'IT'S REALLY JUST ABOUT EXCLUDING CIS MEN'
starstruck ★ 2 ★ with DYKOTOMY • the sans-cis-male collective saving Naarm's scene
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It’s hard to believe it’s been just 12 months since Dykotomy’s extravagant events ransacked the city’s queer nightlife. But after our chat, Alice, Sara and Amelia will run to a promo shoot for their biggest party yet, Dykotomy’s BIG BIRTHDAY BONANZA, to be held at the Industrique this Saturday.
The fourth [member? Founder? Producer?], Tino, is on set now, preparing balloons and a big cake for someone to sit on.
It was always going to be flinta*, explains Sara.
Alice nods emphatically. Amelia lights a menthol esse, dark hair piled on top of her head, huge black-framed sunglasses obscuring her face.
A direct import via the well-trodden Naarm-Berlin pilgrimage, the acronym proposes a utopia where everyone who has been subjected to the menace of patriarchy at some point in their lives can party unencumbered by that abject horror found looming in all scenes: the male gaze.
As Sara tells it, it’s more about curating a lesbian party environment that specifically includes transgender men and women, and gender non-conforming people.
Despite her absence, Tino had kindly provided a detailed breakdown of what it takes to devise comprehensive OH&S guidelines for a flinta* sex-on-premises party over text [Wet on Wellington’s was a useful guide]. It’s this attention to detail that makes Dykotomy so special.
At any given event, you’re in for a flurry of performances rotating around a theme, infused with the Dykotomy angle – campy, kitsch, chaotic, sexy. At the masc-uerade soiree, see a lesbian magician and a drag king performance, or have your shoes shined by a roving sexy bootblack… and a lapdance if you’re lucky.
At 420, Amelia recalls, they set up “the perfect sesh”.
“We had an eshay performance. We had someone cooking loaded fucking tater tots, a tarot reader, a face painter, and Sara did this lit Mario Kart gaming set up.”
At a Dykotomy party, the details go right down to the entrance.
Alice: “We really like dynamic spaces. It’s really nice to have smaller spaces where you can hide, because lesbians get a little bit nervous.”
“The DJs are usually playing EDM mixes of your favorite sexy songs, but sound isn’t our calling card,” says Sara. “We just pick DJs that we like.”
“And also try to give opportunity to DJs that aren’t same five fucking DJs,” Alice lights a manchester.
Dykotomy’s genesis came easy. Sara says the group, who were friends first, were “sick and tired of paying $40 to go into a box with music playing.”
“That’s why we pull out all the stops,” chimes in Amelia. “We want people to walk in and be like, you know what, yeah, it was like 50 bucks for a ticket, but look at how much effort and work and time they’ve put into this event...”
“As friends, all of us have always been like, oh, I hate this bitch, like, everything sucks. Why does everything suck?,” Alice says.
Amelia and Sara nod in assent.
“And then it’s always like, we should do something, but it’s like drunken rambles at the afters.”
Sara nods, “I knew the demand was there because the month prior, Lady Muck had done a lesbian speed dating night, and there was just a line around the block.”
In a city with millions of bars, few are dedicated to lesbians and their allies.
Dykotomy is quick to give the predecessors their flowers. They’re not the city’s first flinta* space.
“Lady Muck did it first, we always give them their credit because they marketed as lesbians of all genders,” Sara says.
They are, to my knowledge, the first flinta* community to capitalise on the acronym’s Berliner legacy with a sex-on-premises party.
A fundraiser for their friend Cat’s short film, marketed on ig with the enticing slug LESBIAN CANNIBALISM, Dykotomy’s first sex-on-premises party was held in the black hole of Northcote’s 24 Moons. The former strip club’s halls were transformed with a TV wall and an upstairs, a curtained-off fuckspace.
“Sara came up with Fuck for Funz, which is a great concept,” Amelia turns to Sara: “You are very, very smart.”
“And it was good, like people were fucking.
They broke three couches.”
Alice: “Tino saw someone getting fisted.”
Sara: “I set up a video camera to live stream to an old TV, and somebody was getting fisted in front of the camera.”
Amelia: “We knew people were horny, but I did not expect within the first 30 minutes people would be up there and fucking.”
“They were fucking hard, people were fucking hard”
Sara: “They ran out of space to fuck. They were breaking into spaces they weren’t meant to be in.”
Amelia: “I went up there with my fuck buddy, and there was nowhere to fuck, so we just went to the bathroom”
Sara: “There’s a lot for the greater queer community, but there’s nothing targeted toward fems and gender diverse people.”
“Gay guys get puppy parties and leather.”
Amelia: “What about us?”
THIS WEEK, DYKOTOMY’S INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT WAS PERMANENTLY BANNED, WITH NO AVENUE OF APPEAL. THEY SAY:
“Considering Meta’s recent targeting and censorship of queer and sex worker communities, it was only a matter of time. We are exploring other avenues of staying in contact with our community, as we still have so many exciting things in store for you in the coming months and we need a way to tell you all about it! At Dykotomy, it’s paramount to us to uplift our community and vision. We do everything we can to prioritise supporting everyone like us and not giving money/time/energy/data to all of the evil in the world. On that note, we have many big and bright plans for Dykotomy’s future, such as a fabulous website and many more beautiful places to document and share our work, but for now we’ve created a Bluesky [@dykotomy.bsky.social], Discord, TikTok and Tumblr account to tie us over in the meantime.
We hopefully will be seeing you all this Saturday the 30th for our Big Birthday Bonanza! YES it is still persisting despite the repeated attempts to dull our sparkle. It. Will. Never. Happen!!! As always - we love you!”
more? presenting
how do you do it all?
Sara: No matter how many events we’ve done, like, there’s always one or two things that we’ve like been like, oh my god, fuck, we completely forgot about that…
Alice: Every single time we fuck up the ticketing, every single fucking time, every event, like literally five minutes before our 420 event, it started at 3.00 and we got the ticketing up at 3.45…
Amelia: Yeah, literally, we’re just like, fuck.
Alice: We never learn!
Sara: People give us a lot of grace and people are so thankful, and really see our passion for this, that they’re willing to give us a bit of grace. Not always, but I think where it counts, people are very compassionate.
what’s been your favourite event so far?
Amelia: I think one of our big ones was the masc-uerade soiree, because there’s not many spaces curated for trans mascs and the trans men, they’re kind of left behind. And it was really a space for them to be appreciated, and they pulled up…
Sara: It was intimate.
Amelia: It was crazy.
Alice: I think the masquerade was one of my favorites.
Amelia: Me too. We bought like 10 packets of esse menthols, and offered a cigarette on arrival. People were like, ‘what????? really?????’
why do you do what you do?
Alice: I think I was just so sick of all these bum ass losers doing boring freaking events, and I was bored. I was bored, and I was broke, because I was like, why am I spending all my money on all of this bullshit? I want to be able to go out and meet some hot babes and hang out with my friends and have a good time and no one else is gonna do it, or no one’s gonna do it right. I think one of the main motivators is having such an incredible outlet to put all of this energy and all of these ideas that all of us have, and everybody that we love have.
Sara: Absolutely, it’s literally just changed my life to have a community around. Before I could count on one hand how many lesbians I knew, now I have this massive network of lesbian and transgender and gender diverse people who I can create with, and I have a far more enriched life.
xxx starstruck xxx
