The third conference of the “Drugs, Genders, Cities” cycle will take place online and in English.

Party spaces such as clubs or festivals are strongly gendered. Rising feminist complaints depict sexual harassment as being endemic in such spaces – not least when alcohol is involved. Drug consumption itself is not only gendered, with, for example, men on average still consuming many drugs more intensively. Rather, “consumer choice” is also part of the enactment of gender and sexuality, as well as of other categories such as class or race. Especially queer and techno subcultures are discussed as sites of consuming substances that enhance the pleasures of dancing or sexual intercourse (such as ecstasy, GHB, Viagra). At the same time, queer and feminist parties are key sites of developing new cultures of community care. These provide “awareness structures” or “psy care teams” whose work dovetails nicely with neoliberal self-help and harm reduction approaches, and may thus receive the support of “night mayors” and club owner associations or be integrated in urban diversity politics. The workshop analyzes these complicated links between the often drug-laden party spaces and gender based on empirical work from different European countries.

Afternoon Programm (14h30-17h)
Moderation by Mélina Germes
14h30 – Roxane Scavo (CNRS Passages), Mapping gender and festive drug consumption in Bordeaux
15h – Gemma Blok (Open University of the Netherlands): Rave girls in the Netherlands: contested women’s liberation in the 1990s
15h30 – Jenny Künkel (CNRS Passages): Negotiating Drugs and Sex in Contemporary Feminist Party Spaces
16h – General discussion

Evening Keynote (19h-20h30)
Moderation by Jenny Künkel
19h – Emily Nicholls (University of Portsmouth): “Girl Time”, wine and crossing the line: embodying class and gender through drinking on the Girls’ Night Out
19h40 – Discussion