Our Dyke Histories

Our Dyke Histories

by Jack Gieseking with Sinister Wisdom

History Society & Culture

Season 1

Pulse, Trump, and the Politics of Queer Space, 2010s-2025 with Krista Burton, Theo Greene & Greggor Mattson

What happens to queer nightlife when the bar is no longer just a place to drink, cruise, or hook up—but one of the places where we figure out how to be together? In this episode of Our Dyke Histories, Jack Gieseking talks with Krista Burton, Greggor Mattson, and Theo Greene about lesbian bars, queer spaces, and the changing social life of the 2010s and 2020s. They begin with the supposed “death” of the lesbian bar and the revival that is still happening, The conversation moves through the Obama years and the Trump era, the Pulse nightclub and Club Q shootings, COVID lockdowns, and the ways political danger can make queer spaces feel newly necessary. They talk about mutual aid, the role bars played during crisis, and what happened when a generation came of age during lockdown without nightlife as part of its route into queer community. Then there are the apps; what happens when we forget how to make small talk? Krista talks about “lesbian bar etiquette,” including the famous art of leaning and staring. Greggor argues that bars work best when they cultivate community rather than simply provide a hookup space. Theo reminds us that dancing, music, and shared activity can be their own kind of icebreaker. And of course, there’s drag bingo, viewing parties, karaoke, Olympic rugby, dildo races, lube wrestling, and the collective effervescence of watching something ridiculous together. Because queer nightlife isn't dead. We just have to remember how to talk to each other. ** 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 Party on Tuesday: The Space-Time of Black Queer Women, 2000s-2020s with Kemi Adeyemi and Nikki Lane

What happens when we age out of the club, but don't age out of wanting to party? In part two of this conversation on Black queer women and Black trans folks, Jack Gieseking talks with Nikki Lane and Kemi Adeyemi about house parties, queer nightlife vs/& queer afternoonlife, aging, and the many ways Black queer people continue to make space for themselves. House parties have always been central to Black queer space-making. At home, you get to decide who is there, what music plays, and what can and cannot happen. For trans folks in particular, the house can offer an alternative to navigating transphobia in public nightlife. The conversation connects contemporary house parties to a much longer history of Black queer women throwing salons, house parties, and rent parties. They also talk about drinking and the growing desire for sober or alternative spaces. They dig deep to explore the racialized space-time of queer nightlife—and the remarkable labor of finding one another when the party keeps moving. It is not just the timing of these parties, but their mobility, though sometimes difficult to find, that allowed these parties to flourish. But this is also Black LGBTQ+ people's labor, to stay flexible, constantly track parties, and be mobile enough to get to them. Because while the spaces may change, and the parties may change, Black queer women and trans people will keep finding a way to them. ** 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.

Black Queer Women, Parties, and the Right to the City, 2000s-2020s with Kemi Adeyemi and Nikki Lane

What does it take to make a Black queer space? What happens when the bar isn’t necessarily the "bar"?And what happens when the space you have is temporary, expensive, gentrifying, imperfect—or all four at once? In this episode of Our Dyke Histories, Jack Gieseking brings together two leading scholars of Black queer women’s spaces. Nikki Lane and Kemi Adeyemi research Black queer women and the politics of partying in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Together, they rethink the relationship between queer parties, lesbian bars, race, racism, music, and the city. From mega clubs and warehouse parties to smaller bar takeovers and itinerant queer parties, Nikki and Kemi unpack gentrification, race, class, sexuality, gender, and the relentless labor required to create a space where people can actually have a good time. They ask why parties can sometimes be more flexible—and more sustainable—than permanent bars, and how the dance floor becomes a place to negotiate a right to the city. Along the way, we talk about homophobia, transphobia, class politics, party organizing, political expectations, and the imperfect realities of queer community. Because sometimes the politics are messy, the venue is terrible, the rent is rising—and we still find a way to party. Black queer women and trans folks keep finding ways to have a great time. They keep making space. And they keep finding ways to party. ** 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.

