Gay bars may be shutting down across the world, but it’s not the end of queer culture, says Oisín McKenna.

Gay bars and queer spaces are shutting down in their droves all over Europe. They are being replaced by luxury flats and hipster cafés, where the avocado sandwiches are served on woodchip panels. Where once there were queer club nights, now there are themed product launches and bespoke dining experiences for people who work in PR to take their clients to. Cities are changing. They are becoming more expensive and less accessible. Gay bars, along with countless communities and businesses, are all getting priced out.

The spaces that do remain are far from perfect. Mainstream gay culture, which has been edging into consumerist territories for years, is increasingly dictated by corporate and conservative influences. There are less and less queer venues willing to engage in any sort of radical queer performance. The image of gay bars as subversive, genuinely queer spaces, is growing further and further from reality.

Many gay bars are still primarily marketed at cisgender, white men, and misogyny, racism, classism and transphobia are undoubtedly present in many aspects of mainstream gay culture. People shouting “Yas Queen!” at a man wearing blackface as part of his Rihanna costume at a gay bar on Halloween is not what a queer space should look like.

Does this mean radical queer culture is shrinking? I’ve listened with frustration a few too many times to an older gay person (usually a man) urging the baby gays to step up and prevent the loss of radical queer culture, politics and spaces. They mourn the loss of the more politically charged queer spaces of the ’80s and ’90s. Radical futures and possibilities were imagined and strived for, which young LGBT people now have allegedly lost interest in. Now, if some of our elders are to be believed, radical queer culture is all but dead, and the apathetic youth who are too busy scrolling through Twitter feeds to radically mobilise, shoulder at least some of the blame.

But maybe those elders are looking for queer culture in the wrong places. Gay bars and clubnights may be on the decline, but gay bars and queer spaces are not necessarily always the same thing. In actuality, radical queer culture is not being eradicated, it’s simply reorganising in a far more inclusive and intersectional way than ever before. Queer culture is alive and well in Ireland, it just exists further to the fringes than older generations might sometimes think to look –– in squats, online, at punk gigs and pro-choice rallies.

As mainstream acceptance for certain LGBT identities is tentatively increasing, there are those who believe that there is a diminished need for queer culture and spaces in our cities – that the boundaries between queer communities and the general population is becoming less pronounced, and sure don’t we have Grindr for hooking up now anyway? Particularly since the Yes vote in the marriage equality referendum the idea has been popularised that LGBT people no longer face serious barriers to inclusion in Irish society, and no longer require the support, community and affirmation that queer spaces and culture can provide.

But the idea that LGBT people are now fully, unambiguously included and valued within Irish society, is wildly untrue and dangerous. Even if that level of inclusion were to be achieved, queer spaces would still not cease to be important. They have something to offer that mainstream society does not and can not. Queer spaces aren’t just spaces for hooking up – although that is still important when public acts of queer affection, identity, sexuality, or love, can still be highly dangerous – but they’re sites of community building. They’re places where culture is shared and subverted, torn apart and re-constructed.

Queer culture exists to propose alternative ways of relating to our surroundings and each other. To think about our families, identities, and political values in ways that are kinder and better and more liberating. And unless we ever establish some genuinely utopian society, where patriarchy and capitalism have been well and truly smashed, the need for that culture will never go away. Rather than mourning an idealised version of the radical queer past, let’s work on protecting and building radical queer futures.

Oisin McKenna’s ‘Gays Against The Free State!’ is at Smock Alley Boy’s School, September 21 – 24 as part of the Tiger Dublin Fringe, fringefest.com