Arts & Entertainment
AIDS and the arts
From the Quilt to Hollywood to Broadway, pop culture helped us make sense of grief, loss
The cast of ‘The Normal Heart’ at Arena Stage. The show, a groundbreaking dramatization of the early years of the AIDS crisis in New York, runs through July 29. (Photo by Scott Suchman; courtesy Arena)
The International AIDS Conference in Washington offers an opportunity to look back at how artists have responded to the disease. Since the very first days of the crisis, artists of all kinds have actively responded, both in their artistic works and as fundraisers and activists.
THE NAMES PROJECT AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT
The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, on display throughout the city through the month of July, is the largest community art project in the world. More than 48,000 panels have been created by lovers, family members and friends to memorialize those who have died of AIDS. The Quilt has redefined the traditional folk-art of quilt-making into a modern art form that serves as a memorial, a tool for education, a work of art and a call to arms. Each of the panels has been photographically preserved in the AIDS Memorial Quilt Archive. About 14 million around the world have seen panels from the Quilt.
The Quilt has its root in a powerful piece of political theater. While preparing for the annual candlelight march honoring Harvey Milk and George Moscone in 1985, San Francisco activist Cleve Jones was shocked to learn that more than 1,000 people in the city had already died of AIDS. He asked his friends to bring placards with the names of the dead to the march. After the march, the activists taped the placards to the side of the San Francisco Federal Building and realized that the signs now looked like a patchwork quilt. Inspired by the sight, Jones and his friends made plans for a larger memorial and in 1986 Jones created the first quilt panel in honor of his friend Marvin Feldman.
THE ART OF ACTIVISM
One of the remarkable features of the fight against AIDS has been the ability to use visual art to generate a powerful public response. This was especially true for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), an international direct action advocacy group that worked to impact the lives of people with AIDS. Founded in New York City in 1987, the leaderless anarchist network effectively combined powerful direct action protests with provocative visual images to effectively generate media attention for their cause.
Veteran media activist Cathy Renna, who describes herself as “coming out and coming of age” when ACT UP was forming, says the global impact of the group came from its ability to use visual art to drive home a message.
“They had people like Ann Northrup and Larry Kramer who understood the media really well and who understood the power of images,” Renna says. “They created iconic images that demanded the attention of the media and became embedded in the minds of people.”
Renna notes that the members of ACT UP really showed the power of visual art to move people and the power of creativity and humor to reach people.
“Not everyone agreed with their tactics, but at the end of the day none of us can argue with the indelible impact they had on the public perception of AIDS and the entire LGBT movement,” she says.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
For centuries, there’s been a debate about how well classical music can respond to specific cultural events. Gay composer John Corigliano leapt into this fray when he wrote his Symphony No. 1 in 1991 as a response to the AIDS epidemic.
“During the past decade I have lost many friends and colleagues to the AIDS epidemic, Corigliano writes in his notes to the first recording of the symphony. “My First Symphony was generated by feelings of loss, anger and frustration.”
Corigliano, best known for his opera “The Ghost of Versailles” and his Oscar-winning score for “The Red Violin,” says that the form of his AIDS symphony was inspired by a viewing of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.
“A few years ago I was extremely moved when I first saw ‘The Quilt,’ an ambitious interweaving of several thousand fabric panels, each memorializing a person who had died of AIDS, and most importantly, each designed and constructed by his or her loved ones,” he wrote. “This made me want to memorialize in music those I have lost, and reflect on those I am losing.”
THEATER
Perhaps no other artistic medium has been as responsive to the AIDS crisis as theater. From ground-breaking pieces like Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” (an Arena Stage production runs through July 29) and William Hoffman’s “As Is” to such recent works as “The Book of Mormon.” The theatrical community has been deeply involved in the artistic and activist response to AIDS. Here’s a sampling of plays and musicals that have AIDS as a central theme.
