Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault and homophobia.

The night I asked my girlfriend to go out with me, I was (shamefully) seven vodka-redbulls down at a very popular straight nightclub for a subject bar crawl. In response to my kissing her on the cheek, surrounded by snogging and grinding straight peers, I was called inappropriate and asked to ‘take it home’ by a member of staff. Later that night, as we moved to a different room, a man reached his hand up my dress, hands drunkenly grabbing for my underwear as I walked up the stairs. This might seem like a particularly unlucky night – but it’s actually a series of events that happened to me over and over again during my second year. After countless nights of leering, sexual harassment and plain homophobia, I decided I was never going to a straight club again. No matter how many cheap student nights or society events were held there – I couldn’t go back to venues where I was treated like a porn category again and again. 

So, on my 20th birthday I decided to celebrate in Birmingham’s Gay Village. Drunkenly turning 20 in the taxi there, I excitedly paid twelve pounds too much for entry to the most well-known venue in the village. At first, I felt safer than I ever had in any straight venue. However, as the night drew to a close, I was let down once again by Birmingham’s nightlife. 

My friends headed out to get a takeaway while my girlfriend and I headed to the toilet before phoning a taxi. We drunkenly squeezed into a cubicle together, something I’d done thoughtlessly with my best-friend only an hour previous. However, cleaning staff spotted us in one cubicle and asked us to exit. Since my girlfriend was still pulling up her tights, we replied that we’d leave after she was done. In response, a member of security climbed onto the toilet in the cubicle next to ours and declared that she ‘knew what we were doing.’ It is obvious to me now, what security assumed two drunk women were doing in a cubicle together. However, as she peered over, it was clear that we were just going to the toilet after finishing our fifth drink.

Unfortunately, what was really happening didn’t matter to her. She decided we weren’t ‘complying’ and we were physically restrained by two straight members of staff. My girlfriend was pushed aggressively against the wall as she tried to leave and told we could only leave the toilet once we ‘admitted what we’d done’. The male security had an arm around my neck and shined a torch in my eyes while asking for details of our sex life. This experience was enough to let me know that this gay club was not a safer alternative. I couldn’t ignore the excitement with which I was asked if I’d been a ‘naughty girl’, how I was cajoled for more explicit details of an act I didn’t even commit. In my opinion, even if you do create a ‘safe space’ it means nothing if the security and management of the club are straight themselves. For me, regulation of the authority in queer spaces is much more vital than the clientele. 

When the manager finally let us leave the toilet, she admitted that she knew we weren’t having sex but couldn’t do anything about the security. If they were unhappy with us, they were unhappy with us.  To me, this is not running a nightclub, it is straight authority wielding power over queer people. In my eyes, it is nothing new. This may seem like a one-off incident but as a lesbian, I have been over-sexualised in nearly every queer space I’ve been in.

Gay culture is more popular than ever. Straight people love drag queens, gay clubs and fashion. However, in my opinion, the cultural love of all-things-queer does not include lesbians – for straight men and women, I still remain in the middle space of male fantasy, deviant or predator. In my eyes, for straight, male bouncers, their position of power is a means to exploit their idea of lesbians as a sexual commodity. I can’t count on one hand how many times I’ve been asked to perform in order to ‘prove’ I’m gay at a club door, or asked sexual questions by a straight bouncer – especially in queer spaces.

If you are going to hire straight bouncers for a gay club, it is vital they are implicit bias tested at the least. Sure, I am slightly off-put and annoyed by groups of straight girls in a gay club. However, what I am really threatened by is the increasingly straight management and security at the majority of Birmingham’s gay clubs. If queer people aren’t kept safe at a club you peddle as a ‘safe space’ then, in my eyes, you’re profiting off the violence and homophobia they experience there. 

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