By Marian Lens
This talk was given at the invitation of Pride Festival for the conference of September 20 (2020) Espaces publics, Affaires Privées. Quelle place avaient les lesbiennes et les gays dans la ville du XIXe à la fin du XXe siècle ?
“Urban public space and clandestine encounters have always been closely linked. In Brussels, as in most big cities, homosexuals had drawn a secret cartography to thwart the laws. If men often engaged in flirtatious behavior around urinals, what about encounters between women? On the occasion of artist Marc Martin’s exhibition at LaVallée, scientists, historians and activists retrace the private lives of our elders and decipher an often denigrated subculture. What was the place given to lesbians and gays in the city in the 19th and 20th centuries?” PrideFestival announcement program. https://www.l-tour.be/archives/ (20 September 2020)
When I perform the rainbow and lesbian itineraries, I could tell the audience stories.
“The downtown area is by far the richest in terms of evocation. Going through the three phases of displacement of the ‘gay village’, or rather the concentration of ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ places in the city center, in particular by following the evolution of its bars and cafés, allows us to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of the late nineteenth century Galerie Royale Saint-Hubert, when Brussels was considered to have the most ‘lesbian and gay’ places in Europe. During the first half of the 20th century, the cafés were concentrated in the square of the Rue des Bouchers towards the Grand-Place. Later, they moved to the other side of the Grand-Place to assume their current quarters towards Lemonnier and Anneessens, via Rue du Midi.” [i]
It would be idyllic if history could only be written that way. A beautiful upward curve. But no, that’s not how it works. The course of history is a series of evolutions and devolutions, a set of ups and downs. Some minority groups within dominant social entities can benefit from general evolutions, while at the same time, others, because they belong to dominated social entities, suffer the full force of all the economic and social crises that push them inexorably into a broad downward spiral.
After the Second World War, in fact, a leaden blanket will fall on the whole population. It is the return of the three ‘K’s’, which women are very familiar with: Kinder, Kirche, Küche (Children, Church and Kitchen). The homeland was to be repopulated. The heteropatriarchal order, which is often relaxed in times of war, tightened its grip.
Before becoming the beautiful glass roof of today, the Galerie Royale Saint-Hubert was an alley with a bad reputation with its “particular fauna” (prostitution, also male homosexuals), but hidden in the bend of dark alleys in disrepair… that the city will make a duty to “clean up” (that’s the term used at the time), in 1958 for the Universal Expo. And then these galleries fall back to abandonment. Until beyond the 70s’, you could then go to lesbian and gay bars, “but then you had to know the numbers and the doorbells to be able to access them”[ii].
On the other hand, when I end with the current year 2020, the ‘Village’ as one says, what should I use as an adjective? It is now referred to as the ‘Gay Village’, as the Brussels Tourist Office calls it, or is it rather the ‘Rainbow Village’ to be more inclusive…? Which Village exactly? Hmmm, where are the lesbians and their very own spaces? What happened?
Yes. What is the place of lesbians in the public sphere and their evolution from the end of the 19th century to today?
If we only speak of “same-sex love”, we cannot understand why the history of ‘homos’ and lesbians is so different.
On the other hand, if we evoke the history currently called “of the sexes” Man/Woman, if we evoke these striking analyses of the 1970s and 1980s, “the oppression of women by men”, everything becomes clearer and better understood.
Everyone knows that the public sphere belongs to men. One of the many examples illustrating this is the absence of urinals (or similar) for women in the public area.
Worse than an inaccessibility for women, it is a space that is too dangerous for them. Harassment affects all women, and violence can lead to physical assault and rape (even though most rapes happen in the private space, a third of women is a huge proportion).
The street, at night, belongs to men too. The only women who risk themselves there: prostitutes. And prostitution is anything but a ‘profession’, women have always known it, because it is a risky business relationship: they depend on the goodwill of the dominant ones, the men. They are not prostitutes for women, but for straight or bisexual men. Not for other women.
