Interview with June Thomas on A Place of Our Own

Cassidy Hunt: In the book, you discuss six spaces that are historically important to queer women. How did you decide on these six spaces?

June Thomas: Oh goodness, some of them were obvious—lesbian bars, for example. Bookstores too, they’re my happy place. They’re the places where I learned, and discovered the possibilities of what life could be like as a queer person. Softball was a tricky one because I like sports, but I’m not sporty myself, so I’d never even been to a softball game, but I knew how important that was. Lesbian land was another tricky one because I knew how much important stuff had happened there, and still is, but at the same time I do have issues with some of the trans-exclusionary politics that are involved with some—not all—of these spaces. When I was writing this book, though, I wanted to make accessible to people information about lesbian history, and so I wanted to cover things that are really important, regardless of whether or not I liked how they turned out. Sex toys, well, I have a real sense of how sexual liberation is so important to queer liberation. At this point, I also had a sense of how business was going to be a running theme throughout this book and, well, vibrators, dildos—they’re a good business! But of course, capitalism still has its ways of getting its claws in. And finally, having gone to so many queer vacation destinations in the US myself, I just thought it was so important, especially now that they’ve become so much more expensive, and have become such a privilege. I wanted to highlight that these places exist, and that they’re so important to our culture.

Cassidy: Were there any others that you wanted to include, but didn’t make the cut of the book?

June: There were definitely a couple of contenders before the end. One of them was definitely women’s studies programs, because these were places you could learn, you could meet people, you could share ideas, but then at the same time—it’s college. It’s not something that anybody can do, to just get together and start a women’s studies program. I also thought about television, or maybe online spaces and the ways that people respond and react to television communities, but I didn’t want to break too much from these in-person spaces. So in the end it felt like there wasn’t too much competition.

Cassidy: You talk about lots of different places in your book, but is there any one specific space that you first felt a queer connection with?

June: Oh absolutely, I actually think the first queer space where I found what I was looking for was a tennis tournament. I just had a sense that tennis was the queer women’s sport at the time, and so I bought tickets, and I was right! And that tournament really helped me make contacts, and that was one of the centers of my queer community. Again, when I moved to the US, I found Lammas bookstore—it was in my town, and it was feminist, and I could just pop down to the store and meet people, make friends, find out about other events in town. It felt so special because it had all of these amazing ideas, and all these amazing people, and every time I went there, there was something new. And the woman who owned the store at that time was somebody who every lesbian in town knew and loved, wanted to talk to and see, and seeing somebody like that who seemed to be so successful was incredible.

Cassidy: You say in your book that you “lesbian for a living.” When did you first discover that lesbian history was such a passion of yours?

June: Well, I was probably about thirty-five before I had a job that wasn’t in the women’s community, whether it was working at Lammas, or at off our backs, or the Outwrite collective in London, and all that was wonderful. They paid terribly, if anything, but at the same time, you were doing the thing you most wanted to do, and at the same time you were surrounded by all these amazing people from different backgrounds. And this was much more doable than it is today, because the world was less expensive! Back then, people always talked about their “straight jobs” and their “movement jobs,” so a woman could be a bicycle courier by day, and a feminist bookseller by night. So it almost felt sometimes that we were removed from the outside or mainstream world. But then, later on, I think it was around 2014 when the debate surrounding marriage equality was gaining momentum, and a lot of straight people around me seemed to realize that they had no education or understanding about queer culture. And so I thought, all of these things that are so central to my life, I wanted to share both with people who have never thought much about the culture of queer people who are very close to them, and also younger lesbians and feminists who want to delve more into their own history. That was definitely an inflection point that made me think, yeah, people will definitely be interested in this.

Cassidy: You talk about a lot of changes in the lesbian community that you’ve noticed in the last couple of decades. What would you say is the biggest change that you’ve noticed about lesbian spaces?

June: Well, interestingly, one of the main reasons that I wanted to write this book was that I felt there was this really strong narrative of “disappearance;” that lesbian bars are disappearing and lesbian spaces are disappearing. And, yes, there are fewer lesbian bars, that’s not disputable, but as somebody who’s been living in this community for decades, it just seems crazy to me to say that there are fewer places for the community now. Yes, there are fewer spaces that meet this narrow definition of ‘lesbian bar,’ but there are so many places we can go! Not necessarily lesbian bars, but other spaces for queer women and the queer community. It feels like there are many more spaces where queer women feel comfortable existing, but that they’re less likely to be labelled explicitly as ‘lesbian’ spaces. So, I suppose in a way the queer spaces themselves have changed a lot, alongside the community.

Cassidy: What do you think are the main challenges that lesbians face with regard to declining lesbian spaces in the last decade or so?

June: Well, I think the problem ultimately is capitalism. When I was writing the book, I tried to be practical and research all of the different spaces separately, but the overarching theme was that people wanted a community center. They wanted a community space for lesbians, but to have one they were usually forced to open a business! So, one of the things I think we should move away from is this culture of self-sacrifice, women working themselves to the bone and sacrificing themselves—which of course, I understand the motivation! But, we have to find ways of making projects sustainable within capitalism.

Cassidy: How are these challenges different to the ones that dykes were facing in the 1970s and 1980s?

June: I’ll just talk about bookstores. When feminist bookstores started in the 1970s and 1980s, people really appreciated this new space that was available to them. They wanted to be there, and they could socialize with other lesbians, but then the 1990s hit and the chain bookstores came in, and then later, amazon.com came in. People realized, you can get your books cheaper there, but they don’t care about you. To them, it’s just a category in a bookstore and doesn’t matter anymore than a bible, or a cookbook—and that’s the nature of capitalism! But that’s not the same as what we want, or what we as a community of people who are trying to build a better world are trying to achieve. So right now, we have the gift of hindsight to know how important it is where we spend our money, and we’ve certainly learned from our errors in the past.

Cassidy Hunt conducted this interview on December 16, 2024.

June Thomas, a journalist and podcaster, is the author of A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture. After 40 years in the US, she now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Cassidy Hunt is a Philosophy and Politics graduate from the University of Edinburgh. She volunteers at the Lavender Menace Queer Books archive, based in Edinburgh, and interns for Sinister Wisdom.