LA RENTA DE MONOPOLIO

Over the years Bøssehuset/BBF has co-operated with lesbians and the Lesbisk Bevægelse (Lesbian Movement). in 1975 BBF held a meeting for students at the University of Copenhagen together with people from the Mandebevægelsen, the women’s movement and Lesbisk Bevægelse. at a big bøsse party at Loppen in Christiania in 1978, there was a perform- ance by Søsterrock (sister rock), Denmark’s first feminist women rock band, and many people from Lesbisk Bevægelse were there.27 a lesbi- an cabaret took place in Bøssehuset in the 1970s and the lesbian rød- strømpe who i interviewed claims that lesbians were always welcome to use the Christiania milieu. Bøssehuset was the place if you wanted to have really big parties, she says. she was playing music and having fun at Bøssehuset when they celebrated the 100th anniversary of inter- national Women’s Day in 2010:

it was not purely a women’s party, it was a mixed party and the gay men were there and they were dressed up in women’s clothes. it was a very funny mix of real left-wingers, anti-fascists and members of Femø [a summer camp for women/lesbians related to Kvindehuset — the Wom- en’s house — in Copenhagen, author’s remark] and then the gay men.

Even though lesbians had been part of Bøssehuset over the years, they did not really feel included, according to a lesbian living in Christiania:

Bøssehuset […] we did things for them, came to some parties, but we were not a part of it. sometimes it was mixed parties, which i came to. Or theatre, they could use some stands for decorations. no doubt they had great respect for us.

Even though she uses the pronominal ‘us’, she later says that she was the only lesbian in Bøssehuset for long periods. One of the gay men men- tions other individual lesbians who have been participating for some time — for example a woman who provided light and sound for the per- formances. When i watched a video of performances in Bøssehuset in the 1980s, i do however see a lot of women actors on the scene, even more women than men.28

Even though the lesbian woman never felt as if she was a part of Bøssehuset, she claims that it has been important to her. Maybe this is related to the fact that she never found a lesbian community at Chris- tiania. instead she had Kvindesmedjen (the Women’s smithy) which, besides its function as a workshop and apprentice place for female smiths, was a kind of feminist community. she describes it in very am- bivalent terms: both as a strong women’s group; a breeding ground for long-lasting friendships, and as a heterosexual nuclear family and craftsmen community. Further she claims that the women in Kvinde- smedjen were almost exclusively heterosexual — some of them, accord- ing to her, even wanted Kvindesmedjen straight — and at the same time she tells me that there were two other lesbians in Kvindesmedjen who had a love relationship with each other. in a way she leaves them out of her account: ‘i was among hetero women. no, there was a lesbian cou- ple, but they were not political about it. Or i just did not see it.’ she says she did not know the ‘few lesbians’ that lived in Christiania. it seems like it is only the politicised lesbianism that counts and is made visible. Besides, this ambivalence, where the gay or lesbian identity and com-

munity is downsized, can also be about privileging the community of Christiania and the identity as Christianite over the gay/lesbian ones. This may be due to the fact that Christiania is often under big pressure and therefore needs people to identify with and struggle for it, and it can also be due to heteronormative attitudes in Christiania. Bøsse huset on the other hand, was very explicit with its function as a community for gay men. a physical place, a community and an identity were of- fered — and therefore we have gay men in Christiania. This was never the case for lesbians — and therefore they ‘do not exist’ in Christiania. silence, in this sense, entails invisibility. still, many lesbians seem to have felt partly included in Bøssehuset.

The lesbian interviewee characterises lesbians in general as some- times ‘too serious, analytical and academic’ compared to the funny, queer and humorous gay men. she says: ‘The gay men were funny and did not pose that many questions to the heterosexual community, in that serious lesbian way, if you understand.’ a central thing in this is that Bøssehuset’s queerness probably was more fitting in Christiania. Christiania is kind of queer in itself, since it challenges many norms and since the politics is characterised by parody, humour and carnival. at the same time, the articles in Ordkløveren and the history of BBF point in another direction; the gay men were posing questions to the hetero- sexual community, at least to men and masculinity. Why is it that those questions are seen as less serious and less challenging than the lesbians’?

One of the gay men points out that the lesbians had Kvindehuset (The Women’s house) in the city to go to, as a reason why they were not included in Bøssehuset. Besides it was BBF that formed Bøsse- huset — and they were obviously gay men. Even though it has been sep- aratist — my word, no one uses it to describe it — women, hetero as well as lesbians, have always visited Bøssehuset, mostly as guests, enjoying the shows and the company, or as crafts(wo)men helping with prac- tical work. They were however not allowed to the Monday meetings. This was changed in the middle of the 2000s when lesbians, as well as

bi- and transsexuals, were officially included in Bøssehuset. One of the gay men discusses this in the interview:

in 2009 or something, we started Din salon [Your salon] and suddenly we began to invite women. and we had Den røde tråd [The red Thread, a women’s musician group], and all the others. and we made several wom- en get on the stage, and there were some men who said ‘what are we go- ing to do with all those women?’ and i say: ‘hello, women are also hu- man beings.’ if we are to move on again, we can’t close the door, we can’t say no. We need more people who wish to do the things that we wish to do. and we will do it together.

The words move on again expose something that another gay man told me: that Bøssehuset had a crisis around 2006 — at the same time that they decided to officially include lesbians, bi- and transsexuals. Even the words we need more people in expose this. Of course one can ques- tion my interest for this earlier lack of inclusiveness; why should lesbi- ans be part of something like Bøssehuset? They are not gay men. Maybe my question should be: Why isn’t there a lesbian house in Christiania?