Our Dyke Histories | Podcast in RSS.com

Our Dyke Histories

Our Dyke Histories

di Jack Gieseking with Sinister Wisdom

Storia Società e cultura

Stagione 1

The 1980s: Sex, Space, and Survival, with Sarah Schulman, Valarie Walker, & Katherine V. Forrest

Welcome to the 1980s! In the first of two episodes on the decade, Jack Gieseking is joined by novelist and essayist Sarah Schulman, mystery writer Katherine V. Forrest, and activist Valerie Walker to talk dyke bars, queer parties, sex, race and racism, AIDS, activism, and the worlds we made from them. From The Duchess in Greenwich Village and a secret lesbian bar in 1960 Detroit to the 1990s Clit Club in the Meatpacking District, Black and tan bars, sex parties, and the enormous landscape of 1980s organizing, the conversation asks what bars made possible—and who they kept out. We hear about rigid butch-femme roles and the 1980s rethinking, rejecting, and accepting them in different ways, Black and brown exclusion, carding, women-only spaces, trans people finding and making community, and the political transformation brought by HIV/AIDS. The episode moves from New York to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, London, and Hartford, following the networks of people, publications, organizations, bookstores, bars, and parties that held queer communities together. Come for the history, stay for the revolution, gossip, and desire that built us. Lez keep doing it, y’all. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Becca Moses & Sophie McClain Social Media Manager: Audrey Wilkinson Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

The Bars Are Ours: Queer Nightlife, AIDS, and Community in the 1980s & 1990s, with Lucas Hilderbrand

In this episode, Jack talks with historian Lucas Hilderbrand about the transformation of lesbian, queer, and trans nightlife during the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing from Hilderbrand's The Bars Are Ours, the conversation traces the shift from neighborhood lesbian bars and lgbtq bars to super queer parties that reimagined queer community during the early years of the AIDS crisis. Together they explore how queer archives preserve not only places but feelings, how generations inherit different understandings of queerness, and why nightlife became central to survival, activism, and pleasure. The episode moves from San Francisco's explosion of queer parties and Boston's early gay-meets-anti-trans gentrification to Dallas' enduring Sue Ellen's, while considering the economics of bars, the emergence of lesbian chic, interracial and inter-gender and interracial dance spaces, and the rise of queer as a political identity. Throughout, Jack situates these histories within questions of geography, memory, and environmental psychology, showing that queer nightlife has always been about more than entertainment—it is infrastructure for community, intimacy, and imagining better worlds. Topics include: AIDS activism, grief, and joy Queer archives and historical research Lesbian bars and super-parties Race, gender, and inclusion in nightlife The economics of queer space Page Hodel, On Our Backs, and lesbian chic Why queer history is always local Do lesbians cruise? ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Becca Moses & Sophie McClain Social Media Manager: Audrey Wilkinson Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

Sex Work, Bars, and Picnics before Stonewall, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe

In this season one finale, Jack talks with historian Roey Thorpe about lesbian and queer life in Detroit from the 1930s through the early 1970s, before and beyond Stonewall. Centering working-class bars, sex work economies, and informal gathering spaces like softball and picnics, the episode traces how Black and white queer women—especially those who were poor, working-class, and gender nonconforming—built lives under conditions of criminalization, surveillance, and police violence. Thorpe highlights the central role of sex work as labor, survival, and community infrastructure, and shows how bars functioned not only as sites of leisure but as workplaces, political hubs, and mutual aid networks. The conversation foregrounds Detroit as a major site of lesbian and queer history, shaped by industrial labor, racial segregation, and the Great Migration. Together, Jack and Thorpe show that resistance, world-building, and dyke life were already flourishing for decades. The season closes with a powerful reminder: dyke history has always been rooted in labor, risk, pleasure, and the ongoing creation of livable worlds. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Co-Editor: Becca Moses Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

A House Where Black Queers Go, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe

** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Co-Editor: Becca Moses Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

Finding the Movement: Queer Space, Dance, and Survival, 1970s Detroit, Chicago, & Minneapolis with Finn Enke

In part two of their conversation about the 1970s, Jack Gieseking and Finn Enke travel through Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis to ask what it meant to find—and build—lesbian, queer, trans, feminist, and dyke worlds. Public space was never simply public, especially for lezbiqueertrans people: it was a maze of bars, parties, lesbian lines, softball fields, coffee houses, feminist presses, bookstores, shelters, and the pathways between them. Together, Jack and Finn talk about the racial segregation and exclusion built into bars, the violence of ID checking and “looks,” and the ways white feminist spaces often failed to recognize Black, brown, working-class, and trans gender expression. From the Wilder Ones softball team to the protests over the Town House bar, these spaces could last only a few years and still change lives. Finally, Jack and Finn turn toward disability, access, trans presence, aging, and the question of what it means to build spaces where more of us can actually be. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