Justin Kirk and Emma Thompson in the HBO adaptation of ‘Angels in America.’ (Photo courtesy HBO)
“Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” Part One of Tony Kushner’s sprawling epic (“Millennium Approaches”) opened on Broadway in May 1993, and Part Two (“Perestroika”) followed in November of that year. The play centers on Prior Walter, a gay man in Manhattan who has just been diagnosed with AIDS as the play opens. Over the course of the seven-hour theatrical extravaganza, Prior is abandoned by his lover Louis, who leaves him for a closeted Republican lawyer; befriends the Mormon’s mother and wife, who takes Valium in “wee little fistfuls,” is nursed by his ex-lover, the fierce snap queen Belize; and, is visited by an angel who wants to recruit him as a prophet. The play won the Pulitzer Prize and several Tony Awards and was adapted into both an award-winning movie by HBO Films and an opera by Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös.
“The Normal Heart” by Larry Kramer was one of the earliest plays to deal with AIDS. Now playing at Arena Stage, the play is a thinly veiled autobiography of the author and the founding of Gay Men’s Health Crisis.
“Before It Hits Home” by Cheryl West was one of the first dramas to focus on the impact of AIDS on the African-American community. Wendal is a bisexual jazz musician who denies his sexual encounters with men even after he is diagnosed with AIDS. He tries to hide the truth from his pregnant girlfriend and his married boyfriend, but as his health deteriorates, he is forced to return to his family and confess the truth.
“Rent” is Jonathan Larson’s hit musical and a loose adaptation of Puccini’s “La Boehme” set on the lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 1980s. Larson’s musical landscape includes a variety of artists in a variety of straight and LGBT sexual situations. Many of the characters have AIDS and the Act II opener, “Seasons of Love” has become a popular anthem for the fight against AIDS.
The musical “Falsettos,” produced in Washington in 2010 by the now-closed Ganymede Arts, brings together two one-act musicals by William Finn written a decade apart. In “March of the Falsettos,” Marvin moves in with his male lover Whizzer, much to the distress of his ex-wife, his psychiatrist and his son. In “Falsettoland,” the extended family, now including “the lesbians from next door,” reunite to support Whizzer and Marvin as they deal with an AIDS diagnosis.
Perhaps most noticeably in theater, it’s possible to also trace how AIDS dramas have evolved over the years.
“’The Normal Heart’ was so significant in its time, but it’s dated now because the disease has changed so much,” says David Jobin, executive director of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, a group that along with its sister choruses has also dealt extensively with AIDS themes. “You see plays now, like ‘Octopus’ by Steve Yockey and it’s dealing with how different generations have responded to the crisis. We now have a whole generation of people whose experience is different and it’s not about loss at all. … all people could concentrate on in ‘The Normal Heart’ was grieving, so it’s become like ‘The Dollhouse,’ a great period piece but not really relevant to today. Which is great in a way that something that’s only 20 years old can already seem so dated. It shows how far we’ve come in treating the disease.”
Jobin says the greatest examples of AIDS-themed art transcend their subject matter.
“You watch something like the HBO adaptation of ‘Angels in America,’ and it becomes so much more than just a statement about AIDS,” he says. “It’s a tour de force for great acting and it’s in a league of its own. I can’t think of a musical or other work that even comes close.”
ARTISTS AS ACTIVISTS
The theatrical community, and the performing arts community in general, have also been incredibly effective at blending art and activism. For example, since 1987 Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has been raising awareness and funds for AIDS organizations throughout the country. Their popular fundraisers include Broadway Bares, Broadway Barks, Broadway Bears, the annual Easter Bonnet and Gypsy of the Year competitions and the Fire Island Dance Festival.
One of the group’s most effective efforts has been its collaboration with the International Thespian Society, a national network of high school theater troupes. Starting in 1999, high school thespians have organized audience appeals, bucket brigades, silent auctions and special performances to raise money to fight AIDS.
During their annual festival in July 2012, Joe Norton, Broadway Cares’ director of education and outreach, announced that the student artists and activists had raised more than $1 million to support organizations in their communities.
