Our Dyke Histories

Jack Gieseking with Sinister Wisdom
  • 5.0 (17)
  • HISTORY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Come for the history; stay for the revolution, gossip, and desire that built it. 🤌 About Us :: Decade by decade, Our Dyke Histories dives deep into the living, breathing past and present of lesbian, queer, bisexual, trans, & nonbinary communities. Each season traces how we made space for ourselves—sometimes in bars, bookstores, and protests; sometimes in basements, alleyways, and prisons; & always against the odds. Host :: Our Dyke Histories is hosted by historian, geographer, and environmental psychologist Dr. Jack Jen Gieseking, and produced in collaboration with Sinister Wisdom, the oldest lesbian multicultural literary and art journal. Season One :: Our first season traces the history of dyke bars* - yes, with an asterisk - including lesbian bars, queer parties, & trans hangouts. Before Pride marches and hashtags, there were bars, parties, and whispered invitations that built whole worlds. Our Dyke Histories uncovers the stories of the women, trans, and nonbinary people who turned repression into resistance and nightlife into liberation. Join Our Community :: Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us at ourdykehistories@gmail.comDonate 3 :: Subscribe and/or donate to the fabulous, in-print Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal founded in 1976. Sinister Wisdom recognizes the power of language and art to create radical, empowering, resilient, and joyous sanctuaries that build and sustain vibrant lesbian futures. What Does Our Tarot Reading Say about What's Next? :: In future seasons, we will move decade by decade through other defining places, objects, and ideas in lesbian, bi, queer, and trans history—mapping the worlds we’ve made and the futures we’re still imagining. Funny and fierce, sexy and smart, and full of dyke spirit, this podcast isn’t nostalgia—it’s a survival guide disguised as a love letter.

  1. Sex Work, Bars, and Picnics before Stonewall, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe

    FEB 9

    Sex Work, Bars, and Picnics before Stonewall, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe

    In this season one finale, Jack talks with historian Roey Thorpe about lesbian and queer life in Detroit from the 1930s through the early 1970s, before and beyond Stonewall. Centering working-class bars, sex work economies, and informal gathering spaces like softball and picnics, the episode traces how Black and white queer women—especially those who were poor, working-class, and gender nonconforming—built lives under conditions of criminalization, surveillance, and police violence. Thorpe highlights the central role of sex work as labor, survival, and community infrastructure, and shows how bars functioned not only as sites of leisure but as workplaces, political hubs, and mutual aid networks. The conversation foregrounds Detroit as a major site of lesbian and queer history, shaped by industrial labor, racial segregation, and the Great Migration. Together, Jack and Thorpe show that resistance, world-building, and dyke life were already flourishing for decades. The season closes with a powerful reminder: dyke history has always been rooted in labor, risk, pleasure, and the ongoing creation of livable worlds. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Co-Editor: Becca Moses Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

    31 min
  2. A House Where Black Queers Go, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe

    FEB 2

    A House Where Black Queers Go, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe

    ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Co-Editor: Becca Moses Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

    49 min
  3. Finding the Movement: Queer Space, Dance, and Survival, 1970s Detroit, Chicago, & Minneapolis with Finn Enke

    JAN 26

    Finding the Movement: Queer Space, Dance, and Survival, 1970s Detroit, Chicago, & Minneapolis with Finn Enke

    ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

    38 min
  4. Dollar Parties, Bookstores, and Constellations of Lezbiqueertrans Life, 1970s Detroit, Chicago, & Minneapolis with Finn Enke

    JAN 19

    Dollar Parties, Bookstores, and Constellations of Lezbiqueertrans Life, 1970s Detroit, Chicago, & Minneapolis with Finn Enke

    Recorded just before the ICE invasions of the Upper Midwest, this episode takes up queer people’s enduring creativity in making life possible in the Upper Midwest during the 1970s—and why these histories matter urgently now. In this first of a two-part conversation, host Jack Gieseing interviews historian Finn Enke about lesbian, queer, and trans spaces with a focus on Detroit, Minneapolis–St. Paul, and Chicago. Moving beyond bars as isolated sites, the episode explores how networks of movement—what Enke calls “travel stories”—connected house parties, dollar parties, bookstores, coffeehouses, softball fields, warehouses, and bars into living constellations of queer life. Drawing on Enke’s book Finding the Movement, the conversation foregrounds how race, class, gender, music, and the built environment shaped who could gather where, who could dance, and who felt welcome. Particular attention is paid to Black lesbian dollar parties in Detroit, feminist institutions like Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis, the impact of blue laws in Detroit, and the role of print culture such as Lesbian Connection and Dykes to Watch Out For, as well as the economic precarity, feminist organizing, and dancing that structured all of these spaces everywhere. The episode frames queer space not as permanent territory but as fragile, imaginative world-building sustained through movement, care, and resistance. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

    38 min
  5. Lesbian Potentiality 4ever: Consciousness Raising & the Birth of WOC Feminism, 1970s

