106. Long Live Queer Nightlife (with Amin Ghaziani)

Guest Opener (0:00)

Amin Ghaziani

I myself, as a person and as a researcher, can find myself at the center of a dance floor that centers me in return.

The fact that I didn't realize that that was possible, the fact that that could even constitute a surprise, tells you about some potential limits of gay bars.

Episode Introduction (0:37)

Rob Loveless

Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay. I'm Rob Loveless, and today I am a non-jaded gay because this past weekend, I was doing some yard work in my backyard, which is kind of an oxymoron because I live in Philly, so I don't really have an official backyard.

But I do have a little patio area, and I just did some work to clean it up. You know, it hadn't been touched in a while. It was kind of dirty. There was moss growing in some places. So, I scrubbed it down, I painted it, I'm putting down some plastic locking tiles just to make the flooring look a little nicer.

And then I'm excited because I also bought a lattice that I'm going to paint and put some fake ivy on and kind of create a little privacy wall that way. And I'm ordering some patio furniture.

So, I'm just excited to have a nice little outdoor space where I can relax, you know, go out there and read, really enjoy the summer weather.

So, it's been quite a bit of work, and there's been a lot of paint spills, but overall, I've been enjoying the work, and I'm really looking forward to the finished product.

Anyway, from outdoor spaces to queer spaces. I am so excited for today's guest. It's going to be a really great episode. This guest, I actually had cited his work way back when, almost two years ago, in the gay neighborhoods episode.

And then, through that, I found him on Instagram, and we were following each other. And then, this past spring, I saw that he had a book coming out all about queer nightlife, which is right up my alley.

So, I was super excited to read it. I dove into it. Loved it, and I am so excited to be bringing him onto the show today. So more about our guest shortly.

But before we dive into it, let's pull our tarot card.

Tarot (2:12)

Rob Loveless

So, the card for this episode is the Ten of Pentacles. Pentacles represents the element of earth, which is very grounding and nurturing. It's feminine energy, so it's reflective and meditative in nature.

And Pentacles is tied to putting in the hard work and reaping the fruits of our labors and prosperity. But I like to frame it more as emotional prosperity. In numerology, the number ten represents the completion of a cycle or achieving something. But with double digits, we add them together, which equals one, and that represents a new beginning because our energy is constantly flowing.

So, when we accomplish one thing, we don't stop. It's opening up a door to begin working toward the next thing. And the ten of Pentacles is specifically tied to spending time with our support systems. Traditionally, this card represented love within the family and potentially an inheritance.

But this card really expands to our found family. So, this can include our friends or our community. We want to be a part of a supportive network where we can give to those in need or receive that aid when we need it.

So, this card is telling us to find and create that network of support and enjoy the time with the people we love in the present while also planning for a prosperous future.

Guest Introduction (3:22)

Rob Loveless

So, with that in mind, let's introduce today's guest.

He is the Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Sexuality and Urban Studies at the University of British Columbia and the author of countless academic articles and six books, including Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution.

Please welcome Amin Ghaziani.

Hi, Amin, how are you today?

Amin Ghaziani

Hi, Rob, doing really well. Thank you.

Rob Loveless

Glad to hear. Well, thank you so much for joining.

I'm super excited to have you on today. We're going to talk all about your book, about, you know, queer nightlife, factors impacting that, which is super insightful.

But before we get too into it, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, how you identify, your pronouns, all that fun stuff?

Amin Ghaziani

Sure. Yeah, so I'm Amin Ghaziani. I'm a Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

I identify interchangeably as gay or queer, although, of course, I understand that these things have very different meanings. My pronouns are he and him.

Rob Loveless

And I like to ask all my guests, today, are you a jaded or non-jaded gay, and why?

Amin Ghaziani

It's a great question. I am a non-jaded gay. Although, I support my fellow jaded gay friends.

Rob Loveless

Glad to hear. We always love having a non-jaded gay in the house, but I do feel it's kind of interchangeable.

You might have a different day, you know, jaded one day, non-jaded the next. So, glad to hear you support the jaded gays out there, though.

Amin Ghaziani

Oh, my God, hilarious. Yes, and absolutely, I do. I stand with you in solidarity.

Amin’s Career (4:47)

Rob Loveless

Thank you.

Well, to kick it off, you know, we have a lot to cover here, but starting off, can you tell us about your career as a sociologist?

Amin Ghaziani

Sure, yeah. I mean, it's been a really long career. I went to graduate school at Northwestern, where I did my PhD in a joint program in sociology and organization behavior.

Like early 2000s, after I finished, I held a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Princeton Society of Fellows.

And from there, I found my way to Vancouver, where I took up the position of an Assistant Professor in 2011, and I have been at UBC since then. My first job out at that postdoc, 13 years later.

