Looking for lesbians: a cross-country road story

On May 21^st I flew to New York, six days after graduating with my masters and twelve hours after dropping my stuff at my parents’ house. Two months later, I am preparing to board a plane back to Indiana after visiting 30 states plus Washington D.C to create partnerships between local restaurants and local LGBT community centers and organizations through the BLgT USA tour, a 50 state food tour pairing the classic BLT sandwich with LGBT rights. And on the side, I had a lot of fun.

Growing up in a small town in Indiana, I didn’t have many queer friends until college. My small, Lutheran college may not seem like the place to find a bunch of young queer folks, but I’ve learned that queer people turn up in seemingly unlikely places. After crossing most of the country, that has only been reaffirmed.

For me, cities for me have long represented the place where I go to find “my people.” Whether it’s New York, Boston, LA, Portland, or Minneapolis/St. Paul, I have relished the opportunity to live in a place where I was not one of three queer kids running around. But across the country, queer people are living everywhere, in Huntsville, Alabama, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Louisville, Kentucky. In all of these places, however, a common theme arose in my conversations with locals: queer women often don’t know how or where to meet each other (except for Tinder and OKCupid).

The saga of dying lesbian or queer women’s bars is well documented, fitting into the larger narrative of the loss of gay bars from cities across the country. Queer men, who are also affected by this loss, continue to retain a social infrastructure through apps like grindr and scruff, whereas women struggle to find the same virtual connection points with Tinder, OKCupid, and a slew of “girl social apps” that never really took off. In some ways, the decline of queer-specific places is a good thing, as it might point to an increase in acceptance throughout the country so that these havens are no longer needed as safe zones in an otherwise unwelcoming world. But this phenomenon could also reflect the culture of assimilation within mainstream LGBTQ communities and the desire to mute our differences.

It’s definitely both.

What fascinates me, however, is that while LGBTQ nightlife spaces are slowly shutting down, lesbian bars have already almost disappeared, even in larger cities. Portland, Oregon saw its lesbian bar close in 2011, Pi, in Minneapolis closed in 2008, and T’s in Chicago shut it doors in 2009.  And this happens while queer men’s focused nightlife continues in those cities, or thrives in the case of Boystown and its strip of bars, including favorites Sidetrack and Replay. In many cities, lesbian dance nights at mainstream venues or gay bars have begun to replace designated spaces for queer women, organized by individual DJs and/or party promoters, much like the Flip Phone in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

When I walked into First Avenue for the Flip Phone XXL party on Saturday, I had no idea what to expect. By 11:30, the venue had filled with 1200 people dancing to music from the “flip phone era” (1996-2006). Many were queer, and some were not, but mostly everyone had an amazing time. No Gaga, no rainbow, just a really great time focused on people.

I had a blast, but I did actually miss the rainbow. And I also missed the women.

Unlike many “gay” places I’ve visited in the states east of the Mississippi this summer, many women packed the space, but it was different. We were all roughly the same age, and already dancing in our groups of friends scattered across the dance floor. Some folks were visibly queer and/or making out with people of the same sex, others were not people I immediately read as queer. Maybe they were straight, maybe not, but in that space it didn’t quite matter.  For the queer millennial generation, these meshed  spaces have come to reflect our everyday lives. We hang out with straight people, queer people, cisgender people and trans people.

Flip Phone is definitely marketed towards queer people, with events at Pride and things billed in a more “takeover” style of an area, or queering up spaces that are not otherwise denoted as queer bars, beaches, etc, but no where in event invites – unless its in the title – is there a giant stamp stating that these parties are for and by queer people, making it a potentially less intimidating space for straight people, which is pretty cool. There’s a part of me, however, that still loves when my straight friends came to a queer space, and not in the bachelorette party way. As a visibly queer person, I move through the world and am constantly noticed. I feel stares at bars that tell me I am perhaps not welcome, and I have no idea if any of the women are attracted to other women. When a straight friend willingly sits in their discomfort, and temporarily relinquishes a portion of their privilege, it’s a very different gesture than attending a probably-queer-but-everyone-is-welcome party.

I don’t think dance parties are a bad thing. Hell, it is my (now not so) secret ambition to host a few of them in my lifetime. I am just also wondering what we’re missing and what we’ve given up. It feels disrespectful to wish for the days where LGBTQ spaces were always needed because of a lack of safety, and I also crave them as a small town kid looking to find community as I step into my big kid job. These are the types of things we will have to grapple with as we continue to move towards lived equality and acceptance. How can we do that and keep culture and spaces as well? I’m looking for the answer, and also for queer friends.

Header image credit: New York Times