Our Dyke Histories

<p>Episode 7 of <em>Our Dyke Histories</em> breaks open the messy, brilliant contradictions of 1970s lesbian life. Join host <strong>Jack Jen Gieseking</strong> in conversation with lifelong activist <strong>Maxine Wolfe</strong>, historian and podcaster <strong>June Thomas</strong>, and <strong>literary scholar and historian</strong> SaraEllen Strongman. </p><p>Together, they trace a decade shaped by <strong>separatism</strong>, <strong>softball leagues</strong>, <strong>racist bar door policies</strong>, the rise of the <strong>Christian Right</strong>, and the fierce groundwork of <strong>lesbian feminism</strong>. From <strong>Anita Bryant</strong>’s Save Our Children crusade to the <strong>Shescape Seven</strong>’s battle against racial discrimination, the episode reveals how queers built <strong>dyke infrastructures</strong>—publishers, collectives, consciousness-raising groups, bookstores, and bars—while fighting right-wing fearmongering that still echoes today. This is the decade where <strong>lesbian potentiality</strong> explodes.</p><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Join Our Community</em></strong></p><p>Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on!</p><ul><li><strong>Newsletter</strong> to your inbox: Jack's <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://queergeographies.ghost.io/"><strong>Queer Geographies newsletter</strong></a> with detailed takes on each episode, &amp; more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time</li><li><strong>Instagram</strong> for more dyke visuals and stories <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/ourdykehistories"><strong>@ourdykehistories</strong></a></li><li><strong>Read</strong> and follow our co-producer and collaborator, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.sinisterwisdom.org/podcast"><strong><em>Sinister Wisdom</em></strong></a></li><li><strong>Email</strong> us questions and comments at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]"><strong>[email protected]</strong></a></li></ul><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Credits</em></strong></p><p>Producer, Editor, Host, &amp; Creative Director: Jack Gieseking</p><p>Co-Producer: Julie Enszer &amp; Sinister Wisdom</p><p>Co-Producer &amp; Co-Editor: Cade Waldo</p><p>Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell</p><p>Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson</p><p>Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain</p><p>Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen</p><p>Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.kitorion.com/">https://www.kitorion.com/</a></p><p>CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> for permission to use any of our content.</p><p></p>

<p>While we'll back next, this short holigays hallo is sharing one of the queerest songs in blues history. Enjoy!</p><p></p><p>B.D. Woman’s Blues</p><p>Song by Lucille Bogan</p><p>Coming a time, B.D. women ain't gon' need no men Coming a time, B.D. womens ain't gon' to need no men Oh, the way treat us is a lowdown and dirty sin</p><p>B.D. women, you sure can't understand B.D. women, you sure can't understand They got a head like a sweet angel and they walk just like a natural man</p><p>B.D. women, they all done learnt their plan B.D. women, they all done learnt their plan They can lay their jive just like a natural man</p><p>B.D. women, B.D. women, you know they sure is rough B.D. women, B.D. women, you know they sure is rough</p><p>They all drink up plenty whiskey and they sure will strut their stuff B.D. women, you know they work and make their dough B.D. women, you know they work and make their dough And when they get ready to spend it, they know they have to go</p><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Credits</em></strong></p><p>Producer, Editor, Host, &amp; Creative Director: Jack Gieseking</p><p>Co-Producer: Julie Enszer &amp; Sinister Wisdom</p><p>Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen</p><p>Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.kitorion.com/">https://www.kitorion.com/</a></p><p>CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> for permission to use any of our content.</p>

<p>In this deeply moving and often electric episode, <em>Our Dyke Histories</em> sits with legendary writer, activist, and Lesbian Herstory Archives co-founder <strong>Joan Nestle</strong> in her last interview as she reflects on the queer worlds that shaped her life in the 1940s–1960s. Joan guides us through her Friday night walks from a condemned Lower East Side tenement to the Sea Colony bar; the dangers and solidarities of queer street life; the violent policing and erotic possibility inside lesbian bars; and the role of race, class, and labor in shaping queer women’s worlds. Along the way, she brings us into Harlem drag balls with <strong>Mabel Hampton</strong>, the lesbian feminist relationship to the <strong>Women’s House of Detention</strong>, the labor histories behind Massachusetts’ <strong>Moody Gang</strong>, and the erotic power of <strong>butch-femme desire</strong>. This is Joan Nestle at her usual: always generous, political, and brilliant—offering a vivid map of mid-century queer survival and community.</p><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Join Our Community</em></strong></p><p>Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on!</p><ul><li><strong>Newsletter</strong> to your inbox: Jack's <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://queergeographies.ghost.io/"><strong>Queer Geographies newsletter</strong></a> with detailed takes on each episode, &amp; more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time</li><li><strong>Instagram</strong> for more dyke visuals and stories <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/ourdykehistories"><strong>@ourdykehistories</strong></a></li><li><strong>Read</strong> and follow our co-producer and collaborator, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.sinisterwisdom.org/podcast"><strong><em>Sinister Wisdom</em></strong></a></li><li><strong>Email</strong> us questions and comments at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]"><strong>[email protected]</strong></a></li></ul><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Credits</em></strong></p><p>Producer, Editor, Host, &amp; Creative Director: Jack Gieseking</p><p>Co-Producer: Julie Enszer &amp; Sinister Wisdom</p><p>Co-Producer &amp; Co-Editor: Cade Waldo</p><p>Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell</p><p>Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson</p><p>Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain</p><p>Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen</p><p>Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.kitorion.com/">https://www.kitorion.com/</a></p><p>CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> for permission to use any of our content.</p><p></p>