Still there. Happily, so, not jaded, enjoying my life in Vancouver.

Rob Loveless

And as we've touched upon in the intro, and as you and I were talking before we started recording, you've authored countless academic studies and books.

One of the studies I had mentioned was back—what was it?—two years ago, I did an episode on gay neighborhoods, and I came across your, your empirical survey of, you know, the six pillars of what makes up a gayborhood, which is how I found you.

So, tell us a little bit about the work you've done as a sociologist, as it relates to academic papers, books, all of that.

Amin Ghaziani

Sure. Yeah, I do work on urban sexualities broadly, and this can range from thinking about gay neighborhoods or urban residential areas, trying to understand why we live where we do.

From that to nightlife, which is my newest endeavor, trying to understand our socializing habits, partying habits, and what that looks like. And with a particular interest now in centering voices of people who are not normally centered in public conversations about nightlife.

Rob Loveless

So, as it relates to the research you've done throughout your career, what inspired you to begin studying the changes in queer nightlife?

Amin Ghaziani

I wish I had a response for you with a whole lot of gravity in it, but, in fact, the book was an accident, in all honesty.

I had no intention of studying nightlife. I had no intention of coming to London, and I knew absolutely nothing about the underground parties that are the stars of my pages.

I mean, having written a book about gayborhoods, as you just mentioned, trying to understand why we live where we do, I thought my next book was going to be about gay resort towns, places like Fire Island, or Palm Springs. Trying to understand why we holiday or vacation the way we do.

I came to London on a sabbatical because a friend invited me to join him at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he's a member of the faculty.

And it was only after I arrived here in the city, in this capital city, that I became aware of public conversations about alarming numbers of closures of gay bars.

And that just made me tune into the scene that was, turns out, was part of a global conversation and a global problem about the precarity and potential transformation of queer spaces.

Long Live Queer Nightlife (7:40)

Rob Loveless

That being said, tell us about Long Live Queer Nightlife.

Amin Ghaziani

Sure, with pleasure, actually. What I would say, just to introduce the project, is what we know about nightlife depends on how we know it.

For instance, I would ask your listeners a question like, how many of you have seen media headlines about the closing of gay bars? You know? I mean, I certainly have. I imagine most of us have.

And so, for instance, while the Washington Post is almost blase, noting that the number of gay bars has simply dwindled, The Economist, writing about London, Washington DC, and New York, sees them as being under threat. Bloomberg hits harder, characterizing gay bars as, quote, an endangered species, while the Boston Review goes all the way in declaring the death of the gay bar, right?

So, if we think about nightlife using headlines like this, then doom and gloom will prevail. And the same thing's going to happen if we look at closure statistics. For instance, in the first two decades of the 2000s, the number of LGBTQ nighttime venues in London, a global capital of finance and culture, declined by 58%, falling a number from 125 to just 53 remaining venues.

An audit by the mayor's office found that 44% of all nightclubs and 25% of all pubs in the capital have also closed. And so, while all nighttime venues are clearly struggling, the impact on queer spaces is, by comparison, more dire. It was around this time that Samuel Dueck, who's an architect turned filmmaker and club night organizer, coined the term closure epidemic to describe the scene that was sweeping London a little bit. Like clubsterben, which translates to the club death dies, or club death in Berlin, and similar closures in cities around the world.

The writing for Bloomberg, a journalist by the name of Richard Morgan, tries to put some of these numbers into perspective for us by noting that in 1976, there were 2,500 gay bars just the United States alone. Today, there are fewer than 1,400 worldwide.

And so, my advice, and as you will see, as I hope you will see when you look at the book for listeners here, that we need to think outside the box. Beyond the stories and the statistics. And follow the breadcrumbs to places underground, seldom seen or studied, where I think a queer world is absolutely shimmering with inventiveness, self-empowerment, and joy.

Rob Loveless

And that's a good transition there, actually, for the next question, because, obviously, the headlines you presented sound pretty bleak.

But you write in your book that despite the closure of these gay bars, you still emphasize joy. And in fact, that joy is an unmistaken theme and feeling throughout this book.

So why did you focus on the joy aspect?

Amin Ghaziani

I have lost count, to be honest, of the number of studies I have read over the years about suffering and social problems. About bigotry and bias. About discrimination and inequalities. All of those arguments are accurate and absolutely essential for guiding us toward a more just world.

And yet, having fun and feeling joy is what sustains us as we grapple with the tough stuff. Stef Shuster and Laurel Westbrook, both of whom are sociologists call this a joy deficit. When we singularly focus on what makes life miserable, all the problems and the pain, then the things that make it pleasurable vanish from view, particularly like negative experiences are only part of the picture, never it's whole. I think we need to insist on joy.

