A PLACE OF OUR OWN: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture, by June Thomas
June Thomas’s ability to resurrect the past in “A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture” is a testament to her meticulous research. But it’s her voice — charming, irreverent, tender — that makes the journey through lesbian history so worthwhile.
The book starts in the lesbian bars of the 1960s, and travels on to feminist bookstores, rural separatist communities, women’s sex-toy shops, vacation destinations and, yes, the softball field. (A longtime Slate editor and podcaster born in England, Thomas confesses to this last phenomenon as a gap in her “sapphic scholarship.”)
Thomas doesn’t tap gently on the glass at these spaces; she flings herself in, starting (metaphorically) in their basements and working up. She scours accounting records, tax receipts and lawsuits going back decades. She reviews the minutes of softball league meetings. She tracks down the women who helped create places that transcended to spaces.
None of these pioneers were in it for the money. They drained their savings and dodged creditors. Purists scoffed at the merch for sale in feminist bookstores, but the refrigerator magnets and Lavender Menace pins kept the lights on. Lesbian bars had the misfortune of a customer base that drank a fraction of what men drank in gay bars, so they had to get creative, like serving a complimentary buffet lunch or sponsoring teams in sports leagues. Go Tower Lounge Hotspots!
Why are queer people so tribal in their need for gathering places? “Unlike other minority groups,” Thomas suggests, “where parents teach their children about family history, religious traditions and systemic prejudice, our birth families are generally ignorant of queer codes and culture. We have to work out their rules, rituals and rich history for ourselves.”
In her chapter on the lesbian land movement of the ’70s and ’80s, Thomas writes about the idealism that pushed women to sleep in a frozen shack in Oregon, and what it took to survive. “We were creating a new women’s culture, living our dreams and visions, and pushing ourselves to our limits,” one says.
They also argued over who got to use the chain saw; most preferred the outdoorsy jobs to domestic work, especially dishes. They rejected traditional women’s responsibilities on principle, until a chore list had to be made.
Historians will owe Thomas for the sprawling and rich record she’s created. But readers owe her most for grappling with the flaws and glories of protected spaces that feel like home. She weaves in her own story, and personal meditations, throughout: the crushes, the intellectual fulfillment at bookstores, the dykes with Alison Bechdel key rings.
Sanctuaries can be messy, exclusionary and cruel. Thomas describes the caste system in lesbian bars, the dismissive attitude professional lesbians showed toward working-class women. Jacqueline Woodson, a future winner of the National Book Award for young people’s literature, who is Black, describes being kept outside on the sidewalk at a chic lesbian bar in Manhattan while white women brushed past to enter.
The book is a Who’s Who of interviews — Susie Bright, the retail godmother of vibrators; Ginny Z. Berson, a member of the Furies, a famous early-70s collective lesbian household; and Elaine Romagnoli, who ran the most storied lesbian bars in New York for four decades.
Thomas is aware she’s catching these pioneers in their twilight, and rushes to nail their stories to the page. She notes that three of the six spaces she writes about are nearly gone — the lesbian bar is a dinosaur, women’s bookstores have been crushed by Amazon and feminist sex-toy stores have been superseded by online merchants.
But “this book isn’t a lament for those lost locations,” Thomas insists. “Rather it is a joyful celebration of the dream palaces queer women have built: places to meet, share ideas, form teams, create utopias, find G-spots and get away from it all.”
A PLACE OF OUR OWN: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture | By June Thomas | Seal Press | 304 pp. | $30
