Butch, Please! A Night of Leather Daddies & Trans Joy in London
“Being in this space, that is resistance.”
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Leather Covered Dyke.) It’s half-past eight, and I’m in the smoking area of the Clapham Grand. The legendary lesbian club night Butch, Please has taken over the 124-year-old performance venue in Clapham Junction, and I’m leant on a wall conversing with a bunch of dykes.
One, in her thirties, speaks of how she popped her lesbian cherry the other week. “I’m a baby dyke, and tonight, I want to graduate to dykolescence.”
Another gives pricing advice on queer dominatrixes. It’s quite a butch-presenting crew, and soon they’re sharing experiences of getting ID’ed in other clubs — for their gender, not their age.
This is a place where the chains of gender expectations are unleashed and, as is the case tonight, leather harnesses are (consensually) put in their place.
Daddies, doms and bikers flood into the venue. Baby dyke is itching to get inside, and she leads our little troop onto the dancefloor where Son of a Preacher Man oozes from the smooth soundsystem.
The energy is electric with anticipation and conversation. Countless jaws rest on the floor as we absorb the majesty of all this dyke energy.