Not as disconnected from a world in which there is suffering, but as a salve to that suffering. Anything that trivial joy is life-enhancing, and I think it's deeply, deeply political. When we go out and have fun with our friends, really important things are happening. Those moments create a shared emotional energy that promotes group pride and communal attachments.

Joy, I think it really brings us closer together, and as it does, we model positive relationships with each other and ways of being and belonging with each other. And I think that joy can, from that point forward, can also bloom into a broader politics that can propel us beyond these romances at the negative and toiling in the present.

Those particular works that I just said, I borrow from a performance theorist, José Esteban Muñoz. That's how he describes it. We must dream, Muñoz says, and enact new and better pleasures. Couldn't agree more, and that's what I've dedicated myself to doing in my new book.

Amin’s Experience with Traditional Gay Bars (12:34)

Rob Loveless

Another theme that popped up throughout reading this book that I thought was really interesting was, in spite of gay bars closing, that doesn't necessarily equal queer nightlife.

You say, you know, queer nightlife is evolving beyond just the traditional gay bar, and you touched upon those underground spaces.

So, can you share with us your personal feelings and experiences with traditional gay bars versus queer nightlife prior to conducting your research for the book?

Amin Ghaziani

Sure. I mean, I love gay bars. I have been going to gay bars for the better part of my adult life, and I imagine that I will always go to gay bars. But sometimes, I've had complicated experiences at gay bars.

Maybe, Rob, with your permission, this might be a nice time for me to share a brief clip or reading from the book. Would it be okay if I did that?

Rob Loveless

Absolutely.

Amin Ghaziani

Great. Okay, so I think there's this clip.

This is the beginning of Chapter Four which is entitled The Core of Whiteness, that might help listeners appreciate some of the complexities that People of Color, for example, sometimes experience at gay bars, right?

And so, there's this duality in that I love these places, will always love these places, but sometimes my experiences are complicated. And here's one example:

"The words still make me cringe. I had spent the day working on my dissertation. I was a graduate student in the mid-2000s when a friend called, convincing me to take a break and meet him at Rosco's, a gay bar. There was so much we loved about the place on a Sunday afternoon in Chicago, singing to retro 80s and 90s music, cheap pitchers of Long Island Iced Tea, free popcorn, billiard games inside, and summer sun outside on the patio, where we wound down the weekend arm in arm.

My vocal cords tingling a bit after I had belted out my best Whitney demanded a drink, and so I walked to the bar to order a pitcher. The place was buzzing as always. A 20-something white guy walked up next to me as I was waiting for the bartender.

He didn't say hello, just tap, tap, tap on my shoulder, and then, "Where are you from?

 I turned and looked at him. "I'm from here."

"No, where are you really from?" he insisted with a grin.

I was trying to be polite. That's what my parents taught me to do when my Brown skin drew attention. I explained that my parents were born in India, but I grew up in the suburbs.

"I've never been with an Indian guy before," he said, as he traced his index finger along my forearm.

I froze. Was I embarrassed? Angry? I couldn't tell in the moment, but I had the sense of feeling small like someone tried to steal my joy. I pulled my arm away. "I'm not your ethnosexual adventure."

It sounded better in my head. Earlier that morning, I was reading Joan Nagel's Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality, which provided me the language but the words and the triumph they were supposed to create got lost in translation somewhere between his flirtation and my fury in a futile attempt to manage my feelings by retreating into my mind.

He shrugged his shoulders and walked away to rejoin his friends. I tried not to watch them, but I still saw. They huddled together, looking first at him and then at me, and then they laughed.

I'm of Indian descent. Although I was born in Karachi, after Partition forced my parents, then kids and their parents to move to Pakistan. Some part of me, on my mom's side, is Persian, but I grew up in the Midwestern United States, although I lived also for a long time in the South and the Northeast. Now I call the west coast of Canada home.

I have dark skin and big brown eyes. After going to gay bars for the better part of my adult life, I've noticed that some people, like that guy in Chicago, seem intrigued when they see me. Others, as best as I can tell, don't even notice that I exist.

Both types of moments can make me feel diminished, an experience shared by many People of Color, like we don't belong in those places. When someone asks you where you're from, and they're like, "Oh, what did you say?"

We all know what that means because we've all experienced it. Soof's words in London reminded me of that moment in Chicago. We all know how loaded something like that question can be."

So, it's a really difficult and a highly personal vignette that I've just read it. I've never shared something so personal in anything that I've written.

And I think it's important for me to locate that reading alongside an insistence that I love gay bars only as a way to illustrate that these places often create experiences that are complicated for particular groups of people, especially racialized and trans+ individuals.

Rob Loveless

And that's a good point that you raised. I think truthfully, a lot of people will hear the word gay bar, and they might think, oh, great, an inclusive space because it's not a straight bar.

