Our Dyke Histories

How many lesbian bars were there in the 1980s? How do we know—and what happens when the numbers challenge the story we’ve been telling? In this episode of Our Dyke Histories , host Jack Gieseking sits down with sociologist Greggor Mattson to explain the history, geography, and changing meanings of queer bars across the United States. Greggor's research grew from comparing old editions of the Damro...

What makes a queer bar last—and what happens when we stop expecting a bar to be just a bar? In this episode of Our Dyke Histories , Jack Gieseking returns with Krista Burton , Greggor Mattson , and Theo Greene to explore the changing worlds of dyke bars*. The conversation asks what these spaces need to survive, who gets to feel welcome, and how queer communities can keep building places to gather....

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”...

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 cen...

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 pol...

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, restaur...

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...

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 dan...

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...

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 Cl...

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 explor...

We’re backkkkkkkk. Get ready for the theorists and the activists, the lovers and the fighters, the rock stars and the resistance, the friendships and definitely the f*ckers (of all types) – welcome back to Our Dyke Histories! In this second part of our first season, we are continuing to create and share more of this content we love about dyke bars*, including lesbian bars, queer parties, and trans...

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 nonco...

** 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...

** 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...

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. P...

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 Gi...

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 Chris...

While we'll back next, this short holigays hallo is sharing one of the queerest songs in blues history. Enjoy! B.D. Woman’s Blues Song by Lucille Bogan Coming a time, B.D. women ain't gon' need no men Coming a time, B.D. womens ain't gon' to need no men Oh, the way treat us is a lowdown and dirty sin B.D. women, you sure can't understand B.D. women, you sure can't understand They got a head like a...

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 o...

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 sp...

In this episode of Our Dyke Histories , we continue to follow the astonishing life of Eve Adams into exile — the butch, Jewish, immigrant anarchist who opened Eve’s Hangout , a tea room in 1920s Greenwich Village that became one of the earliest proto–lesbian bars in the United States. Drawing on Jonathan Ned Katz’ s groundbreaking research, Jack Jen Gieseking , Katz, and Julie Enszer trace Eve’s f...

In this episode of Our Dyke Histories , we follow the astonishing life of Eve Adams — the butch, Jewish, immigrant anarchist who opened Eve’s Hangout , a tea room in 1920s Greenwich Village that became one of the earliest proto–lesbian bars in the United States. Drawing on Jonathan Ned Katz’ s groundbreaking research, Jack Jen Gieseking , Katz, and Julie Enszer trace Eve’s friendships with Emma Go...

What if Paris and Berlin were the first great dyke bars*? In Episode Two of Our Dyke Histories , Jack Gieseking, Lillian Faderman, and Cookie Woolner follow the trail of queer women, trans patrons, and gender rebels from Harlem across the U.S. as well into the theaters and hotel parties of Black artists and performers in the U.S. We then head across the Atlantic to trace queer modernisms into the...

Before the first lesbian bars, there were queer worlds built in rented rooms, smoky clubs, and parlor parties. In our premiere episode of Our Dyke Histories , host Jack Gieseking joins historians Lillian Faderman and Cookie Woolner trace the roots of lesbian and queer nightlife to the 1920s—a time before the first official “lesbian bars” in the 1930s, when parties, salons, and underground theaters...