Did The L Word Kill the Lesbian Bar?: Trish Bendix, Katherine Griffiths, & Mairead Sullivan, 1990s-2000s

Did The L Word kill the lesbian bar? In the second part of our ’90s and ’00s series, Jack Gieseking is joined by Mairead Sullivan, Katherine Griffiths, and Trish Bendix to discuss this and many other complicated questions. Lesbian bars began declining in the 1990s, but the episode looks beyond the easy story of changing sexuality or television culture. Racism, gentrification, rising rents, restaurant groups, globalization, changing drinking habits, smoking bans, and the growing fragility of nightlife all transformed queer space. Race and gender are central to this story. Trish discusses Chicago’s Black lesbian spaces and the emergence of Nobody’s Darling and Dorothy’s, while Katherine describes the role of Black music and Black women’s organizing in London nightlife—and the racism that could still determine who was allowed through the door. Camp Trans and the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival become a major site of conflict and organizing, while more and more trans-centered parties and spaces emerge. The conversation asks what happens when identities and communities don't stay neatly inside the categories we inherited. The question isn't simply where the lesbian bars went. It's what happened to the worlds around them, and what new worlds people built in their place. Because spaces don't just disappear...sometimes they evolve. ** 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.

Lesbian Chic, Dyke Politics: Trish Bendix, Katherine Griffiths, & Mairead Sullivan, 1990s-2000s

Welcome to dyke bars* in the 1990s and the 2000s! Jack Gieseking joins Mairead Sullivan, Katherine Griffiths, and Trish Bendix to talk about queer parties, lesbian bars, identity, sex, music, and the changing geography of queer life. From My Sister’s Room in Atlanta and Tease in Chicago to London’s Royal Oak, San Francisco’s Lexington Club, and Boston’s Diesel Cafe, they ask what makes a space a dyke bar—and what makes it feel like home. The conversation moves through women’s nights, DIY parties, bookstores, health centers, dancing, trans inclusion and exclusion, aging, race, and the economics of keeping queer spaces alive. They explore how lesbian bars were represented in indie films including Chasing Amy, Go Fish, Bound, Boys on the Side, and The First Wives Club. The episode digs in to lesbian chic, the 1993 Dyke March on Washington, language, and the biomedicalization of “lesbian.” Through it all, bars emerge as spaces of possibility, projection, connection, 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: 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.

How to Be an Activist: the 1980s from Auntie Valerie Walker

In this extra 1980s episode of Our Dyke Histories, Jack Gieseking sits down again with one of his favorite people. activist and artist, legendary Auntie Valerie Walker to talk about bars, dancing, organizing, racism, AIDS, ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers, and the queer joy that keeps us connected. Valerie remembers Garbo’s, The Duchess, Henrietta’s, Cubbyhole, Nanny’s, and the bars where she danced so hard that they paid her to keep the party going. For her, the bar was never just a place to drink. It was where people met across differences, found one another, shared information, organized, hooked up, and made community. The conversation moves from the racism Valerie experienced inside ACT UP to her work with the Lesbian Avengers, including a delightfully thorough protest involving phone trees, Dyke TV, Hershey’s Kisses, and a whole lot of kissing. And underneath it all is Valerie's call to keep building who all lezbiqueertrans people can call Auntie Yes. She leaves us with mic drop wisdom and love: "Joy is a connector." "We deserve everything." And "the bar scene is its own movement." ** 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.

But Do We Get to Stay?: Sex, Gentrification, and the 1980s, with Sarah Schulman, Katherine V. Forrest, & Valarie Walker

In this episode of Our Dyke Histories, we keep rocking through the 1980s: sex wars, lesbian bars, gentrification, bookstores, health centers, fiction, and the complicated work of building community. Jack Gieseking talks with Katherine V. Forrest, Sarah Schulman, and Valerie Walker about the places where queer people found one another—and what happened when those places changed. We visit Crazy Nanny’s, the only Black lesbian bar in Greenwich Village, the Christopher Street Pier, lesbian health centers, and the W.O.W. Café. We talk about bars as community, sobriety and the economics of keeping spaces alive, and the ways racism and class shaped who could gather. We also tackle (or are tackled by) the sex wars: the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality, Women Against Pornography (the other WAP), pro-sex feminism, BDSM, leather, On Our Backs, and the essentialism versus social construction debate. We see gentrification begin to rear its head against and with queers just as the AIDS crisis evolves. In the end, we turn to representation and ask the enduring question: do we get to stay? ** 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 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.

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