Our Dyke Histories

Jack Gieseking with Sinister Wisdom

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 h...

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Our Dyke Histories

Episodes (14)

Feb 9th Sex Work, Bars, and Picnics before Stonewall, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe
Feb 2nd A House Where Black Queers Go, 1930s-1970s Detroit with Roey Thorpe
Jan 26th Finding the Movement: Queer Space, Dance, and Survival, 1970s Detroit, Chicago, & Minneapolis with Finn Enke

Our Dyke Histories

Feb 9, 2026
31 minutes
28 MB

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 w...

Our Dyke Histories

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

Jack Gieseking with Sinister Wisdom

00:00 -30:41