“Thespians know how to effect change by working together and celebrating their love of theater,” Norton says. “And, in the process, they become leaders who raise awareness about HIV/AIDS where they live, while making a difference for so many people in need in their local communities and around the country.”
TELEVISION
Sometimes the artistic response to AIDS has been more about context than content. The popular nighttime ABC soap opera “Dynasty” was groundbreaking in its portrayal of Steven Carrington, the openly gay son of a wealthy Denver oil clan. But its role in the emerging AIDS crisis was due to an off-screen drama.
In 1984, closeted gay Hollywood icon Rock Hudson was cast as Daniel Reece, father of the scheming Sammy Jo Carrington (Heather Locklear). Hudson’s character had a romantic interest in Krystle Carrington, played by series star Linda Evans. Although viewers gossiped about Hudson’s gaunt appearance and producers were worried enough about Hudson’s health to write his character out of the series, no one blinked an eye when Hudson and Evans shared an on-screen kiss.
That changed on July 25, 1985 when Hudson publicly announced that he had AIDS, the first celebrity to reveal his HIV status. He learned that he had AIDS while he was appearing on “Dynasty,” and the soap set suddenly became the focus of a public health controversy. The CDC warned the public about exchanging saliva with members of high-risk groups. Aaron Spelling and the producers of “Dynasty” offered to arrange for AIDS tests for the entire cast. The Screen Actors Guild wrote new rules to regulate on-screen kisses.
Hudson’s revelation, and the subsequent revelation of his homosexuality, suddenly put a public face on the disease and his death on Oct. 2, 1985 set the stage for the first television movie on AIDS. On Nov. 11, 1985, NBC broadcast “An Early Frost” starring Aidan Quinn as Michael Pearson, a successful Chicago lawyer who has not told his colleagues and family about his lover Peter Hilton (D.W. Moffett). When he’s diagnosed with AIDS, he’s forced to go home and tell his family the truth about himself.
MOVIES
A short sampler of independent and mainstream movies that have dealt directly with the AIDS crisis include:
“Parting Glances,” Bill Sherwood’s moving 1986 indie film that was one of the first to deal with AIDS. Richard Ganoung plays Michael who is dealing with concurrent crises: caring for his ex-lover Nick (Steve Buscemi) while his lover Robert (John Bolger) is preparing to leave for a two-year work assignment in Africa.
Tom Hanks (left) and Denzel Washington in ‘Philadelphia,’ a 1993 AIDS-themed Jonathan Demme movie. (Still courtesy TriStar Pictures)
“Philadelphia,” Jonathan Demme’s 1993 drama that was among the first mainstream Hollywood movies to deal with AIDS. Tom Hanks won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Andrew Beckett, a closeted lawyer who is fired from his conservative law office when his partners learn he has AIDS. Denzel Washington plays Joe Miller, a homophobic lawyer who helps Beckett sue his former law firm.
“Longtime Companion,” is a 1990 film that takes its title from the homophobic term used by the New York Times and other newspapers to refer to the surviving partners of deceased gay men. It chronicles the early years of the AIDS epidemic from the 1981 article on the mysterious disease occurring among gay men to the beginnings of AIDS activism.
“Tongues Untied” is Marlon Riggs’ stunning 1989 film sought to “shatter the nation’s silence on matters of sexual and racial difference.” It combines documentary footage with fictional stories and episodes from Riggs’ life, as well as footage from civil rights marches and a homophobic stand-up routine by comedian Eddie Murphy.
FICTION
Since the 1980s, countless novelists have tackled the topic of AIDS. From early efforts, such as Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” series to recent books such as Edmund White’s “Jack Holmes and His Friend,” the novel has been a fertile ground for exploring the devastating impact of AIDS on individuals and their society.
One of the most controversial has been “People in Trouble” by lesbian writer and activist Sarah Schulman. The novel deals with a love triangle among artists in the East Village. The controversy, however, arose from Schulman’s accusation that Jonathan Larson lifted the gay plot of “Rent” from her novel. In her 1998 book “Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America,” she details the similarities between the two works and critiques how Larson depicts LGBT people and people with AIDS.