But like you talked about in your book, a lot of what gay bars are typically represent white gay men specifically. And there could be a tendency of a certain body image tied along with that, too, and maybe even a certain wealth status.

But then, throughout your book, interviewing the speakers in this book, a lot of them have different experiences than that, which really show a gay bar may equal one thing, but queer nightlife should equal more. All bodies, all races, all genders, not just adhere to the, you know, 90s archetype of what we might have seen in the media of what gay representation was back then.

So, that being said, what was the process like interviewing members of the LGBTQ+ community regarding their experiences with queer nightlife?

Amin Ghaziani

Absolutely exhilarating and absolutely essential. I mean, let me explain. Counting gay bars in travel guides like Damron, Yelp, or Time Out has been a methodological feature of this conversation and research about queer nightlife for decades.

While imperfect, like all data, tracking changes in bar listings can help to establish statistical trends, which is how I was able to say earlier in our conversation that 58% of gay bars in London have closed, or similar numbers like 41% of gay bars have closed in the US between 2002 to 2009.

That said, counting bars will offer us conclusions only about bars while leaving unexamined other forms of nightlife, like club nights, which are the stars in the pages of my book, because these kinds of places are harder to quantify.

This world that I'm traveling through and talking about in my book is intentionally inchoate. It's purposefully undefined and it's joyfully celebrated as such. The people who produce these parties and those who flock to them as revelers are there to imagine new ways of being and new worlds of belonging, not new ways of counting.

Okay, fine, that's poetic. But so how do you study it? And I think in this regard, the feminist researcher Donna Haraway offers some really good advice. She says that the only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular.

So, you want to study something ephemeral, like club nights? You have to, you have to show up. You know, you got to do the work by showing up. And you have to talk to people. And that's because knowledge in creative industries and cultural markets like nightlife is embodied, and it's embedded in local networks. It's not just something you count up.

You have to talk to the people who are producing these parties. You have to talk to the people who are attending these parties, and that is a magical, incredibly stimulating experience.

The Evolution of Club Nights (20:27)

Rob Loveless

And I loved in the book, the sections where you actually include your experiences going to these underground queer nights or club nights, talking about different, inclusive experiences. You show pictures of attendees there, and it really, you really can see the joy in those pictures.

And it really shows that even though there are these statistics that gay bars are closing, that queer nightlife is still vibrant. You just need to find it and immerse yourself in it.

And I know we touched upon this before, but in your book, you wrote that queer nightlife, the way it looks and feels, is evolving, not dying. And while gay bars are closing, they're not the sum total of nightlife.

So, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Amin Ghaziani

Sure, I think that the main argument in the book is that bar closures disrupted the field of nightlife and thus encouraged the visibility of other forms of fellowship, like club nights.

Now that word disruption is important. It describes an unsettled moment in time, either anticipated or unexpected, that alters our routines and the ideas we take for granted. Recent examples include economic recessions, pandemics, mass shootings, natural disasters, for instance.

Sometimes disruptions, they can exacerbate existing inequalities, meaning they can make things worse. Like racial profiling, which increased following the September 11 attacks. A reaction like this occurs because disruptions feel urgent, and those of us who are affected by them are compelled to respond right away.

But the problem with rapid responses is that they often target survival and they seek a return to the familiar. So, for instance, you might think about what the mayor of London said to the media about the closing of gay bars all across the capital. He said, quote, we can save London's iconic club scene.

Or consider what the night czar, the mayor of the night, a very, an official role here in the city, said to me, personally in our interview. Places like gay bars are important, according to Amy Lamé, because they help communities to, quote, survive.

So, saving and surviving, right? Like notice, notice, the words. The mayor's office sees a problem of organizational decline. Their goal is to address the threat as quickly as possible and get things back on track. This is a rational response in that it reduces uncertainty.

But the problem is that this response is prone to what some sociologists would call isomorphism, or the tendency to reproduce the thing that is most common or most familiar to us while overlooking other possibilities. This is why, like, you see it in application or in practice, because both the mayor and the night czar believe that saving and surviving are contingent on the replication of the gay bar.

But drawing on some research that shows that this idea of isomorphism, the tendency to reproduce the thing that's most common, it can stifle efficiency. I showed that, I show that it also, it also conceals creativity. Both cultural, in terms of the world-making efforts of these individuals who are producing these parties, and organizational in terms of what the format of nightlife is and that its expressions are much more diverse than just a bar.

Because gay bars are super important, and we absolutely must save them and must do everything we can to ensure that they survive. Let me be very clear and unequivocal about that. But gay bars are not the sum total of nightlife. Are they?

Rob Loveless

Can you explain to us some of the other differences between traditional gay bars and the other nightlife scenes that you study in your book?

