this is how it feels
being a woman in electronic music
This story starts with me greening out in a club in New York City. Emma and I were on holiday, a big eleven-day extravaganza we’d spent the year saving for, to celebrate ten years of being in love. As the party girls we always have been, we wanted to hit the club. Everyone was telling us to check out Nowadays, deeming it the best spot in the city for electronic music, and that weekend they were throwing their monthly 24-hour event. So, on our one sacred Friday night in the city that never sleeps, we drank some beers in our hotel room and boarded the subway to Queens.
In the queue, we listened to the clubbers behind us try to one-up each other about their “life-changing” experiences in Berghain and tried not to laugh at their vocal fry. Eventually, it was time. We flashed our tickets at the door and a group of ten of us were ushered into a small hallway. We were greeted by a person in a hot pink balaclava, a crop top, and tiny shorts. They looked like if Heaven by Marc Jacobs did a campaign inspired by Spring Breakers.
Rules sound like a boring, uptight concept, but in my opinion, all good clubs need them. Nowadays had a lot of rules. No harassment of any kind, no nonconsensual touching, no photographs, and no phones anywhere near the dancefloor, not even to check the time. Then, some reminders. Fentanyl testing strips were available for free at the door, as were condoms. Finally, we were told that their welfare staff would be wearing red glow-in-the-dark wristbands if anyone needed help. “If you feel uncomfortable or just need a quiet place to sit down, you can look for these and we’ll help you out,” Balaclava told us. Then we were let in, past the pink velvet curtain and towards the rhythmic pulses of the music.
We were inside for no more than thirty minutes before it happened. We grabbed a drink, sat by a fire pit in the smoking area, and took a few hits of the joint we’d bought in a dispensary earlier that week, charmed by the concept of being in a place where weed was legal. When we ventured towards the dancefloor, I knew I’d made a fatal error. That familiar, hellish feeling: chest tightening, brow sweating, head starting to spin from the strobe lights. I’d fucked it.
“I think I’m going to faint,” I shouted to Emma over the music. She took my hand and led me towards the bar, finding a chair for me to sit on. She told me to wait as she got me water, so I did, mute and panicking and embarrassed. The girl next to me gave me a sympathetic look as she reapplied her lipgloss. I wanted to blink, make a wish, and magically be tucked up in bed in our hotel, but that was in Manhattan and a forty-minute train ride away. She reappeared with the water and I exhaled a heavy sigh of relief. I thought she was never, ever returning.
“Take small sips.” She told me. “How do you feel?”
“Awful.” I could barely keep my eyes open and my body felt heavy, like it was made of lead.
“Is there anything else I can do? Do you want to just sit here for a few minutes?” I didn’t. The music was so loud and someone’s tipped-over beer was dripping onto my leg, making my skin sticky.
And then I remembered. It popped into my head and glowed like Gatsby’s green light. “Can you find someone with one of those red wristbands? They said they could bring me somewhere to sit down. A quiet place or.. something.”
She was off again and returned two minutes later with someone else in tow. Their voice was unfamiliar but I trusted them instantly. “Hey, hon. Your girlfriend said you’re not feeling well! Do you want to come into our staff room and sit down for a while?”
They led us past a roped-off area and up some stairs, Emma holding tightly to my hand the whole time. The door swung open and the person announced our arrival. “This girl smoked too much, so she’s gonna chill in here for a bit.”
Another voice. “She what?”
“She smoked too much! She’s too high!” It was so absurd that I wanted to laugh. That was me they were talking about. I was the girl that was too high! But I also wanted to laugh out of sheer relief; relief to be away from the techno, to be rescued, to be flopping down on a comfy couch in their staff room. The anxious flutters in my chest instantly began to subside. Someone turned the lights down to a dark, comforting red. I was handed a bottle of water and a packet of sugary sweets. Within ten minutes, I was almost back to normal, returned to Earth. We dusted ourselves off, thanked the staff profusely, and went back downstairs for a dance. It was a miracle. I had been saved! Our night out had been saved! It was also, undeniably, funny.
This is a story with a happy ending. My night was not ruined. I was not kicked out of the club, taken advantage of, or left alone to puke my guts up in a bathroom stall. But there are a lot of versions of this story. Not all of them are triggered by one puff too many of a joint. Sometimes it’s a colourless liquid covertly slipped into someone’s drink. Sometimes it’s a Class A drug given to someone who doesn’t understand what they’re taking. Sometimes it’s a panic attack, too many tequila shots, or an intrusive, unwanted hand touching you in a place that they’re not invited to. Sometimes it’s not a substance or an action at all, but a comment. Perhaps it’s something sexual, perhaps it’s an insult. (Depending on how you respond to it, the latter can often come after the former).