Examples
THEATER
Terrence Mc Nally, “Love! Valour! Compassion!”
Cheryl West, “Before It Hits Home”
William Finn, “Falsettos”
William Hoffman, “As Is”
Jonathan Larson, “Rent”
Paula Vogel, “The Baltimore Waltz”
Paul Rudnick, “Jeffrey”
Harvey Fierstein, “Safe Sex”
Larry Kramer, “The Normal Heart” and “The Destiny of Me”
Tony Kushner, “Angels in America”
Robert Lopez, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, “The Book of Mormon”
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS
POETRY
Mark Doty, “My Alexandria”
Essex Hemphill, “Ceremonies”
Marie Howe, “What the Living Do”
Paul Monette, “Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog”
Rafael Campo, “What the Body Told”
Tim Dlugos, “Powerless”
Tory Dent, “What Silence Equals”
TELEVISION
“An Early Frost”
“Dynasty”
“Another World”
“As The World Turns”
“Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt”
“And The Band Played On”
“The Real World”
“Any Mother’s Son”
“In The Gloaming”
FICTION
Christopher Bram, “In Memory of Angel Clare”
Sarah Schulman, “People in Trouble”
Alice Hoffman, “At Risk”
Armistead Maupin, “Tales of the City”
Paul Monette, “Afterlife”
Edmund White, “Jack Holmes and his Friend”
Dale Peck, “Martin and John”
E. Lynn Harris, “Invisible Life”
Felice Picano, “Like People in History”
Sapphire, “Push”
David B. Feinberg, “Spontaneous Combustion”
Samuel R. Delaney, “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals”
Geoff Ryman, “Was”
CLASSICAL MUSIC
John Corigliano, “Symphony No. 1”
“Classical Action”
MUSIC
“NakedMen”
“Exile”
“Metamorphosis”
“In This Life” by Madonna (from “Erotica”)
ARTS ACTIVISM
ACT UP
Broadway Cares
Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt
ESSAY
Susan Sontag, “AIDS and Its Metaphors”
Larry Kramer, “The Tragedy of Today’s Gays”
MEMOIRS
Paul Monette, “Borrowed Time”
Reinaldo Areñas, “Before Night Falls”
Mark Doty, “Heaven’s Coast”
Derek Jarman, “At Your Own Risk”
Jamaica Kincaid, “My Brother”Paula W, Peterson, “Women in the Grove”
John Preston, “Winter’s Light”
David Wojnarowicz, “In the Shadow of the American Dream”
PERFORMANCE ART
Ron Athey
Ron Vawter
David Drake
MOVIES
“Longtime Companions”
“Parting Glances”
“Paris is Burning”
“Philadelphia”
“Patient Zero”
“The Living End”
“The Hours”
“It’s My Party”
“Tongues Untied”
VISUAL ARTS
Visual AIDS
Keith Haring
ACT UP and Gran Fury
DANCE
Bill T. Jones, Absence
Neil Greenbery, Not-About AIDS-Dance
UCLA Dance Marathon
Dancers Responding to AIDS
a&e features
Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monster’ vilifies the lesbian
Netflix show promotes stereotype that queer women are dangerous
Ryan Murphy’s “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” just premiered on Netflix and became the most watched show on the platform. Murphy and his series are deeply controversial. The past three seasons have focused on convicted killers Jeffrey Dahmer, Lyle and Erik Menendez, and Ed Gein, and have garnered considerable criticism for sensationalizing real-life trauma, exploiting victims for entertainment, and glorifying the perpetrators.
But his newest season centers on Lizzie Borden, the white, affluent Massachusetts woman still referenced today in nursery rhymes who was never convicted of killing her parents Andrew and Abby Borden. As with Murphy’s other seasons, the show plays fast-and-loose with real-life history, instead turning a real-life crime into a psychosexual spectacle.
