![]() Anyone who has a problem with queer people is always having a problem with who we’re fucking and how we’re doing it. ![]() “It’s implicitly what everyone has a problem with. We’re talking about who we fuck at the end of the day,” says Bielagus. We’ve always tried to prioritize sex and pleasure and sexiness in the branding, in the art and in the language of the space. When deciding how to describe their bar, The Ruby Fruit’s co-owners, Mara Herbkersman and Emily Bielagus, tapped a panel of cis and trans friends and lovers to weigh in. Today’s queer spaces are appealing to a wider, more gender-expansive clientele partly because they acknowledge that no one gender is singularly capable of harm. Owners of Henrietta Hudson, founded in 1991 in New York’s West Village, removed the label of “lesbian bar” in 2014, opting instead to describe it as “a queer human space built by Lesbians.” Although “queer bar” has filled the void as a gender- and sexuality-inclusive term, to some people from older generations, the word “queer” still evokes a history of violence. Bonnie & Clyde’s, a well-known lesbian bar in New York City that opened in 1971, was said to have an “unspoken race-based quota at the door,” according to artist and archivist Gwen Shockey. For many owners and patrons, the term “lesbian bar” is fraught, irrevocably tied to an unsavory history of racial quotas and turning trans patrons away at the door.
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