“The bar was advertising a fundraiser event for the New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling team, and it was right after Decadence, so we kind of assumed that there would be lesbians everywhere,” Shelby says. She dreamed of a club where she could avoid the leering eyes of straight men, who she says find ways to make her uncomfortable whether she’s alone or with a date. On the evening of Southern Decadence, Shelby says she started her night at a small, quiet bar where she hoped to meet women. Finding single queer women is especially difficult. The spaces are often packed with straight women accompanying their gay male friends, pushing queer women to the periphery. Though some of them are marketed toward the community at large, Shelby says that finding lesbians or otherwise queer women in those venues is difficult. Of the sixteen LGBT bars in the city, not one is dedicated specifically to women. Shelby*, a closeted lesbian who moved to New Orleans from a small town in Northern Louisiana to find a more accepting space, recounted a night of bar-hopping after Southern Decadence, an LGBT pride parade held annually in September. In the beginning, in 2006, there were several lesbian bars where the women could gather. Jenna Ard, the Co-Founder and Co-Organizer of the event, says it was created as a means of reunion for queer women who returned to the city after Hurricane Katrina. While gay men have three brick and mortar institutions at one intersection alone, lesbians in the city don’t have a single solid space, bar or otherwise. The most prominent space that the queer women of New Orleans have to themselves is GrrlSpot, a pop-up event hosted on the first Saturday of every month at different locations around the city. “There is no specific event at the Center that focuses on queer women at this time,” says a representative from the LGBT Community Center of New Orleans, despite advertising a mission statement that touts combatting misogyny and creating equitable spaces for gender and sexual minorities. Queer women – who face unique, intersectional problems – are forgotten or fetishized while queer men are celebrated. Gay clubs are filled with men, pride parades are overwhelmingly male, and even activism is limited mostly to men. New Orleans, a city known for its prolific gay presence and its extreme party culture, is no different. In the midst of an era of acceptance for the LGBT community, women-exclusive queer spaces are dying out on a drastic scale. There is a clear theme to the New Orleans gay scene: it is distinctly male. Look at any poster for Southern Decadence, and you will find oiled six-packs and well-trimmed beards.
On any given Saturday night, three of the biggest gay bars in the city – Oz, Bourbon Pub Parade, and Napoleon’s Itch – have the streets teeming with drag queens and gay men in leather and mesh.
Ann streets is the heart of gay life in New Orleans.