There's 32 Lesbian Bars Left in America. Here's Where They Are
90-second YouTube video and another $150,000 after a short film in 2021, Rose told Newsweek in an interview."Before us, there wasn't a centralized list to find all of the bars," she said.In 2022, to mark National Coming Out Day, the Lesbian Bar Project released an eponymous three-part docuseries on the Roku Channel, with each episode focusing on a different establishment.
It went on to win an Emmy.Since the project was first launched, a handful of new lesbian bars have popped up around the U.S., including Femme, The Lady's Room in Largo, Fla., Mother in San Francisco, The Ruby Fruit in Los Angeles, and The Sports Bra in Portland, Ore."I think we definitely helped amplify the conversation and pinpoint a desire for it," Rose said, adding that she didn't want to take credit for the other bar owners' work. "People have been trying to do this business for years."As Geoghegan put it, "lesbian bars are not for the male gaze." These spaces are "built by the queer girlies for the queer girlies."While gay bars remain far more prominent throughout the country, Rose said they aren't always inclusive to others in the LGBTQ+ community.
But most lesbian bars, she said, don't use "lesbian" as their main identifier, and also market themselves toward queer, intersex, nonbinary and transgender patrons."We deal with misogyny and violence and threats that make us want to maintain some exclusivity with who is welcomed into the spaces," said Vic King Smith, the general manager of the Cubbyhole in New York City's West Village. "It's really important that lesbian bars hold space for everyone's gender journey."King Smith said that today, white cis-gender gay men "have all of the privileges" that white straight men have."They're not experiencing the same amount of oppression and marginalization as trans people and queer people that just look different," King Smith said. "It can be hard to compete with men in their own spaces."That is why King Smith said lesbian bars "better represent" the.