    JAN 12

    Lesbian Potentiality 4ever: Consciousness Raising & the Birth of WOC Feminism, 1970s

    Episode 8 of Our Dyke Histories takes us into the revolutionary cultural work of the late 1970s—from consciousness-raising circles to the birth of women of color feminism with all of the work that preceded the creation, production, and envisioning of the most core women's studies text of all time, This Bridge Called My Back. With SaraEllen Strongman, June Thomas, and Maxine Wolfe, host Jack Gieseking explores lesbian archives, lesbian newsletters, house parties, lesbian feminist presses, and dyke bars. All together, these spaces created a vast dyke ecosystem of queer life beyond nightlife alone. The episode spotlights Kitchen Table Press, the Combahee River Collective, and the grassroots publishing networks that preserved lesbian histories and made political coalitions possible. This is the story of how activists labored—in libraries, activist groups, non-profits before they were part of the non-profit industrial complex, prisons, community centers, and bars—to build the world we inherit today. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

    45 min
  6. Softball, Separatism, and the Shescape Seven, 1970s

    JAN 5

    Softball, Separatism, and the Shescape Seven, 1970s

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

    50 min

  7. 12/29/2025 · BONUS

    Holigays Special: B.D. Woman's Blues for You

    While we'll back next, this short holigays hallo is sharing one of the queerest songs in blues history. Enjoy! B.D. Woman’s Blues Song by Lucille Bogan 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 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 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 B.D. women, B.D. women, you know they sure is rough B.D. women, B.D. women, you know they sure is rough 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 ** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

    5 min
  8. The Gender of Desire: Joan Nestle’s Last Interview

    12/22/2025

    The Gender of Desire: Joan Nestle’s Last Interview

    In this deeply moving and often electric episode, Our Dyke Histories sits with legendary writer, activist, and Lesbian Herstory Archives co-founder Joan Nestle 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 Mabel Hampton, the lesbian feminist relationship to the Women’s House of Detention, the labor histories behind Massachusetts’ Moody Gang, and the erotic power of butch-femme desire. This is Joan Nestle at her usual: always generous, political, and brilliant—offering a vivid map of mid-century queer survival and community. ** Join Our Community Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us questions and comments at ourdykehistories@gmail.com** Credits Producer, Editor, Host, & Creative Director: Jack Gieseking Co-Producer: Julie Enszer & Sinister Wisdom Co-Producer & Co-Editor: Cade Waldo Assistant Editor: Mel Whitesell Social Media: Audrey Wilkinson Interns: Michaela Hayes and Sophie McClain Consulting Producer: Rachel Fagen Music: Our theme song: "Like Honey" by Kit Orion https://www.kitorion.com/ CC-BY-NC-ND 2025. Write to us at ourdykehistories@gmail.com for permission to use any of our content.

    56 min
See All (14)

Trailer

5
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

Come for the history; stay for the revolution, gossip, and desire that built it. 🤌 About Us :: Decade by decade, Our Dyke Histories dives deep into the living, breathing past and present of lesbian, queer, bisexual, trans, & nonbinary communities. Each season traces how we made space for ourselves—sometimes in bars, bookstores, and protests; sometimes in basements, alleyways, and prisons; & always against the odds. Host :: Our Dyke Histories is hosted by historian, geographer, and environmental psychologist Dr. Jack Jen Gieseking, and produced in collaboration with Sinister Wisdom, the oldest lesbian multicultural literary and art journal. Season One :: Our first season traces the history of dyke bars* - yes, with an asterisk - including lesbian bars, queer parties, & trans hangouts. Before Pride marches and hashtags, there were bars, parties, and whispered invitations that built whole worlds. Our Dyke Histories uncovers the stories of the women, trans, and nonbinary people who turned repression into resistance and nightlife into liberation. Join Our Community :: Want to be part of our community? We'd love to have you. 😏 Come comment, connect, and get your gayme on! Newsletter to your inbox: Jack's Queer Geographies newsletter with detailed takes on each episode, & more about lezbiqueertrans spaces across timeInstagram for more dyke visuals and stories @ourdykehistoriesRead and follow our co-producer and collaborator, Sinister WisdomEmail us at ourdykehistories@gmail.comDonate 3 :: Subscribe and/or donate to the fabulous, in-print Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal founded in 1976. Sinister Wisdom recognizes the power of language and art to create radical, empowering, resilient, and joyous sanctuaries that build and sustain vibrant lesbian futures. What Does Our Tarot Reading Say about What's Next? :: In future seasons, we will move decade by decade through other defining places, objects, and ideas in lesbian, bi, queer, and trans history—mapping the worlds we’ve made and the futures we’re still imagining. Funny and fierce, sexy and smart, and full of dyke spirit, this podcast isn’t nostalgia—it’s a survival guide disguised as a love letter.

Information

  • Creator
    Jack Gieseking with Sinister Wisdom
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © CC-BY-NC-ND Jack Gieseking & Sinister Wisdom 2025
  • Show Website
    Our Dyke Histories

You Might Also Like