Women belong to men – they are part of a ‘heteropatriarchal’ order and have been destined for men and attributed to them for centuries (both women and girls)
Their approach to sexuality is therefore fundamentally different. Also because sexuality has long been thought to be non-existent in women (typical example of the Victorian period).
In a social system where the relationship of domination M/F and its heterosocial structural system where women have no importance as such, they exist only according to the needs of men. They have been for centuries enslaved to serve these masters by all means. And consequently on the sexual level to serve the men without being supposed to have a sexual life of their own, nor of pleasure.[iii]
Heterosexual?
For centuries, marriage has been imposed, love has no place in it. It’s basically fishing in the dark. And marriage is for life.
We must not forget that women fought to be able to divorce, or to be able to leave violent husbands.
Society considered that women who are only “interested” in sexuality were prostitutes, while, as I told you, these sexual relationships were at their own risk, for the only good pleasure and need of men.
What if they still broke free from this order of things?
For their own pleasure? “Ladies’ women” were seen as dangerous. It was unacceptable. Yes, just like for the gays.
But for the majority of women, when their sexuality and pleasure were taken into consideration, they were seen as a threat, until the 19th century included and beyond. It should be remembered that female circumcision (the removal of the clitoris) was not unique to African or Muslim societies. It was also practiced in Europe in an equally repressive way against women, from the Middle Ages until the 19th century.
The existence of the clitoris, the only organ in the mammalian world that serves only for pleasure, has no equivalent among males. The political lesbians of the 1950s all the way to the 1970s proclaimed it loud and clear.
Yes, this delicious little organ, so powerful, so fabulous for women, is a threat to a heterosocial order, because women could get high by themselves, or between themselves, without needing a man’s intervention. And that, in a heterosocial society, is an absolute danger, an obvious prohibition. And independent women knew it all too well.[iv]
To speak about the public sphere, and the connection to it, means addressing the other repressive aspect specific to women when they belong to the lesbian social group – The history of the lesbians: a (her)story of absolute prohibitions
The public sphere is thus a dangerous One Man’s Land for women.
And it has been for such a long period of time, that the historical memory has forgotten the origin, that is to say the initial possession of “Women” by “Men”. To this day, no historical clue has been found as to when this took place. But it is evident that extreme violence has existed to establish it, and to make it last.
The lesbians’ relationship to the public sphere is therefore diametrically opposed to what men could have with it, even if it was in a secretive manner/around urinals or in parks or dark alleys. For lesbians, it just wasn’t an option.
Our lesbian herstory is one of double repression, and as we are talking about a whole social system, double oppression:
as they are ‘women’, of the prohibition of sexuality, of sexual pleasure, and to take control of it quite simply, which was proscribed to them since centuries;
and that of the even more absolute prohibition of pleasure, without men.
In doing so, they defied an absolute prohibition, that of turning their backs on the social order of the sacrosanct heteropatriarchal family: the superiority of the heterosexual male, the submission to him and the mission of childbirth, ‘the three Ks’, of which I mentioned earlier.
***
This historical and sociological introduction is fundamental to understanding why our lesbian history is not the same as the gay history, and simply cannot be.
Therefore, our relationship to the public sphere – the conquest of our lesbian pleasures and spaces – has almost nothing to do with that of homosexual men.
What then is our history of hidden encounters? What are the spaces of encounters that have been possible?
It is that of an even more secretive and hidden history, much more difficult to find and to reveal. As it is still, to this day, seen as threatening.
How have lesbian meeting spaces evolved from the late 19th century to the present?
First half of the 20th century – the glorious era of the cafés
The period from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries until the Second World War was the glorious era of cafés for the Brussels population, during the day and sometimes extended into the evening.
For “those individuals” too, that is to say us, “homos” and “lesbians” (at the time these were obviously not the words used to describe us). So they were more like small cafés, open during the day, sometimes late at night.
One must know that there were a lot of cafés in those days. At a time when there was no TV or Internet, they acted as social places of exchanges and meetings: it represented 10% of Brussels’ economic activity (one person out of ten worked in this field). There was no social stigma attached to them being run by women, and many actually were.