Amin Ghaziani

Absolutely. It's a good question, just to get a sensory feel for these parties. And I guess, so the space where you are is the first thing that we might talk about.

So, when you're inside the party, the question you would ask yourself, or I would ask you, if you go to one of these events, is, what do you see around you? One of the most striking things about the venue or the space where these parties occur is the lack of any distinct symbols.

There are no rainbow flags, for instance, which is very different than gay bars and gayborhoods, which are plastered with rainbow flags. Its visual emptiness is what makes it radical because it's adaptable, and that's the queerest thing you can do.

So, for instance, something empty is quite expensive in its possibilities. After all, club nights, therefore, are not about the decor but something deeper. The symbols don't define the place. The people do.

And about those people, club nights are queer because they privilege the bodies of people who don't normally get to go to a public space and be centered. This often happens with particular demographic groups, like what we here in London called QTBIPOC groups, which is an acronym that stands for queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. So QTBIPOC groups.

And also, FLINTA parties. This is one of the newer expressions that's just arrived in London late 2023, originated in Germany in the 1970s. F-L-I-N-T-A for FLINTA. And that stands for female, lesbian, intersex, nonbinary, trans, and agender. It's basically an umbrella term for anyone who's not cis male.

The centering of these groups at club nights also includes individuals with expansive gender identities. And so, you'll have parties that specifically focus on gender expressions that are marginalized in places like gay bars, like Femmetopia, or another party called Femmi-Erect.

So, it's really sort of marvelous because the work that these parties are doing is protecting the most vulnerable segments in our community. And not just protecting them but creating parties that center, center them and celebrate them.

Of course, if we talk about people, we should also talk about what they're wearing. And fashion is actually quite interesting at these places. These parties feature much more experimental sartorial styles and much more elaborate modes of self-presentation, including making up your face.

You can think about the last time you were at a gay bar and ask yourself, how were people dressed, or what did you wear the last time you went out to a gay bar? I would say that's anodyne, whereas club nights are expressive. Fashion makes you then think about music.

A lot of gay bars play pop, whereas club nights will feature techno, house, sound system, or other kinds of experimental music. It's, you know, basically, it's less Britney and more Black Obsidian and Bollywood. I would also add that club nights often feature DJs, who are People of Color, which brings me to programming.

If they're like drag performances or other kinds of events, it's not just POC DJs but also POC performers. And a great example of this in London is a club night called The Cocoa Butter Club that I feature in the book, which is really taking great efforts to prioritize Black and other racialized artists who don't normally get prioritized in the same way.

Then, I guess the last thing I would say here about this question is geography. Club nights seldom, if ever, occur in the gayborhood, which is where you'll have among the largest concentration of bars. They're much further from the city center, in the cracks of the capitalist city, which is how I describe it in the third chapter of the book.

And in those cracks of the capitalist city, club night organizers are exploiting or making provisional use of abandoned or disused spaces. And it gives it a really queer vibe.

Rob Loveless

As you talked through that, you mentioned Femmetopia when you were talking about, you know, music and dress and all that. And it brought me back to that chapter where you, you know, go to Femmetopia, and I, I'm drawing a blank now on the song.

But I remember you writing about between the fashion and the song, it felt very thematic. Like, intentionally thematic. And I think, especially in the realm of femme-inclusive spaces, that's something that's severely lacking.

We mentioned gay bars earlier, but again, there's not really lesbian-specific bars. Here in Philly, I just saw a headline somewhere that they're potentially exploring building a lesbian bar in South Philly, which would be great.

Because, you know, if somebody asks you a gay bar, I'm sure you could name, at least for me, I can name five off the top of my head. But how many of those actually cater to a femme audience?

Amin Ghaziani

Yeah, I think your observation really illustrates one of the key themes of the book, and that is that one of the main reasons why these parties exist is to give space to particular groups of people who don't feel prioritized at existing gay bars, which is not to say that there are... I mean, actually, I don't know.

In some instances, there are very insidious systemic efforts to exclude People of Color. One sociologist, Reuben May, calls this Velvet Rope Discrimination, or strategies that people at the door, bouncers at the door, use to make it much harder for People of Color to enter the bar.

You also know that there's a lot of misogyny, sexism, and femmephobia at gay bars. Some of these spaces, not all of them, tend to be or promote hyper-masculine cultures. And so, if you're someone who presents in more femme ways and celebrates femme expressions, then these places, which are supposed to be places of belonging broadly, don't always feel that way for you.

And so, what do you do? Where do you go? Like where can you go to have fun, and feel a sense of fellowship with other people who are like you?

And that's where I think these club nights really excel.

Intersectional Failures of Gay Bars (29:58)

Rob Loveless

Going off of that, in the book, you wrote that, since gay bars historically primarily catered to white, gay men, queer, trans, Black, and Indigenous People had to create a place for themselves in those spaces.

