A Place of Our Own by June Thomas: author interview

A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture by June Thomas

published 2024

 

‘Not as niche as it sounds’ is a strange verdict on a book, but it is definitely true of this one – which is also well-researched, well-written, hugely funny and just an all-round good thing: one of my best books of 2024.

It was written by a friend of mine, journalist, writer and podcaster June Thomas, so I thought I would interview her about it, and get the full lowdown.

Moira @ Clothes in Books: What led you to write the book?

 

June Thomas: I was working at Slate, [American political and culture online magazine, and the place where June and I first met more than 20 years ago] surrounded by supersmart, superknowledgeable people, especially younger people, and they know so much, but I would mention something that I thought was such a basic part of lesbian history, queer history, and they wouldn’t have any knowledge of what I was talking about. And I realized you kind of had to be there to know about this, because it was only written about in small publications, locally distributed, very ephemeral. So not a failure on their part – it was that our movement did not get mainstream attention. So how could they know? Even very engaged people might not know about things that had loomed very large in my life.

Secondly, there was – IS - this stereotype: people over a certain age, feminists and lesbians, are all transphobic. Well it isn’t true - and where it is true let’s at least talk about what those women did.

Third – there’s been a lot of attention focused on the disappearance of lesbian bars. I do not think that that means there is nowhere for Lesbians to get together, it’s a category problem – there totally are places for gay women, and I just wanted people to know that.

 

M: You write about the differences between gay male and lesbian culture?

June: There’ve always been more places for gay men. They go out more, they have more money – stereotypes, which you might want to interrogate, but still – and also they tend not to be as domestic. Women have less casual sex, while bars are great places for men to meet people to have casual sex. That’s changed somewhat, and there are fewer places where men meet for casual sex, but it’s generally been a pattern historically & in contemporary life.

Someone at an event for the book raised this question: ‘Were gay men less political?’

Not quite that, but lesbians demand so much of their places, they want them to be politically sound. Gay men aren’t uniformly apolitical, but they have a bit more separation: they’re more like, ‘it’s not perfect, yeah but I need a place to go out’

You also deal with the importance of the difference in US/UK drinking rules

June: I lived in the US for a long time, and was carded into my 30s. Bars have to see government ID, they have to have people at the door checking. On TV everyone has fake ID, but that’s not as common as it seems.

Now, a bar is a key homo-social setting – but in US you maybe can’t get in, and that’s a huge difference. No Brit has that mentality, that you can’t go out without serious ID.

When you come out, particularly if you are young, you want to meet other people, you want to talk, maybe find a partner. Where will you find these people? The first answer that comes into your head will be a bar, and in the US that isn’t going to happen.

M: I lived in both the US & the UK, I walked alongside the movement. The shocker in your book was the lesbian spaces I’d never heard of – softball! Of course not solely lesbian, but a major thing in that community?

June: It’s huge for people who like to play sports: its sociable, you meet people, when you’re batting you’re sitting in the dugout, chatting, younger shyer people come in and want to make friends, they’ll say ‘I just wanted to meet people outside bars.’ There is no indoor softball, you play in public parks, there are leagues in most US cities. You can have this camaraderie in a healthy environment.

M: Is there a UK equivalent?

Every country has one - in Australia it’s adult field hockey. Rugby – soccer. Something where you don’t need much equipment. Cricket would do….

 

M: Now onto the other big surprise: lesbian communes, where groups moved out of the city, bought up some land and set up a commune. They are known as landdykes… 

June: These were women who had had it. This was in the 1970s & 80s, that was the heyday.

It seemed obvious to move to the city to live a queer life, but it could be expensive and dangerous. So people had the idea to get together with a group, maybe one person had access to family money. That caused awkwardness - there was an attempt to be egalitarian, but money always ended up causing problems on both sides.

Then, where you can buy land cheaply – it was beautiful but it wasn’t the best kind of land, and they didn’t have the skills. These women were very educated (much more so than average) but not the right kind of education.

Often there were no buildings on the land to start with - the conditions unimaginable to a non-outdoorsy person. But – they could be naked or at least topless, and even today there’s nowhere a woman can do that.

M: That section left me gobsmacked, hysterical, & melancholy. Any commune – you need people who know what they are doing, which is only people who grew up on a farm. And it’s the last thing they want, they’ve had enough of the drudgery

June: The women were always figuring things out from scratch. Young people know bugger all but have energy. It was a great adventure, but they needed some form of older guard…

Now when people are starting things, they get advice from an older generation. There is more inter-generation socializing and info-sharing. That’s so positive and was desperately needed and didn’t exist then.

The landdykes have almost (not quite) petered out, and that’s largely because of the internet.

M: and it’s just easier to live an out gay life now.

Another thing I loved about the book is that it’s very specific as to how these lesbian women lived and played together, but also so universal and so human…

June: Anybody who’s on a collective, or any group that works on consensus, is familiar with too-much process. ‘I just couldn’t go to any more meetings’.

M: There were issues with allowing boy children, with money, with allowing alcohol, smoking…

June: People were unforgiving on these things, and it got the commune movements stuck. People stopped joining. Because no new people come, there’s no new info, no new ideas, they’re not exposed to anything, they’re stuck in 1980.

M: anyone who has been in any kind of meeting – student politics, a political party, a church – will recognize so much. Someone derailing the meeting to spend 20 mins discussing the wrong thing. Even, was the softball team aiming to win or just be sociable…

You could use your book as a management guide – relevant to anyone: do we need to expand, do we need to have growth. The whole question of relationships and working with people.

June: and economics, all these businesses. Someone asked

‘Are lesbians just not good at capitalism?’ but many would answer: ‘it wasn’t that we didn’t understand it, we rejected it. We didn’t want to elbow out our competitors. We don’t want to exploit our workers we want to co-operate.’

one of the feminist bookstores featured in the book

Many women are entrepreneurial. But – there were dresscodes and a lot of lesbians did not feel comfortable with the office wear. They wanted to find a job where they didn’t have to put up with a sexist homophobic boss, wear high heels, so set up their own business – and in a collegial way, not doing down competitors but giving advice, sharing mailing list, or names of suppliers.

I truly believe that this book and all queer history IS of interest to straight people, we live in the same world, there’s shared humanity. But also the factors that mean there are fewer dyke bars & feminist bookstores apply everywhere - big businesses take over your business. It’s the same for everyone who just wants to get together with their friends and do something. The reasons are exactly the same. The factors are the same.

M: Either it fails or someone monetizes. Can’t we keep it relatively level? – that’s the hard part.

Another thing I loved - terrible things, big and small, happened to some of these people, they were getting away from hard times - but cheerfulness keeps breaking in, they are laughing and living life as best they can. Look at that cover (top) – love that picture.

This is an incredible story, and you have captured a history. Thanks for talking to us.

 

Australian women playing softball, 1950, State Library of Queensland

Feminist bookstsore, Wikimedia Commons