Eugene Wilhelm (whose pseudonym is Numa Praetorius), a lawyer from Strasbourg, “the most productive collaborator of Hirschfeld {who served} as a bridge between the French- and German-speaking world in the emerging homosexual movement”, describes Brussels at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as “probably the European city where homosexual establishments are the most numerous.”[v]
With the introduction of the wage system, the common people, including some women (although for them much later and limited), started to acquire some freedom, namely also free time with the possibility of having a drink at the café.
The right to paid/retributed work is still forbidden to married women, unless they get the agreement of the husband, and this until 1976 in Belgium because women are still considered as legal minors, therefore dependent on their husbands (Napoleonic Code). And freedom is simply impossible for those who would have wanted to live their lesbianism or bisexuality one day.
For single women (the majority of lesbians), retributions are very poor: women were even more badly underpaid in the past.
Nevertheless, we can say that for those who went out in cafés to socialize and be together, it was a glorious time.
In the pre-war 1930s, we have the testimony of Suzanne de Pues (alias Suzan Daniel, founder of the first Belgian LGBT association in 1953) who said that then “there were more bars for women than for men, because they still had the parks {a historical constant, including the Parc Royal, the Mont des Arts, the Cinquantenaire, I’m the one who lists… } and urinals as meeting places.” [vi]
Despite the regular occurrence of raids in cafés by police (because in conventional and catholic Belgium, there could not be an “attack on the family order”), the owners of the cafés would often protect their customers and help them flee, before the arrival of these squads. These café owners got to know “these individuals”. A sense of empathy had emerged.
It is these mechanisms of solidarity and protectiveness of a minority group, which also help a society to change: all these daily gestures of the “righteous” make a society evolve positively. Empathy, solidarity, allow us to create both the present and future of a better world.
In the neighborhood of the rue des Bouchers, the Impasse de la Fidélité, you had for example at number 5 La Pergola that Suzanne de Pues frequented, which lasted from the 1930s until the 1960s. It was run by the lesbian Germaine, nicknamed “Mae West” because she looked like her. She later handed it over to a gay man, Max, who continued to have an audience of mostly women between the ages of 18 and 30. In 1996, Suzanne reported that “except for the color, it was still the same door and window.”[vii]
In the thirties and war years, different cafés were thus accessible to lesbians. She further states, “in 1953, in Amsterdam, she went to a party or a lesbian bar, where you had to ring the bell and give the password. These were specifics that she had never seen in Brussels.”
After World War II – Greater repression – The norms of the heterosocial order impose the repopulation of the nation with the return of the ‘three K’s’ – Back in the ‘Closet’
After the war, jobs were reallocated to men or are primarily intended for them and reserved.
Belgium and its oh-so-free Brussels will very quickly become absorbed by the new dark atmosphere of big European cities. Just like New York.
Patricia Highsmith accurately describes this America of the lesbian and homosexual community that she knew: “Those were the days, the ‘forties and early ‘fifties, when gay bars in New York were behind rather dark door somewhere, and private clubs had get-togethers on Friday nights, admission $3.00 which included one drink, and you could invite one friend. There was dancing, and dinner at candlelit tables. (…) The gays talked about the latest homosexual novel, and maybe chuckled over the end of the story.”[viii]
The 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – Bars are confined to closed places, late at night and on weekends – Heterosocial control reaches its peak in Belgium and being “different” “like that” forces this part of the population to live in hiding and in ‘shame’
With the sixties, the repression of the heterosocial order increased. In 1965, Belgium saw its first and only repressive law against homosexuals (or ‘homophiles’). With the article 372 bis, the Belgian penal code raises the age of consent granted to 16 years for heterosexuals, to 18 years for homosexuals. There was thus a risk of being arrested for the “corruption of minors” if, for example, a very young ‘adult’ of 18 years has a relationship with a 16-year old ‘teenager’…
The first homosexual demonstrations, which will begin at the end of the years 1970s will especially require the suppression of this law, precursors of our current Pride claims. We will need to wait until 1985 for the law to be abolished. It will have been in force for twenty years, as well as its potential arbitrary threat in the years that will follow. Indeed, a repressive climate never disappears with the mere abolition of a legal rule.