And you described this as the intersectional failures of gay bars. So, I know you touched upon it already a little bit, but can you go more in-depth about what this means?

Amin Ghaziani

Yeah, sure. Briefly, an intersectional failure occurs, where, when one form of difference, like sexuality, overrides the others, like race, class, and gender.

And this creates an experience of exclusion or non-belonging because you feel like you're not being seen for all of the qualities and identities that make you who you are. And that you're, in order to belong in a particular space, that that beautiful richness of who you are becomes reduced into like single issue identities, and it doesn't work.

It's kind of like that metaphor of forcing a square peg through a round hole because you're more than that, and it doesn't, you don't fit there. And so, it's in response to the intersectional failures of gay bars that club nights present intentionally inclusive, radically inclusive, in fact, spaces.

Rob Loveless

Can you provide some examples of this from your book?

Amin Ghaziani

With pleasure. And I think the example that I would provide is the one that stuck with you, as well. You've already mentioned it, about Femmetopia. It's a great example of this.

So, listeners, if they go and get, pick up a copy of the book, which I hope you do, one of the things that people will notice is that we basically go... I take you party-hopping through the book. And so, every time we go to a party, it's offset with a black page, and they're really short, like, descriptions of what the parties are like, and they alternate with a more formal discussion where we're trying to understand what our experience is like in those events.

So, this example for intersectional failure comes from the opening of the Femmetopia clip. So, I won't read the whole thing, but just the beginning, because I think it provides a really powerful illustration of what this potentially abstract idea means:

"There are not many places where we can freely embrace and fully celebrate expressions of feminine genders in all their glory and gorgeousness. Phoebe and Kat were chatting about this one day.

"We were perpetual guests in other's environments," Kat told me. She wasn't alone in feeling like an outsider at gay bars, which often had masculine cultures and expectations.

In 2018, Dazed magazine broke a story that woke many of us up. Gay nightlife's violent femmephobia needs to end. That was the title of the story. Otamere, a self-described flared, 70s silhouetted, glittering choker-wearing faggot shared a heart-wrenching episode.

"I spent years avoiding clubs like XXL, a muscle-bound gay club near London Bridge, on the premise that it simply wasn't my vibe, sensing that its one club fits all slogan didn't quite ring true for my body. When my friends suggested going there a few weeks ago, I swallowed my discomfort, naively, presuming that it would be short-lived.

What I didn't know was that XXL's door policy explicitly refuses entry, not only to women but to anyone wearing what they described as women's clothing. Heels, dresses, skirts, a laundry list that the bouncer reeled off to me when I arrived in my strappy corset top. I was told that I would be refused entry unless I changed or took it off.

I acquiesced, shrunk myself, and complied, in the knowledge that the humiliation would be over soon enough, and I would be with my friends who were already in the club ahead of me. As I walked in, the bouncer had one last stake. He let me know that should I put the offending top back on while inside the club, I'd be thrown out.

I wasn't the first person this had happened to at XXL, nor would I be the last. Door policies like these, and indeed, the culture they represent, are all too familiar. Not just in XXL, but in gay clubs and spaces all across the world."

It's a difficult example, but it illustrates this idea of an intersectional failure.

Club Nights’ Community-Focused Tactics (34:17)

Rob Loveless

And that's just one of a few.

So definitely, again, in the book, really goes into detail with that. And I think it's really eye-opening to see what's happened historically and why these club nights and underground queer spaces are so important.

Shifting gears a little bit. Another aspect you wrote about is how some queer spaces are positioning themselves as a community enterprise rather than a for-profit venture. And I really liked the example you used about how Pxssy Palace had a tier ticketing policy and a taxi fund so patrons could get home safe.

So, can you tell us more about that and some other tactics queer spaces are implementing to focus on the community?

Amin Ghaziani

Oh yeah, I love those initiatives. And I love the names too.

These parties, you can just get a sense of their edgy and creative profile with names like Pxssy Palace or Femmetopia or Gayzpacho or Buttmitzvah. Inferno, The Cocoa Butter Club. They're wonderful, wonderful names that you'll see throughout the book.

But tier ticketing policies and a variety of other ones that we should definitely talk about. For me, they represent both economic innovations and practices of collective care, and we'll often see this in door policies.

Like tiered ticketing, and so what this means is that what you pay to enter the party reflects your identity and relative privilege. There are also pay-what-you-can tickets and pay-it-forward tickets where an individual can actually purchase the ticket for someone else who may not have the financial means to do so.

Then there's a fourth example, which is called the progressive redistribution of funds. And so, what this would mean is that an organizer might host a party at one time that draws a sub-group within the community that has relative amounts of economic privilege, and so they'll spend more at the bar.