<p>In this episode of <em>Our Dyke Histories</em>, we travel deep into the smoky <strong>lesbian bars</strong>, <strong>queer parties </strong>(house, rent, and otherwise), and clandestine love affairs of the 1940s–60s with three powerhouse historians: <strong>Joan Nestle</strong>, <strong>Hugh Ryan</strong>, and <strong>Alix Genter</strong>. Together, with host <strong>Jack Jen Gieseking</strong>, they explore how desire itself created new genders, new communities, and new forms of resistance inside spaces policed by the state and shaped by <strong>racism</strong>, <strong>class struggle</strong>, and <strong>McCarthy</strong>-era repression. </p><p>From <strong>Greenwich Village’</strong>s lesbian bar circuits to the <strong>Women’s House of Detention</strong> and the surprising queer history of Coney Island, the episode uncovers the joy, danger, and erotic electricity that defined mid-century queer life. Featuring the first half of Joan Nestle’s final interview, this conversation offers an emotional, <strong>intergenerational</strong> look at the bars, books, femmes, butches, and bodies that made public lesbian life possible.</p><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Join Our Community</em></strong></p><p>Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on!</p><ul><li><strong>Newsletter</strong> to your inbox: Jack's <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://queergeographies.ghost.io/"><strong>Queer Geographies newsletter</strong></a> with detailed takes on each episode, &amp; more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time</li><li><strong>Instagram</strong> for more dyke visuals and stories <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/ourdykehistories"><strong>@ourdykehistories</strong></a></li><li><strong>Read</strong> and follow our co-producer and collaborator, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.sinisterwisdom.org/podcast"><strong><em>Sinister Wisdom</em></strong></a></li><li><strong>Email</strong> us questions and comments at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]"><strong>[email protected]</strong></a></li></ul><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Credits</em></strong></p><p>Producer, Editor, Host, &amp; Creative Director: Jack Gieseking</p><p>Co-Producer: Julie Enszer &amp; Sinister Wisdom</p><p>Co-Producer &amp; Co-Editor: Cade Waldo</p><p>Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell</p><p>Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson</p><p>Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain</p><p>Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen</p><p>Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.kitorion.com/">https://www.kitorion.com/</a></p><p>CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> for permission to use any of our content.</p><p></p>

<p>In this episode of <em>Our Dyke Histories</em>, we continue to follow the astonishing life of Eve Adams into exile — the butch, Jewish, immigrant anarchist who opened <strong>Eve’s Hangout</strong>, a tea room in 1920s Greenwich Village that became one of the earliest <strong>proto–lesbian bars</strong> in the United States. Drawing on <strong>Jonathan Ned Katz’</strong>s groundbreaking research, <strong>Jack Jen Gieseking</strong>, Katz, and <strong>Julie Enszer</strong> trace Eve’s friendships with <strong>Anias Nin </strong>and<strong> Henry Miller</strong>; her bold self-published book <strong><em>Lesbian Love</em></strong> (about many of her exes, so delightfully gay); and the policewoman who entrapped her, triggering a sensational raid, trial, and her deportation.</p><p>We track Eve from New York to Chicago, LA, and back, and finally Paris, where she and her partner <strong>Hella Olstein</strong> evaded Nazis for years during <strong>World War II</strong> before being murdered at Auschwitz. And yet the episode insists: Eve was not just a victim. She was an agent, a flirt, a hunk, a radical democrat, a community-builder — someone who lived with astonishing boldness. Through <strong>speakeasies</strong>, <strong>slumming</strong> cultures, <strong>rent parties</strong>, <strong>tea rooms</strong>, and <strong>censorship</strong> battles, this episode unearths how Eve Adams helped shape queer public life long before lesbian bars existed — and why her story still electrifies us a century later.</p><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Join Our Community</em></strong></p><p>Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on!</p><ul><li><strong>Newsletter</strong> to your inbox: Jack's <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://queergeographies.ghost.io/"><strong>Queer Geographies newsletter</strong></a> with detailed takes on each episode, &amp; more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across time</li><li><strong>Instagram</strong> for more dyke visuals and stories <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/ourdykehistories"><strong>@ourdykehistories</strong></a></li><li><strong>Read</strong> and follow our co-producer and collaborator, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.sinisterwisdom.org/podcast"><strong><em>Sinister Wisdom</em></strong></a></li><li><strong>Email</strong> us questions and comments at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]"><strong>[email protected]</strong></a></li></ul><p>**</p><p><strong><em>Credits</em></strong></p><p>Producer, Editor, Host, &amp; Creative Director: Jack Gieseking</p><p>Co-Producer: Julie Enszer &amp; Sinister Wisdom</p><p>Co-Producer &amp; Co-Editor: Cade Waldo</p><p>Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell</p><p>Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson</p><p>Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain</p><p>Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen</p><p>Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.kitorion.com/">https://www.kitorion.com/</a></p><p>CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> for permission to use any of our content.</p><p></p>