The Golden Sixties will primarily benefit the male population – The disproportion between the places held by homosexuals and those held by lesbians will begin – In the 1980s, there were more places for homosexuals than for lesbians, from simple to triple
When I landed in Brussels at the age of 19, having fled my family, at the end of the 1970s, I had landed in a desolate atmosphere. Light years away from knowing that a lesbian place like La Pergola had just stopped a few years before, after having lived and survived for half a century.
During those years, the places were hidden from view, open on weekends, evenings and nights, sometimes so late that if you lived in the province you couldn’t get home by train, or you could only have one drink. Their capacity was on average thirty to fifty people.
I was completely unaware that there had been a more glorious time. I felt as though I was “alone in the world”, or something like that. After years of loneliness and vagrancy, I met other women, who like me were ‘different’, during serendipitous encounters.
As its name suggests, the Black Swan was very dark and painted black. Run by Monique, a lesbian, the bar was mainly frequented by lesbians in the 1970s and 1980s. It was located in the district of the Rue des Bouchers, in the Impasse de la Fidélité. In the 1980s, this cul-de-sac (i.e. dead end) was squalid, dilapidated and very dark too as well as very little frequented. The Black Swan was one of the few places that was open there, at the very end.
Despite the fear of a physical assault before reaching the destination, I am glad the bar exists.
Thanks to word of mouth[ix], I also knew of another bar a few blocks away, in the Galerie Saint-Hubert, the ‘Madame’, whose number I had been given and whose doorbell I needed to ring.
But unlike ‘Suzan Daniel’ and other lesbians who had barely ever experienced this twenty years earlier, I had to write my name and address in the register at the entrance of the bar. For the police, “in case of controls”.
A battle-heartened lesbian whispered in my ear to give a false name and address. In spite of the desolation and abjection, the powerful breath of solidarity blew a wind of change.
The memory has faded – but the anger still rumbles and grows – it will materialize in historically new movements – The affirmation of the lesbian and gay movements
Fortunately, the anger is intact. These are the post-68 years that I did not get the chance to experience, but the rage is still there. With the end of the 70s and the early 80s, it was the emergence of political lesbianism in Belgium which very quickly became radicalized. It is the very militant, very open, also very joyful time of the Fight Back.
Under the pressure of very politicized lesbian and homosexual movements, which also happened to still be a minority, the registers will end up disappearing completely. On the dancefloors of bars, the reactions of lesbians follow one another. The perverts who long to “rub themselves” against lesbians are pushed bluntly out of dancefloors and bars. To the great displeasure of bar owners, behaving as pimps!
The 1980s and 1990s – Bars and associative places, dance parties and national and international meetings for lesbians
Beside certain bars that continue to exist (like the ‘Capricorne’, the oldest one, which still existed at that time) and others that emerge (like the ‘Evénement’, the ‘Féminin’,…), weekly cafés are held by associations (in Brussels, and especially in Flanders) in places rented for the evening.
In Flanders, the concept has lasted, like ‘Atthis’ in Antwerp, ‘Labyrint’ in Leuven or ‘Goudou’ in Bruges, even if they have sometimes changed locations.[x]
In Brussels, it was the ‘Lesbische Paarse Peperpot’ at the Babbelkroeg. Later still, ‘Lady June’, ‘Les griffes de sorcière’ or ‘De Kluts’.
At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, lesbian ‘parties’ and ‘dance parties’ appeared very quickly, concepts of meetings organized several times a year by politicized lesbian associations. These would open their doors starting from eight o’clock in the evening until two or three o’clock in the morning and had explicit names like ‘Sappholie’, organized to financially support the lesbian association and bookshop Artemys.
The music played is that of the ‘All Women’s Bands’, composed or sung by lesbians, feminists, mainly or essentially women. Solidarity and financial support to women and lesbians are a priority.
