freeQ generate earnings through ticket sales.
freeQ and Bloom are teaming up to connect queers all over the globe.
Contact:
Sarah Massey, sarah@freeq.love
Release: freeQ PrideFest is a virtual Pride Party, Queer Arts Happening, and Kink Dungeon online on
June 25, 26, 27, 2021
The first LGBTQ+ live online events platform built for and by the queer community presents freeQ PrideFest with artists and audiences around the globe.
(Online, June 14, 2021) - freeQ is making Pride history by offering the first-ever fully interactive online virtual Pride on new technology built by the LGBTQ+ community for the LGBTQ+ community. The new company, created initially as a response to the Covid pandemic to help LGBTQ+ people stay connected, operates like an online theater or club. freeQ is both developing its own virtual interactive video technology platform and programming its safer online space with phenomenal LGBTQ+ and sex-positive leaders and programs from around the world.
“For Pride 2021, team freeQ and LGTBQ+ leaders and artists are offering a three-day online festival of performances, workshops, and nightclubs for $29.99 per ticket, available at freeQ.love,” says Sarah Massey, freeQ co-founder. “freeQ offers interactive opportunities for queer people to make connections in a time when it’s really hard to do so due to the pandemic. In order to make online activity safer and more fun, freeQ is developing our own spy-free, recording-free, AI-free, biased-algorithms-free, censorship-free LGBTQ+ video tech to host events.”
freeQ PrideFest includes three days of live and interactive dances, parties, workshops, a dating game!, freeQ member forum for chat, all for LGBTQ+ fabulosity and joy. freeQ PrideFest is hosted by: freeQ, International Ms Leather and International Ms Bootblack, Dear Queer Dancer, The Positive Force Team, and Special Forces Shadow Queers. The event includes performances and workshops by: Maryella Marie, Pup Indigo, Diva Darling, Prncss Peach, Manchic, Mx Dream Beautiful, Mademoiselle Ceci Cloutier, Rhapsody Blue, and Killsey Van HellSin. freeQ PrideFest is the first live, interactive, global queer Pride hosted on queer-developed virtual tech!
“freeQ’s mission is creating connections and opportunities for queer joy on a safer online tech,” says Massey. “freeQ PrideFest is embracing the future of online events on a new tech that honors people and refuses to spy on them or use them as commodities. Come to freeQ online events to be transported to a space that loves you for you and wants you to feel free. freeQ means freedom for queers.”
For $29.99, ticket buyers are able to access all of the 18+ hours of live, interactive programming for the weekend and play on freeQ’s new chat forum. In this way, ticket buyers can make new connections both at events and on their own time. freeQ PrideFest ticket holders can dance, learn, connect, and play at events with artists and leaders all over the world. Ticket buyers have the option to purchase gift tickets for those experiencing economic hardship and make a donation to the Juneteenth fund by International Ms Leather and International Ms Bootblack and People of Color in the Kink and Leather Experience to support their programming, for $69.69. Tickets are on sale now and going fast at freeq.love.
Pride’s Canceled — Here’s How Radical Queer Organizers Are Celebrating
by Lindsey Danis for Greatist
“To address the loss of the Capital Pride Parade this year, Massey created Joie de Vivre, a secure platform where LGBTQ and sex-positive people can connect through weekly online dance parties and other events, including The Future is Queer Online Pride Celebration. …
“‘When I think of Pride, I think about booty shorts and cute outfits, or Burning Man and play parties — who are we and who do we want to be? Can we not be more liberated being naked?’” Massey asks. To protect guest privacy, Massey worked with a developer to ensure content couldn’t be recorded. (more.)
Queer Tech Ensures That Our Parties Can Rage On
by Sondra Rose Marie for Tagg Magazine, Sept 12, 2020
“Massey enlisted members of the LGBTQ community to aid her in creating a platform that catered to untethered expression. Where Facebook censors bodies, forbidding users to publish images of nipples and genitalia, Joie De Vivre celebrates nudity. Where Zoom lacks security, Joie De Vivre makes every effort to ensure it—requiring all users to agree to the platform’s privacy policies.
So what’s it like to attend a virtual dance party? Well, it’s a lot like attending a physical one. A DJ spins popular songs as participants dance to the beat, partygoers are able to chat privately or with the whole group, and fun costumes are encouraged and celebrated. What Joie De Vivre contributes that differs from queer culture pre-COVID is a near-universal level of accessibility: participants can enjoy cocktails or remain as sober as they please, physical ability doesn’t determine if one can enter the party, and finances don’t automatically stop anyone from attending….
“‘What I’ve learned from the older queer community is that we have a resiliency that keeps us going,” says Massey. “After a protest, a sit-in, or a big win, we party and build up our communities and ourselves so we can continue to fight. Joie De Vivre provides the virtual space to keep that tradition alive.’” (more)
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