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?

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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/

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