Sydney is supposed to be Australia’s queer capital… so why do the gay girls have nowhere to go?
In September 1990, the monthly magazine ‘Lesbians on the Loose’ ran its ninth issue with the headline: “NEW BARS OPEN”.
The magazine, made by and for queer women, reported at the time that over the course of just three and a half weeks, three new lesbian bars opened in Sydney.
Girl Bar, XL’s and Georgie’s were all only open one night a week, but they brought Sydney to a total of seven lesbian nightspots – more than the city had ever had before.
Throughout the same September issue, there were advertisements for several of the above nightspots, as well as several other lesbian and women-only spaces including a Feminist Bookshop in Lilyfield, a “Dyke Talent Nite cum cabaret”, and “Girls own Space” (a “womins entertainment and cultural venue”).
Almost 34 years on from the ninth issue of ‘Lesbians on the Loose’ and a lot has changed. There is significantly less social stigma attached to identifying as LGBTQIA+. Same-sex marriage has been legal for seven years. Many beloved public figures, celebrities, and politicians are proudly queer.
And yet, almost none of the organisations mentioned exist anymore. Sydney can really only lay claim to one nightspot for lesbian and queer women: ‘Birdcage’, at the top level of Newtown’s Bank Hotel every Wednesday.
Oxford Street is still regarded as the LGBTQIA+ hotspot of Sydney, but its slew of gay bars and nightclubs have a patronage largely made up of gay men, or straight women on a hen’s night.
But why are there so few spaces for lesbian and queer women? Sydney loves to consider itself Australia’s queer capital – so where are its lesbian and queer women supposed to go the six nights of the week that Birdcage is not open?
It is a question Lana Galloway (she/her/they/them), a UNSW student, would love to know the answer to.
Moving from Port Stephens to Sydney for university, Galloway had expected more from the queer scene in Sydney.
“I came out in like, year 12,” she said, “and when I went to Sydney, I was very open and out in all capacities, I guess because I envisioned the city as being this big, open, accepting place.”
Brimming with excitement and ready to find the community they had always felt was lacking in Port Stephens, Galloway headed out for their first gay nightclub experience at Universal in early 2022.
It was packed. It was the first time the Oxford Street venue had been open since COVID-19, and people were racing back to the dance floors.
But for Galloway, the experience was jarring.
The bar was dominated by men, and it became clear very quickly that as fun as it might have been, the venue was not designed for nor frequented by people like her.
“I suppose I really thought there would be more of ‘us’ in the general spaces [gay bars and clubs] …. I was excited for that. I was excited to connect with my community and then I just wasn’t able to do that very easily,” they said.
Later in 2022, Galloway penned an article for the UNSW Law Society about their experience of isolation in male-dominated LGBTQIA+ spaces.
The article cites studies that show the number of lesbian bars in the US has more than halved since 2007, and one in three queer women and gender non-conforming people do not feel welcome at pride.
Despite these statistics, Sydney does have at least one regular venue for lesbian and queer women – the Bank Hotel’s Birdcage.
But when asked about the venue, Galloway just shakes their head.
“No. We can’t go to Birdcage… it’s horrendous.”
Birdcage
The weekly event is beloved by many – with a cult patronage that has even inspired a meme account on Instagram: @birdcageshitposting.
But this popularity has also earned it a less-than-ideal reputation.
Galloway notes that straight men often frequent the venue, which can make her uncomfortable, but that more importantly, the women who attend are incredibly young – most, they say, are only 18 years old.
Whether this is factually true or not, at only 21 years old, Galloway already feels that they have outgrown the venue.
Speaking to peers who have attended Birdcage, much of the same sentiments are echoed: The crowd is too young, there are too many men, and the music is shit.
But if Birdcage is not cutting it, where else is there for lesbian and queer women to go?
The Keeper
Silke Bader is in the middle of interviewing subjects for an upcoming project on lesbian nightclubs, and how they have changed over time. Because of this, and a lifetime of work in the queer community, she has become a walking encyclopedia on Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ history.
Bader has owned and run the ‘Lesbians on the Loose’ magazine for the past 25 years, overseeing the rebrand to ‘LOTL’ in the early 2000s, the transition to digital, and the ultimate end of print circulation for the brand.
“I’m going into documentaries,” Bader says. “This is the kind of oral story that now ‘LOTL’ wants to produce.”
Looking back on the queer history of Sydney’s nightlife, she recounts the story of the Clover Businesswomen’s Club.
When lesbians were consistently rejected from nightclubs on Oxford Street by gay men who “did not like lesbians”, Clover opened in the early 70s and was one of the very first women’s only spaces available in Sydney. It was not necessarily a nightclub, but a space to drink and mingle specifically for queer women.
Over the course of the 80s and 90s, the lesbian nightlife scene grew, and Bader can rattle off the names of many popular haunts from that time at the drop of a hat – from those frequented by “dyke-y looking butch kind of women”, to those for women who were less into the hard clubbing scene, to a straight-up bona fide sex club.