They'll spend more for higher costs for tickets. And then the organizer will use the proceeds from that party to throw another one the next time for groups that have less amounts of privilege, right? So that one group is effectively subsidizing a party for another group.

And so, it becomes a collective model of thinking about the community and ensuring that various segments have places where they can feel centered and seen.

I think we also need to put the party, any given party, in a holistic context, because it's not just about the night, but also getting yourself to the party. And even more importantly, because it's much later, getting yourself safely home.

And so, Pxssy Palace has pioneered an initiative called the taxi fund, where they collect donations to help trans+ individuals, in particular, who are most susceptible to hate crimes right now, get home safely so that they don't have to take public transportation so that they're not walking around in the streets where they may be targeted.

And it's a genius policy that demonstrates with particular force that the practices and the economic practices that club nights are using are actually exemplary expressions of collective care.

Reflections on Long Live Queer Nightlife (37:14)

Rob Loveless

Obviously, there is a lot that was covered in your book. What was the most surprising thing you learned through writing Long Live Queer Nightlife?

Amin Ghaziani

It's hard to pick the one single most surprising thing. Page after page, I feel like the experiences I describe are full of surprises.

But one of the most formative ones, maybe was the fact that I myself, as a person and as a researcher, can find myself at the center of a dance floor that centers me in return. The fact that I didn't realize that that was possible, the fact that that could even constitute a surprise, tells you about some potential limits of gay bars.

I want gestures to diversity, inclusion, and representativeness with phrases like everyone is welcome or love is love. They're helpful and they're important and, and I think we should continue them, but they don't always amount up to all that much in practice, particularly for racialized and trans+ people.

And so, as our community grows and evolves, so too will and should the places where we can come together to have fun and feel fellowship with each other. And I just think it was wonderful to discover that I could have that experience.

So, you know, if you want a specific example in this, would you like a specific example of this?

Rob Loveless

Absolutely, yeah.

Amin Ghaziani

One spring day, I had heard about an event that featured Bollywood imagery, and that fused Bollywood music with hip-hop as a reflection of the South Asian diasporic experience.

And I felt this vibe, as soon as I walked into the space, which is a cavernous room located about an hour's train ride from the city center near the University, which is where my flat was located. Projected on a bare white wall across from the DJ booth, I see clips of iconic Bollywood videos.

Devdas, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and Khabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham. They were pulsating on a packed dance floor, and when I was at the center of that dance floor, I felt like it was much more queer and less gay to me, which is a compositional and tonal shift that seems fitting for a party that night, which was called Hungama.

And Hungama is an Urdu word which loosely translates to a celebratory chaos or commotion. Vogue India describes this party and others like this, there are several, as an, quote, explosive underground scene. They call it a nightlife movement that QTBIPOC people can claim as their own.

It was just amazing that feeling to be in this space where I was surrounded by other people that looked like me. I'd never been, I'd never been at a gay bar filled with queer South Asian people playing music that reminded me of my childhood when I was growing up.

And I guess that that was a big surprise that places like this exist. And that there are so many other people like me looking for other people like ourselves. That's a beautiful thing, and that's not specific or unique to London, but these parties exist all over the world.

Rob Loveless

Going off of that too, what do you hope readers get from Long Live Queer Nightlife?

Amin Ghaziani

I guess I hope that listeners in the show and readers especially of the book, that the book will help them reorient their thoughts about what nightlife is, its many meanings, and the hopeful and joyful possibilities that await us when we prioritize redefinition over mourning and loss.

Because hope and joy are major themes and comprise a significant momentum that carries the reader through the book.

Rob Loveless

And I love the title of the book because, upon first read of the title, I feel like sometimes you see the phrase long live as, like, in memoriam to. Like you're remembering something like long live this.

So, upon initial read of the title, you might think, long live queer nightlife, it's over. Gay bars are closing. But really, after reading the book, you realize, okay, gay bars are closing, but that is not queer nightlife on its own, and there's so much more to it. That it's evolving. It's adapting.

And like you mentioned, with your own personal experiences, it's a more inclusive space where people can and should be able to see themselves beyond just being gay or, you know, whatever, they could see, body representation, you know, femme representation, racial representation, so that by the end of the book, the long live really is a celebration.

Like it is living long. It's not, it's not, you know, looking back nostalgia, better days. It's looking to the future.

Amin Ghaziani

Absolutely. The title is a play on a quintessential British expression. But in relation to royalty, it implies the preceding assumption that gay nightlife is dead.

And so, the pairing of these delicate declarations of life and death create metaphors of transferal and continuity and especially triumph. And so, it's, it's not a mourning.

It's a celebration of the unstoppable, kinetic, even, qualities of queer nightlife.