In real life, Lizzie was found not guilty by an all-male jury in the highly publicized 1892 trial, largely due to a lack of evidence including blood on her clothing and a murder weapon. Her initial statement contradicted her later testimony but her defense team argued that the morphine a doctor repeatedly gave her likely caused her confusion. But despite the fact that Lizzie was acquitted in court, she was ostracized by her community during her life and has been branded a murderer ever since.
Murphy’s highly fictionalized retelling of Lizzie’s story leans into this accusation not only that Lizzie murdered her father and stepmother with an axe but that she was successful in covering it up with the help of the maid Bridget Sullivan. Murphy not only concocts a sapphic relationship between Lizzie and Bridget, pinning the idea of killing Lizzie’s parents on the widely traveled woman who dyes her hair and is repeatedly called a lesbophobic slur by Lizzie’s stepmother, but also portrays Lizzie as an inspiration to Aileen Carol Wuornos, a woman who killed seven men who solicited sex and was also in a relationship with a woman.
Further, Murphy’s retelling creates a false ending to Lizzie’s story. While in real life, Lizzie and her sister Emma buy a house called “Maplecroft” and live there for the rest of their lives, Murphy instead imagines Bridget returning sporadically for romantic rendezvous with Lizzie and eventually moving back in with her and marching together for women’s right to vote. In real life, Bridget left town immediately after providing testimony and lived in Montana until she died.
Lesbophobia is at the heart of this retelling of Borden’s story. Despite the fact that Murphy depicts Lizzie and Bridget having sex and possibly getting married or at least promising themselves to one another wearing flower crowns, there is no evidence that Lizzie and Bridget had any romantic or sexual relationship. If they did have a relationship, it would likely have been hidden and any evidence destroyed, but records show that Lizzie herself refused to call Bridget by her real name, instead referring to her as “Maggie,” the name of their previous maid. It was only Lizzie’s stepmother Abby who called Bridget her real name. In Murphy’s retelling, it’s Lizzie’s stepmother Abby who refuses to learn or use Bridget’s actual name and treats her with disdain along with her stepdaughter.
Some people online argue that we are witnessing Lizzie’s story retold through Wuornos’s perspective, so adding in elements of child abuse and sapphic relationships would make sense, but there is no record that Wuornos ever visited Lizzie Borden’s home, or that she was inspired by Borden throughout her life. Instead, Murphy and his co-creator Ian Brennan use (or I would say exploit) Wuornos as a thematic device to make broad stereotypes about female rage across generations. In doing so, they conflate two real-life examples of violence to sapphic individuals.
Depicting a lesbian relationship in this way is not progress, nor is it fruitful representation today. As sapphic shows are increasingly cut and cancelled, Murphy’s inclusion just reinforces the lesbophobic and sexist stereotype that lesbians and queer women are “dangerous” to straight women and abet or incite violence against men and a family unit. At a time when anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and real-world violence and murder of LGBTQ+ people, especially queer and trans people of color, is exploding, stories that frame murder of a family unit as germinating from a sapphic relationship feed into far right narratives.
They further the myth popularized by far right leaders (including those in the highest echelons of government) that LGBTQ+ people are dangerous, a threat to heterosexual norms and family life, despite the data showing that children of same-sex parents have above average health and well-being according to research by the University of Melbourne.
Today, many LGBTQ+ people feel they have to be (or are forced to be) idealized versions of themselves in order to stave off anti-LGBTQ+ stigma, policing and violence. These “acceptable” behaviors and appearances are rooted not only in cisgender, heterosexual norms but also white supremacy, colonialism, xenophobia, and ableism. It is respectability politics that tell us how we can and should behave (including those perpetuating in the wider LGBTQ+ community) and push LGBTQ+ people to assimilate into a society governed by queerphobic normativity.