But now, when asked if she knows of any lesbian spaces in Sydney right now, Bader cannot think of a single one. The disappearance of lesbian spaces and businesses is personal for the ‘LOTL’ owner.
Since the print version was axed in 2019, there has been a website operating under the ‘LOTL’ name, albeit in a highly reduced capacity, that publishes contributor pieces and features a digital archive of all the magazines printed since 1990.
“LOTL is still going, but not commercially,” Bader says. “I make money through corporate gigs… LOTL is no longer a business.”
She points out that most of the popular lesbian ‘hubs’ lasted for around 30 years, before lack of demand shut them down – the Feminist Bookshop in Lilyfield and ‘LOTL’ both had a similar commercial run.
“They all lasted for around 30 years, and they did their job. But the job is done now,” Bader says.
“We don’t sell advertising, we don’t have subscribers, I don’t have any money. I’m doing this for…” Bader trails off to think.
“I’m the keeper.”
Is the job done?
Maybe the loss of spaces exclusive to queer women is another example of when something once considered counter-cultural goes, at least mostly, mainstream.
Andrew Gorman-Murray is a social geographer at Western Sydney University who has dedicated much of his research to the intersection of gender, sexuality, and physical and geographic space.
Before the interview, Gorman-Murray wants to make it clear that his work around spaces for lesbian and queer women has all been done in conjunction with women, and as a man,, he cannot lay claim to speaking for queer women.
He says that this isn’t a Sydney-exclusive phenomenon – spaces designated to lesbian and queer women are disappearing everywhere.
Gorman-Murray traces the roots of this as far back as the transition from agrarian to urban industrial societies. As urbanisation took off, he explains, women were increasingly relegated to the private domestic sphere, whilst men took ownership of the public and workspaces.
Even as women increasingly entered the workforce post WWII, there remained a social hangover that saw masculinity associated with the public domain, and women continued with an inclination to create networks through the domestic sphere.
Economically, the gender pay gap means women are also less likely to have access to the capital required to create public and commercial spaces for themselves. Gorman-Murray posits that the gender pay gap particularly impacted lesbians, who were less likely to gain access to money through marriage.
While there have been periods in time with more successful public and commercial lesbian spaces, Gorman-Murray argues that they have always been more temporal than their counterparts that catered to gay men, with it being common for lesbian nightspots to only operate one night a week or to be considered more ‘alternative’.
When it is put to Gorman-Murray that maybe those spaces don’t exist anymore because there is no need for them, he is not sure he agrees.
“For groups that are still not politically and socially equal, like lesbians and queer women, it’s important to establish those communities for solidarity, and to provide a base for all social and political agitation and movement,” he says.
“For those kinds of reasons, I’d say yeah, they are still important.”
While there may not be as many designated spaces as there once were, the past couple of years have seen a notable increase in events and organisations for lesbian and queer women.
In late 2022, a regular event called Sad Dyke Sundays was launched at Redfern Bar The Bearded Tit, described as “a place to rest your sore head, nurse your sad heart, and be surrounded by other sentimental sapphics.”
There is also Dykadellic – a lesbian dance party, which is not hosted regularly but has events on ‘special occasions’, such as Mardi Gras, or the start of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023.
Moving from Manchester to Sydney, Erin Barnes, founder of Hands On Entertainment, was surprised and disappointed by the lack of lesbian-focused queer dancefloors in her new city.
“I think it’s super important to have spaces that are particularly focused on lesbians, queer women, and nonbinary people,” Barnes says. “Sydney has so many options for cis gay men… We have such a great community here in Sydney that we need to nourish.”
Her disappointment with the lack of nightlife options inspired Barnes to host her own lesbian and queer event, Junipero, in late 2022.
While it started as a one-off, word-of-mouth situation, where Barnes invited friends who invited friends until it was “basically a big house party”, the event grew in popularity, and Junipero officially launched as a monthly event in April this year.
“The response has been crazy. It’s a myth that lesbians don’t want to go out to party – from what I’ve seen, anyway!” Barnes says.
“The appetite is there, and Junipero is ready to have you.”
However, most of these newer events are still relying on word of mouth as their main marketing technique.
It was Lana Galloway who first told me about spaces such as The Bearded Tit, Dykadellic, and Junipero. It is true that you must be in the know to get in on the fun, but those who are are enjoying the increasing options for connecting with the lesbian and queer community.
“I feel a lot more connected to my own queerness, as well as the community around me,” Galloway says.
They’ve put in effort since first arriving in Sydney to seek out the queer community, even if it is harder to find.
Galloway tells me about their involvement with queer societies at UNSW, and about joining the Sydney Stingers, an LGBTQ+ inclusive water polo team, both of which she credits to helping her make friends, feel less isolated, and integrate into Sydney’s queer scene.
“We have lost all the dedicated [lesbian and queer women] venues,” they acknowledge. “But it makes me hopeful that there are a lot of events popping up and continuing to grow in popularity and frequency. So that’s exciting.”
Update: This story was originally written in April 2024. Since then, Birdcage has begun hosting a Saturday night event in addition to the ongoing Wednesday night party.