From the thirty or so lesbians who used to gather in the bars, the attendance of the rooms reached a hundred or more lesbians, who came from Brussels or the provinces. And gradually from overseas.
The rooms are rented. But as soon as the parishes or schools that rent them find out who we are – lesbians – repression very quickly makes a comeback. We have to find new places to rent, hiding the fact that we are lesbians when signing the lease contract. Yet, having only women is still rather unusual. It is a time of police raids, or at least their attempt, to put an end to our parties.
But we knew the laws all too well: we use the label ‘private party’, so the cops are not allowed in either. At the door, we are obliged to provide a security service to prevent them from entering, as well as the typical “lesbian bashers”. We also keep a close eye on the surrounding area and streets (the access to the rooms) against aggressions. These teams are made up of those of us who used to do combat sports. They themselves are often pioneers of the feminist self-defense groups of the seventies and eighties: Karaté Amazone in Brussels, Wendo in Wallonia and Refleks in Flanders.[xi]
This is the ‘Out & Proud’ generation: numerous proud individual lesbians and lesbian communities. National and international Lesbian Days are created and held late at night. The Lesbiennedag in Ghent, organized since 1985, has been co-organized thrice with groups from all over the country. In Brussels, the Anniversary Meetings from the fifteen years and more of Artemys literally became genuine Brussels-based, national and international encounters of several hundred lesbians[xii]. A whole cultural center in Bockstael was rented for this purpose. It allowed us to fill the numerous rooms throughout the day and the evening with a plethora of multilingual activities: film projections, big conferences-debates, workshops of self-defense, gigantic book stands,… and parties until the wee hours of the morning.
In Brussels, lesbians started to regularly organize – every month or so – supposed “private” parties, which were in fact business-oriented (Linda Coessens, la Péniche, Pussy Galore…).
The number of participants has long since been exceeded, that’s for sure!
Later still, the rooms will open its doors to one-off parties of several thousands of lesbians, like the well-known ‘Velvet 69’.
Beginning of the XXIst century – An upward slope for gays and new ‘rainbow’ places – A backlash for lesbians: disappearance of all lesbian bars
The successive economic crises, amplified by an aggressive globalization of the economic sector, hit the most fragile groups – women and lesbians in particular – very hard. Lesbian places were deserted, and those in the city of Brussels ended up disappearing completely.
Although the ‘rainbow’ slope seems to be ascending in the early 21st century for homosexuals in terms of semi-public places (bars), lesbians are forced to witness the disappearance of all their meeting places in Brussels, except for the only RainbowHouse. which they naturally co-founded.
The latter is a place that acts as a house/home and disposes of a friendly bar-space for lesbian associations as well as for all other GBTI+ minorities.
As for bars, those run by homosexuals have only increased, all of them strategically located in the heart of the city. There are currently at least fifteen bars, saunas and gay cabarets which happen to constitute a business corporation, ‘Syndigay’. The latter has actually become a powerful lobby.
The tourist plan elaborated and financed by the Brussels tourist authorities is exclusively made up of these ‘gay’ bars, saunas and business cabarets. As for mixed associative places, these no longer seem to make the cut[xiii].
The evolution in this sector (which is not the only one) has been largely in favor of the ‘G’, in other words ‘gay’ men, who have mainly, if not essentially, benefited from our collective LGBTQI+ struggles.
Renaissance – Reinvented dating concepts: Lesbian pioneers once again – A new lesbian bar… off-center
And yet, twenty years later, the creative spark of lesbians is still as vibrant as ever. The lack of financial means gives way to new dating concepts, during which lesbians, once again, reveal their talents as pioneers.
Just like, for example, Mrs Charvet’s Apéro-lesbien. In existing straight cafés, she improvises ‘pop up’ dates, informed a week or ten days before the date itself. At the end of the evening, she reveals to the owner that these include a ‘gang of women’ (as it would be said in Quebec), lesbians as well as ‘non-binary’ and sympathizers. This concept proved to be hugely successful![xiv]
More recently, from 2017 to 2019, the Brussels Regional Authorities initiated and financially substantially supported a several weeks ‘pop up’ lesbian event, the Mothers & Daughters, to take place during the Belgian Pride month in Brussels.