The club can be a beautiful place, full of mystery and exploration and euphoria, but just one of the things listed above can make it switch in an instant. Suddenly it stops being the place you thought it was. It becomes frightening, inescapable, claustrophobic. For a long time after our night at Nowadays, I couldn’t stop thinking about the kindness that the staff had treated me with, the lack of judgement and understanding required to bring me, a stranger, into the space where they relaxed on their break. I was in awe at their ability to diffuse the situation, to figure out what I needed and give me it, and then to leave me alone until I felt better. In Dublin, people are rarely afforded this. Everyone knows a story of a drunk girl getting kicked out of a club and stranded, alone and vulnerable, on the street. It shouldn’t happen, but it does, and it continues to. It happens because people have a lot less patience for the behaviour of women and queer people than they do for straight, white men. That is a simple, unavoidable fact.
Two days ago, an Instagram account popped up called @2manymeneire. Its bio states that it exists to “expose the sexism that is currently rampant in the Irish DJ scene with the intention of making positive changes for all Irish DJs", with an anonymous Google Form linked for people to share their experiences. Since its inception it has amassed nearly 2500 followers and hundreds of submissions. The stories are bleak and unsurprising to anyone remotely involved with electronic music. DJs, clubbers and promoters alike have shared their accounts of the racism, discrimination, harassment, assault and ignorance that they have faced in the Irish music scene. This is not new, but I’m tired of it. And, judging by the followers and the comments on the posts, thousands of others are, too.
I run a club night with my girlfriend called HONEYPOT. We call it a night for gay girls and friends because it’s a night founded by lesbians but welcoming to anyone who identifies with queerness, including allies. We throw parties every two months, have teamed up with friends for charity fundraisers, and are currently working on a programme of free beginner DJ lessons for female, trans and non-binary people. In my (biased) opinion, our parties are magic. They’re connective and chaotic and celebratory in all the best ways. It’s the best thing we have ever created, and we did it because Dublin needed it.
We have learned a lot from running HONEYPOT—how to be promoters, how to treat people, how to run a business, how to be inclusive, how to keep people as safe as possible when they’re entrusting you with their money and their attendance at your event. We have learned how it feels to win, to be recognised, to create community. We have also learned how to be dismissed, to be insulted, to be talked down to. I don’t think that all straight male promoters learn these things. I am not sure if they want to.
In press interviews, Instagram DMs, and comments on our posts, we are questioned about our choices. People want to know why our door policy is the way it is, how we approach booking acts, how we ensure a safe space at our parties, why we opt for gender-neutral bathrooms—the list goes on. We don’t mind answering them. We’re happy to be transparent about the thought and intention that goes into running HONEYPOT, and we’re proud of it. But every time we’re asked, I can’t help but wonder why our male counterparts aren’t being asked the same things, too. We’re all involved in the same scene, yet it feels like the queer and female-run parties are always held to a noticeably higher standard. I think this is because we genuinely want a higher standard for ourselves and each other. The problem is that not everyone gives a shit about that.
Last year I was interviewing the manager of a prominent Dublin electronic music venue for a piece and I asked if they had implemented any policies to make dancefloors safer for everyone. He immediately grew nervous and shifty, stumbling over his words, and I got the sense that he thought I was accusing him of something. We hired a lighting technician to work at our Pride party last summer, one of the biggest events in the city that weekend, with over 500 attendees and a waitlist of over 100 others. After double-booking himself and spectacularly fucking up the lights, he got defensive and angry when I asked for half our payment back at the end of the night. “It’s just not good enough,” I told him in the booth, clearing up after the lights came on. He drunkenly parroted my words back to me in a girlish, high-pitched, mocking tone, one I was certain he never used with the male promoters he worked with. In 2022, when we were scouting out venues for our first HONEYPOT, Emma talked to a man who ran another popular club. “How well you run a night with only female DJs anyway,” he chuckled. “I’ve tried to find some before and can’t. There are none!” She laughed, assuming he was joking, and then realised by his perplexed expression that he was being serious.
We have seen the way we are treated by bookers, heard the way promoters spoke about ‘diversity’ behind our backs, checked our Revolut notifications in dismay to see the abysmal pay we have been offered for our work. We have been told to pipe down, giz a kiss, listen, shut up, look sexy, move over, be grateful, smile. We have gritted our teeth and swallowed our pride and dealt with it for years, but now we are finally speaking about it. The good men—and there are ones, I mean this—are listening. They care. They want to build an environment where no one has to worry about predators during an activity that is as enriching and human as dancing. But the perpetrators, the ones we’re talking about, are getting frightened. They know there’s nowhere to hide when the truth comes out. Like the club when your night changes in the blink of an eye, it’s frightening, inescapable, claustrophobic. Maybe they’re finally beginning to understand how it feels.