Dollar Parties, Bookstores, and Constellations of Lezbiqueertrans Life, 1970s Detroit, Chicago, & Minneapolis with Finn Enke

Recorded just before the ICE invasions of the Upper Midwest, this episode takes up queer people’s enduring creativity in making life possible in the Upper Midwest during the 1970s—and why these histories matter urgently now. In this first of a two-part conversation, host Jack Gieseing interviews historian Finn Enke about lesbian, queer, and trans spaces with a focus on Detroit, Minneapolis–St. Paul, and Chicago. Moving beyond bars as isolated sites, the episode explores how networks of movement—what Enke calls “travel stories”—connected house parties, dollar parties, bookstores, coffeehouses, softball fields, warehouses, and bars into living constellations of queer life. Drawing on Enke’s book Finding the Movement, the conversation foregrounds how race, class, gender, music, and the built environment shaped who could gather where, who could dance, and who felt welcome. Particular attention is paid to Black lesbian dollar parties in Detroit, feminist institutions like Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis, the impact of blue laws in Detroit, and the role of print culture such as Lesbian Connection and Dykes to Watch Out For, as well as the economic precarity, feminist organizing, and dancing that structured all of these spaces everywhere. The episode frames queer space not as permanent territory but as fragile, imaginative world-building sustained through movement, care, and resistance. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

Lesbian Potentiality 4ever: Consciousness Raising & the Birth of WOC Feminism, 1970s

Episode 8 of Our Dyke Histories takes us into the revolutionary cultural work of the late 1970s—from consciousness-raising circles to the birth of women of color feminism with all of the work that preceded the creation, production, and envisioning of the most core women's studies text of all time, This Bridge Called My Back. With SaraEllen Strongman, June Thomas, and Maxine Wolfe, host Jack Gieseking explores lesbian archives, lesbian newsletters, house parties, lesbian feminist presses, and dyke bars. All together, these spaces created a vast dyke ecosystem of queer life beyond nightlife alone. The episode spotlights Kitchen Table Press, the Combahee River Collective, and the grassroots publishing networks that preserved lesbian histories and made political coalitions possible. This is the story of how activists labored—in libraries, activist groups, non-profits before they were part of the non-profit industrial complex, prisons, community centers, and bars—to build the world we inherit today. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

Softball, Separatism, and the Shescape Seven, 1970s

Episode 7 of Our Dyke Histories breaks open the messy, brilliant contradictions of 1970s lesbian life. Join host Jack Jen Gieseking in conversation with lifelong activist Maxine Wolfe, historian and podcaster June Thomas, and literary scholar and historian SaraEllen Strongman. Together, they trace a decade shaped by separatism, softball leagues, racist bar door policies, the rise of the Christian Right, and the fierce groundwork of lesbian feminism. From Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children crusade to the Shescape Seven’s battle against racial discrimination, the episode reveals how queers built dyke infrastructures—publishers, collectives, consciousness-raising groups, bookstores, and bars—while fighting right-wing fearmongering that still echoes today. This is the decade where lesbian potentiality explodes. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

The Gender of Desire: Joan Nestle’s Last Interview

In this deeply moving and often electric episode, Our Dyke Histories sits with legendary writer, activist, and Lesbian Herstory Archives co-founder Joan Nestle in her last interview as she reflects on the queer worlds that shaped her life in the 1940s–1960s. Joan guides us through her Friday night walks from a condemned Lower East Side tenement to the Sea Colony bar; the dangers and solidarities of queer street life; the violent policing and erotic possibility inside lesbian bars; and the role of race, class, and labor in shaping queer women’s worlds. Along the way, she brings us into Harlem drag balls with Mabel Hampton, the lesbian feminist relationship to the Women’s House of Detention, the labor histories behind Massachusetts’ Moody Gang, and the erotic power of butch-femme desire. This is Joan Nestle at her usual: always generous, political, and brilliant—offering a vivid map of mid-century queer survival and community. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

Queer Pulp, Dark Bars & the Police State, 1940s-1960s

In this episode of Our Dyke Histories, we travel deep into the smoky lesbian bars, queer parties (house, rent, and otherwise), and clandestine love affairs of the 1940s–60s with three powerhouse historians: Joan Nestle, Hugh Ryan, and Alix Genter. Together, with host Jack Jen Gieseking, they explore how desire itself created new genders, new communities, and new forms of resistance inside spaces policed by the state and shaped by racism, class struggle, and McCarthy-era repression. From Greenwich Village’s lesbian bar circuits to the Women’s House of Detention and the surprising queer history of Coney Island, the episode uncovers the joy, danger, and erotic electricity that defined mid-century queer life. Featuring the first half of Joan Nestle’s final interview, this conversation offers an emotional, intergenerational look at the bars, books, femmes, butches, and bodies that made public lesbian life possible. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time Instagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistories Read and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister Wisdom Email us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

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