That same year, in 2019, two lesbians launched a new, vibrant and fully self-sustaining bar/concert venue, the ‘Crazy Circle’, which offers a friendly and musical space (a wide array of concerts) for the lesbian and other GBTQI+ communities.
Although all gay bars are located downtown, for obvious economic reasons, the lesbians have to start from scratch in the outskirts: they find themselves in the outer suburbs. Similarly to the 1980s, there is a return to the economically affordable districts of the 70s and 80s: Ixelles.
More and more new creations, completely invented in terms of concept, are emerging, such as Match-Belgium, which is mainly aimed at the lesbian and women’s communities, combining a mobile bar with artistic, sports, musical and performance meetings.
Thanks to the authorities we have just mentioned, Equal.Brussels, we have been able to launch conferences-debates to underline what is (still) not working and look for solutions. We were thus able to launch our first series of conferences around the complex concept of “over-discrimination”, and thus bring you this summary and critical sociological analysis.
Let us make room for imagination and invent our new spaces. At present, we have the genuine support of several authorities, which truly is a blessing in our world. Knock on their door and ask them to endorse your projects. It is a fair return of our taxes and solidarities.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to listen.
Marian Lens, Sociologist – September 2020
References to be cited for the article: Arthemys
We would like to thank Lucile Bazantay for her wise comments in adapting the syntax to a web format, for L-Tour.
The online publication of this article (detailed and referenced) was made possible thanks to the support of Equal.Brussels – Equal Opportunities for the Opportunities for the Region of Brussels, in the framework of the grant file “What spaces exist for the most vulnerable minorities within the LGBTQI+ communities, which are also subject to various types of discrimination/inequality?
[i] Excerpt of the article on L-Tour: https://www.l-tour.be/en/l-tour-dans-la-notion-insupportable-fonds-suzan-daniel-n23-decembre-2017/
[ii] Excerpt of the article on L-Tour: https://www.l-tour.be/en/l-tour-dans-la-notion-insupportable-fonds-suzan-daniel-n23-decembre-2017/
[iii] Excerpt of the article: https://www.l-tour.be/en/which-sexualities-and-identities-are-possible-and-allowed-for-women-in-the-post-metoo-era/
[iv] Excerpt of the article: https://www.l-tour.be/en/which-sexualities-and-identities-are-possible-and-allowed-for-women-in-the-post-metoo-era/
[v] Georges Eekhoud (1854-1927), Brochure, Fonds Suzan Daniel, 2013.
[vi] BH : Les bars gays et lesbiens d’antan, in : Het ondraaglijk besef / La notion insupportable (Fonds Suzan Daniel), n°20, december/décembre 2014, pp. 4 et 5.
[vii] Ibidem.
[viii] https://www.l-tour.be/en/francoise-mallet-joris-1930-2016/
[ix] Naturally, there were no paper or digital guides at the time.
[x] https://www.l-tour.be/en/historical-evolution-of-the-lesbian-movement-in-flanders-from-the-1970s-onwards/
[xi] Article to be posted soon.
[xii] https://www.l-tour.be/artemys/.{remplacer par l’hyperlien vers la version anglaise}
[xiii] The term queer does not yet appear in the LGBTI+ acronym because it is only since 2013 that the concept itself, imported from the States, starts to be used more frequently in Belgium. There was even hesitation between the adjective ‘queer’ or ‘rainbow’ to qualify the first guided tour to which I was invited. My opinion was asked and I ended up suggesting the term ‘queer’ for the Queer Bike Tour of 2013, which personally seemed to be more appropriate for a historical itinerary referring to an old insult (‘weird’, ‘twisted’) that this movement has been trying to reappropriate.
[xiv] Martineau Emilie : Le bar lesbien : un commerce militant en voie de réapparition à Bruxelles. Bruxelles, Master en études de genre, Bruxelles, 2018.