Rob Loveless

With Pride Month upon us, how can we take the lessons learned from your book and put them into practice to make this Pride a more inclusive celebration?

Amin Ghaziani

I think one of the things that listeners and readers can do is to reflect on the qualities of club nights, and then do their part to ensure that other kinds of LGBTQ places are also typified by those qualities.

So articulated, consent is the first. It's a core cultural characteristic of club nights. They're quite direct and explicit about consent. And as we talked about earlier in our conversation, it's one of the few things that you'll see taped to the walls, but you'll never see consent policies at gay bars. And I see no reason why they can't be posted at gay bars and other kinds of spaces, as well.

Intentional inclusion is a second core cultural quality of club nights. Club nights are not exclusive, but they're not for everyone either. They're often powered by marginalized communities who have struggled to feel like they belong in other kinds of places, similar to the vignette that I read about the individual who asked me, no, where are you really from?

Which brings me to intersectional queerness, the third quality. Club nights prioritize the bodies of people who don't normally get to go to public spaces and be centered like racialized and trans+ individuals. And I think we can do better to create places that offer multiple centers rather than replicating single centers in a certain type of demographic over and over and over.

And finally, another thing that we've been talking about throughout our conversation here, Rob, there's this feeling of joy. One person who I interviewed, Ben Walters, told me, "Fun don't get no respect, either from the academy or from society." I love that line. It's such a great quote. Club nights show us the political power of having fun and feeling joy.

So, I think we can take these four qualities of consent, inclusion, intersectionality, and joy. We should celebrate them at club nights, and we should apply them more broadly to other kinds of LGBTQ+ spaces.

Episode Closing (44:19)

Rob Loveless

And, connecting it back to the tarot, Ten of Pentacles. Again, this is a very grounding and nurturing card. And it's really reminding us to spend time with our support system, with our chosen family, to create that network of support.

And again, it also talks about a potential inheritance, putting the money aside. You could think of it as creating resources, creating a sense of community that you can pass down to future generations.

And through what Amin talked about today, I think we really can see this card pop up in queer nightlife. You know, for a long time, gay bars were synonymous with white, gay, cisgender men. And really, as the tides have changed a little bit with gay bar closures, it's not an end to queer nightlife, but it's really shining a light on that was never a fully inclusive queer nightlife and that there are other venues.

There's club nights, there's underground queer venues that do provide a more inclusive atmosphere where people can see themselves represented, whether it's body type, gender identity, race. And so, I think this card really is a call to action that, you know, we need to make sure that we are creating inclusive, supportive places.

We need to make sure that we are intentionally inclusive with our thoughts, our words, and our actions so, that way, everyone in the LGBTQ+ community can see themselves in these spaces. That it's not just the, you know, traditional 90s archetype of the white, gay, cisgender, masculine, you know, toned, straight passing man, but instead that everyone feels welcome.

So again, really, just remember to be intentional and be inclusive and supportive. Show up for others and make sure that you are creating and supporting those spaces that are truly inclusive atmospheres for everyone. Because, remember, there's room for every person in the LGBTQ+ community at the table.

Connect with Amin (46:00)

And Amin, thank you so much for coming on today.

Sorry for being tongue-tied. I was fangirling over having you on because I was very excited for this episode. So, thank you for sharing these important insights with the listeners.

Can you please tell everyone where they can learn more about you, connect with you, and where they can buy your book?

Amin Ghaziani

First of all, thank you for saying that. You're very kind and generous. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be on your excellent show. Thank you for having me here.

I encourage listeners to order my book directly from the publisher, which is Princeton University Press, or support your local bookshelf. There's also an audiobook, I should add, which is narrated by Amin El Gamal, the first openly queer Muslim actor to play a lead on a television series for Prison Break and Breaking Fast.

And so, it's Amin and Amin in this case, which I think is quite cool. And that narrator has just a mesmerizing voice. It's gorgeous. So, if you, if you're someone who prefers audiobooks, then that's also an option for you.

I'd be delighted if listeners and readers want to follow me to learn more about nightlife. You could do so on X, which is my first name, underscore surname, so @Amin_Ghaziani, and it's the same on Instagram. You can find me, follow me there.

And I'm hoping to connect with as many people as possible. And if you want to look up some of my other writings, you could do so by finding me at aminghaziani.net.

Rob Loveless

And definitely go out and buy Long Live Queer Nightlife. In my personal opinion, I think it is an essential read for every member of the LGBTQ+ community. Super informative, very eye-opening. So, make sure you go out and buy your copy after listening to this.

Connect with A Jaded Gay (47:37)

Rob Loveless

And you know the drill. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me, rob@ajadedgay.com.

Please also remember to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast. Five stars only; it's always greatly appreciated.

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And remember, every day is all we have, so you got to make your own happiness.

Mmm-bye.