While the 1920s and 1930s were all about queer women slipping in and out of smoky speakeasies and tea rooms with monocles and bad gin, that radically shifted by the mid-20th century. The 1940s through 1960s turned the volume way up on danger, desire, and dyke ingenuity.
World War II moved women into military bases, shipyards, and cities, suddenly offering networks of possibility that, once the war ended, was often economically kaput but psychologically and socially forever. On (and in) the heels of Prohibition, “gender impersonator” acts continued to bring trans, nb, drag, and genderqueer presences to stages and audiences in urban bars across the country–all the while trans and gender non-conforming people were targeted for being themselves. While parties continued to thrive underground, the public lesbian bars became a beacon in this era: part sanctuary, part battleground, and always a little bit messy.


Basically, if you’ve ever locked eyes with a hot stud/butch/masc/nb across a sticky bar floor and thought, “This is dangerous but worth it,” lift a toast to this era and the dykes who survived it. The period from the 1940s through the 1960s gave us the blueprint for dyke drama, bar crushes, messy hookups, police raids, and the complicated joy of finding each other in the dark. So next time you’re two bevvies deep (of course, seltzers count) and arguing about whether flannel is a lifestyle or a symptom, remember: Leslie Feinberg walked tall so you can too.


From San Francisco’s lesbian-trans bar Mona’s Candle Light (immortalized in a grainy six-minute film clip that still makes our hearts pound) to Greenwich Village’s fictional Colophon (for Beebo Brinker) and real life Sea Colony (and the very real Joan Nestle and friends), lesbian bars promised the intoxicating mix of safety, sex, and chaos. Inside, femmes dazzled in pin curls, heels, and pencil skirts, butches swaggered in leather jackets or collared shirts with a firm duck’s ass (see left), and gender impersonators made chanteuses faint in the bright light of the stage. Outside, police wagons waited to raid, arrest, and humiliate. This contradiction—the thrill of self-discovery and the constant threat of violence—was the air lesbians, queers, and gender rebels were forced to breathe daily.


Stay tuned!