I hope it’s clear that I’m not trying to argue that we cannot and should not have shows that depict queer women who kill, or at the very least queer women who are unethical or morally complex. We need these depictions because they ask difficult questions and they reference how some LGBTQ+ people can be and are unethical. In fact, several public LGBTQ+ figures are associated with employee abuse and exploitation, ableism, and fat phobia.
But when Lizzie’s sapphic identity is invented to drive the story along, arguably to generate interest (especially straight men’s interest) in this spectacle of historical slop, it’s not a story that invites discourse and dimensionality, it’s one that collapses Lizzie, Wuornos, and queer women’s identities and relationships to plot devices. It objectifies and fetishizes queer women, arguably committing violence against not only Lizzie but also Wuornos.
And when there is so little representation of sapphic relationships on mainstream television or streaming platforms, it makes this the vast majority of representation that queer girls and women will see of themselves first, and that the straight public will see. Historians will know that Murphy’s depiction of Lizzie’s life is wrong, but many viewers will not and may not go digging for the truth.
Why not focus on the stories of bisexual, lesbian, and queer women who really existed, shared their identities (sometimes covertly, sometimes not), and had long-term partners? In fact, “Boston marriages” were common in this time period and referred to women living together when sexual and romantic relationships between women were illegal, partially because penal systems didn’t know how women could have sex with one another and didn’t want to put the idea in “impressionable” women’s minds. Why not focus on these stories instead of creating a fictionalized account? We have always existed; we do not need to invent relationships.
Murphy’s depiction of Lizzie Borden is deeply problematic. Lesbophobia is not the only issue at the heart of Murphy’s drama, but it merits a broader discussion about how mainstream media routinely hurt queer women and is part of perpetuating queerphobic violence, and what we all lose in the process.
Arts & Entertainment
Vote now! Best Of LGBTQ DC readers’ choice awards
Halloween party set for Oct. 22 to celebrate the winners
The Blade is excited to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our Best Of LGBTQ DC awards this year. We’re pulling out all the stops for our annual party with celebrity emcee Ashley Darby and acclaimed DJ Michael Navarro. The party is set for Oct. 22 at Longview Gallery with pop-up performances, cocktail and food tastings, open bar, and a Halloween costume contest with the theme, “Murder on the Dancefloor.”
But first, you have to vote. You nominated and now we have our finalists for the 2026 Best of LGBTQ DC Awards.
Vote for your favorites through Oct. 8.
We’ll honor the winners at the Best of LGBTQ DC Awards Party on Thursday, Oct. 22, and showcase them in our special issue released Friday, Oct. 23.
Bars & Parties
Lesbian Bar Project co-founder: purity politics could destroy our remaining spaces
Last Ditch’s decision to lift its mask requirement for one night a week has sparked intra-queer controversy
Uncloseted Media published this story on Sept. 29
By ERICA ROSE and THE LESBIAN BAR PROJECT | As a professional lesbian and Massachusetts native, I’ve recently been asked by a lot of folks what I think about the saga unfolding at Last Ditch. The now-viral story, first reported by the Boston Globe, centers on a Western Massachusetts lesbian bar that lifted its mask requirement for one night a week to help drum up business.
The decision ignited an intra-queer controversy that has been feasted on by media outlets across the political spectrum — from the New York Post to LGBTQ Nation — and is even reportedly being eyed for a Hollywood adaptation. Apparently nothing is more entertaining than a bunch of lesbians and queers fighting with each other over KN-95s.
What has been lost in all of the chatter and media coverage is the very real possibility that Last Ditch, which just opened in April 2025, will have to close its doors. The venue’s one remaining founder, Jackie Matellian, revealed in a community Zoom meeting that she’s working four jobs, is now solely responsible for the bar’s $50,000 business loan and is struggling to keep up with the bills. So as we laugh about the controversy’s similarity to a “Portlandia” skit and how one of the bar’s founders left to enroll in clown school, we forget that yet another lesbian bar is facing an existential crisis — and this time the call is coming from inside the house.
