Welcome to the Men In Touch Blog!

Men In Touch is a community of men who love men, who are devoted to learning and growing our abilities to learn the language of touch, intimacy and sexuality. Using tools like consent, empowered choice and voice, expressing emotion and desire, setting appropriate boundaries, the elements of touch, the three rooms of embodied pleasure (sexuality, sensuality, intimacy) and trusting pleasure, we are helping to create a new culture of connection and embodied love.

I'll be expanding on these topics in the upcoming months and years, but I wanted to start this blog out explaining who I am and why I am doing this.

My name is Daka Ziji, but I go by Ziji. Although Men In Touch is composed of a team of teachers, I am the main organizer holding it together. When I first started teaching with Men In Touch in 2015, Sequoia was the lead teacher and organizer. Sequoia held the container with integrity and devotion through a period of gay history that was heart-wrenching: the AIDS epidemic. Especially in the '80s and '90s, there was an emphasis on how men who love men could have nourishing erotic contact that was safe.

Over time, as the larger culture deepened into greater maturity, the emphasis shifted from safety to finding quality touch that nourished not only body, but. heart and soul. The fire of sexuality - as powerful as it was - was not enough to sustain erotic friendship and community. Sexuality is like kindling - it can catch quickly when the conditions are right, and it burns bright! But, it is fickle, and can burn out as quickly as it started. In order to sustain deeper and longer connections, we need fuel sources that produce slow and steady heat. These are where sensuality, intimacy and subtelty play an important role. We also need relational tools to navigate the complex emotions that arise in ongoing question. How do we accept a friend's boundaries without taking it personally? How do we hold the inevitable moments where a lover disappoints us? Can we part amicably when our desires diverge? What does accountability look like when a boundary is crossed?

Sequoia was one of my most cherished erotic lovers, and he died in September 2024. In the intervening two years, I have lain low to the earth and tried to put my ear to the ground. I have still been teaching, but in the midst of a rapidly changing society, I'm trying to understand where our community needs to go to meet this moment. Humanity is at a great crossroads, and at the centre of a number of paradoxes. We've never been so hyperconnected, and so disconnected and lonely, at the same time. We've never been more powerful as a species to alter the course of our planet, and yet we also feel a deep powerlessness in the face of systems that feel out of control. At least in modern history, we men who love men have never been so free to explore and express our sexuality, while we walk into a world that is more disembodied and body insecure. To me, the medicine of this moment is about creating a model of erotic friendship and erotic community that create nourishing experiences of body, heart and soul.

An organization like Men In Touch is rare. Very few cities in North America, never mind the world, have ongoing events that are oriented to erotic community that emphasize support for all bodies, containers that prioritize sobriety, and a focus on learning and personal growth. Vancouver, relative to other cities, is small city, so to keep Men In Touch alive takes more intentionality and commitment. It would be easy to let it wither. I'm asking you to consider what matters the most to you, and what's the world you want to create for the queer ones being born today? How can we create stronger community bonds that will amplify the unique medicine and magic we bring to the world? How do we bring into being a world based on love, dignity and empowered choice? I'm hoping to keep asking these questions and offering my own insights as a sacred intimate, sex worker, queer whore, man who loves men, teacher, spiritual practitioner and lover of the world.