Cruising, the act of searching for sex with strangers, typically in a public place, is well documented within the culture of gay men. Beloved writers and artists such as David Wojnarowicz and Derek Jarman document the resistant act of cruising under persecution and the AIDs crisis, in the shadows of Manhattan’s waterfront and the foliage of Hampstead Heath. Men find each other through systems of signalling; charged looks, shared fashion and a mutual understanding.

Today, despite increased societal tolerance for explicitly gay meeting places, the practice of cruising persists. Texts such as Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Past Time and Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest! eulogise cruising as an essential expression of sexual freedom and a resistance to the commodification of sex. Amongst increased debates of homonormativity and queer assimilation, the persistence of cruising represents a cherished divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The honouring of hedonism over homemaking. 

Driven perhaps by voyeuristic perversion or an envy of the teeming erotic possibility posed by cruising, I set out to fill the presumed gap of a shared lesbian history of cruising. The few sources I could find that refer to lesbian cruising, only mention the idea to assure the reader that they have considered the radical possibility that such a thing could exist – before asserting that there is simply no evidence.

Stereotypes of lesbians are inextricably linked to misogyny and homophobia, punishment for opting out of sexual availability to men. Lesbians are either painted as over-sexualised within a male gaze, harassed or catcalled for displaying their sexuality or entirely desexed for the purpose of an anti-lesbian recruitment policy. Painted as pandering to men or overly sensitive and socially reclusive, lesbians are presumed to have simply no interest in cruising or anything outside of what is considered their sexual norm.

Despite this explanation being both lazy and dull it is also factually untrue. As activist and performer Dan Glass explains, for as long as people have been having sex, they have been doing it outside – I argue – lesbians included. 

Meanwhile, the call is also coming from inside the house as lesbian cultural landmarks such as the Well of Loneliness by Radcliffe Hall, the Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith or the barrage of lesbian period dramas create a shared expectation for ‘sapphic longing’ rather than release. Sexual climax is found in stolen glances, fraught misunderstanding or the fervent brushing of hair—lesbian paralysis.

In contrast, cruising can be considered as the direct and near-instantaneous translation of desire, into action, into pleasure. Cruising is the ultimate expression of agency, a will to power that is outside the typical expectation for women and marginalised groups who face an increased risk of physical danger in the secluded places where pleasure seekers typically roam.

While cruising is inherently risky to all participants, particularly those of colour, the threat of violence is particularly difficult to separate from dreams of lesbian cruising.

As documented within the biographies of Audre Lorde’s Zami and Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, lesbian sexuality often understands ‘the personal as political’ with sexual awakening deeply linked to the development of political consciousness. The understanding of intersectional oppression, coined by Crenshaw (1989) shared by dykes and gays has given rise to several powerful social movements as evidenced by the Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners and Queers for Palestine.

However, in the throws of second-wave feminism, two lesbian feminist camps emerged in the politics of sex; those who viewed unbridled sexual freedoms such as BDSM and cruising as essential to the emancipation of women and others who viewed the optics of leather and chains, butch/femme dynamics or eroticised power imbalances as a rehashing of patriarchy in the bedroom. The extremity of the infighting of the ‘Lesbian Sex Wars’ is expertly captured by the documentaries Blood Sisters (1995) and Rebel Dykes (2021) which culminate in the storming of the lesbian sex party Chain Reaction at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern by radical feminists. Emboldened by the possibilities of sex outside of patriarchy, both camps had different ideals of how this could be achieved.

As Denise Bullock in Lesbian Cruising: An Examination of the Concept and Methods (2008) highlights, lesbian cruising does not need to look exactly as it does for gay men. As a distinctly different social group with their own understandings of freedom and code of erotics, lesbians have historically created their own spaces for sexual exploration. Leather dykes such as Pat Califia of Macho Sluts fame, banded together to form the first lesbian BDSM group Samois in 1978, while Gayle Rubins captured the lesbian inclusive scenes of San Francisco’s Catacomb sex club within the pages of The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole (1981). 

The transgressive ecstatically explicit photography of Volcano Del LaGrace and Jill Posener further reimagine lesbian sexual agency, out in the open and leather-clad. Building on the tradition of gay bathhouses, lesbian saunas such as San Francisco’s Osento and Toronto’s explicitly trans-inclusive Pussy Palace, allowed women to meet and touch on their own terms.

Chanelle Gallant, one of the founders of Pussy Palace, documents the important contribution of the bathhouse within the 2001 article ‘Pussies Bite Back: The Story of the Women’s Bath House Raid’. “Aside from launching thousands of orgasms,” Pussy Palace created a space for those who don’t “conform to the middle class norms of private, marital (hetrosexual) sexuality” and was explicitly pro-sex, feminist and pro-sex worker. 

As we lament the closure of designated lesbian spaces, it won’t come as a surprise that none of these spots are standing today. However, algorithmic fate or divine intervention lead me to the currently operating Angel Touch Spa, an New York City-based and lesbian-centred sauna party, forever cementing my enduring belief in both the horniness and resourcefulness of dykes throughout time and space.

Largely due to the efforts of sex education organisers across BDSM and queer culture, nightclubs are making increased efforts to provide consent-based codes of conduct and welcome those outside of the cis-male norm. As a result, there is an emergence of spaces with cruising potential for lesbians. FLINTA-centred dark rooms, while rare, are increasingly appearing and typically a stamp of a good night.

Lesbian cruising practices may not be as explicitly obvious as gay male fun but the evidence is clear; the people are willing to pack the strap to the club.