In 2020, my friend Elina Street and I created The Lesbian Bar Project, an Emmy-, Webby- and GLAAD Media Award-winning docuseries and initiative that tells the stories of lesbian queer bars around the world. We were moved to act because at the time there were only an estimated 16 lesbian bars in the United States, and the pandemic threatened to bring that number down even further.
There are now more sapphic bars than there were just before the pandemic — about 36 of them in total — but this is down from approximately 200 in 1980. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but for the millions of sapphics living in the U.S., this number is calamitous.
As the world laughs at lesbians and sapphics, I want to take a second and tell you what I feel when I walk into one of these bars, which are all unique and irreplaceable in their own way: I feel seen.
Sometimes I think Cubbyhole in New York City’s West Village neighborhood knew I was gay before I did. When I walked in there for the first time, before I was even out, I was transfixed by the colorful array of tchotchkes hanging from the ceiling and how the women standing next to me were completely unafraid to express their desire for one another. I knew the minute I was ready to come out, I had a home. I also felt the joy of a new couple falling in love at Seattle’s Wildrose, the quiet confidence of a short king lining up her shot at the pool table at Ginger’s in Brooklyn and the kick of cayenne pepper in Julie Mabry’s crawfish at Houston’s Pearl Bar.
Lesbian bars don’t just serve lesbians; they serve queer folks across the spectrum, including bisexual, pansexual and trans people. As Elina and I traveled across the U.S. and Europe and to parts of Latin America to document the bar owners, staff and patrons that make up the ecosystems of these spaces, we also became uniquely acquainted with the factors that threaten their existence: gentrification, wage gaps, sexism, environmental disasters, gun violence, rising insurance premiums and political administrations working to annihilate queer people and their families.
Lesbian bar owners, like all leaders and entrepreneurs, are imperfect. There have been significant issues over the years at lesbian bars: employee harassment, racism, lack of accessibility, sexual assault and transphobia. All bar owners should be held accountable and should listen to their communities to evolve into safer and more equitable spaces. I also acknowledge my privilege: I am able-bodied, white, cis and from a family system that loves me for who I am. Not everyone has that.
Queer people, especially trans and bisexual people, are suffering from disproportionately high levels of depression, and our mental health system isn’t equipped to support them. Immunocompromised people and long COVID are real, and many of my friends are suffering to this day. The people with the least safety net are often the ones for whom a bar closing costs the most. And yet, as we’re seeing with Last Ditch, the queer community often lashes out at each other. It’s also the mainstream media taking the internal conflict and making a mockery out of it, distracting from the real possibility that this bar could close due to financial pressures. A bar that many people loved and needed is facing extinction. Perhaps it’s safer to dissent with one another than with the larger forces trying to eradicate us, but in doing so, we risk destroying the few spaces we have left.
Due to the constraints of purity politics — some in good faith, some not so much — lesbian bar owners, almost all of whom are queer women themselves, are forced to be everything for everyone, similarly to how women are forced to be everything for everyone. By asking these bars to uphold impossible standards — standards very few other third spaces are asked to consider — we all end up losing.
I want to move as a community toward dialogue, compassionate dissent and collaboration to make our spaces better with the goal of keeping them OPEN and thriving, rather than destroying them from the inside with expectations that are arguably unattainable.
While I have your attention — for this fleeting second of the news cycle — may I urge us to spearhead a way to keep these small businesses afloat without attacking our own community along the way? Bar owners are left with an impasse: They want to be community-centered, but they also have to make money to keep their doors open. Sometimes they might make business decisions that don’t work for everyone — and that’s partly because different patrons have different priorities and want different things — but these owners deserve the opportunity for productive dialogue. We have to work with them and with each other to keep our spaces open, to keep them growing.
Lesbian bars raised me into the queer woman I am today. One thing I think about as I reflect on the six years of work we’ve done to document these spaces is that shared, unspoken language I have with a stranger the moment we both walk into one of these bars: the nod, the ease, the not having to explain ourselves. I don’t want to lose that, and neither should you.
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