Last Ditch Effort to Defend One of the Last Lesbian Bars from Queer Paranoia

– Art: Last Ditch Bar, lastditchvenue.com (edited by Claude) –

“If I become convinced that [COVID] carries my trauma, then I have accomplished a projection and displacement that makes it even more difficult to tell my story . . . ” – Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender, 167.

Last Ditch Effort to Keep a Lesbian Bar Open

The Last Ditch Bar, a lesbian social space located in Greenfield, Massachusetts, has gone viral. The bar owes its sudden social popularity to long-COVID paranoia, this time within the queer immunocompromised community.

Until recently, the struggling Last Ditch Bar required patrons to wear masks seven days a week. The bar’s last standing owner, who lives in her car, works four jobs, and owes $50,000 on a loan for the bar, decided to make Saturday nights mask-optional. Here is the announcement, posted on August 31st:

It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional to try out typical club nights with themes/hosts/DJs/full capacity. Accessibility is a pillar of our mission, AND our mission is also to make the space work for everyone and everything radical, sometimes that’s being wild! We strive for solidarity, transparency of risks, and connecting us all in this revolution. We still give priority to public and private Masked bookings, and continue a recurring monthly Masked Social prioritizing safety. It is only after an outpour of feedback from our regulars, volunteers, and team that we make this addition.

One mask optional night a week, to keep one of the last remaining lesbian bars alive, drew the ire of “our immunocompromised disabled divas.” The irony is that their protest may be more deadly than the virus they fear.

Two COVID Cases All Summer

According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Greenfield, population 17,800, has reported roughly two COVID cases all summer. As the word “roughly” indicates, “reporting” is far from a science nowadays, and Greenfield was hit hard at the start of the pandemic. Driven by deaths among the elderly in nursing homes, the COVID death rate in Greenfield was roughly triple the national rate during the pandemic’s first year.

As the current numbers indicate, the past is not prologue. Yes, COVID cases are on the rise in Massachusetts (and elsewhere around the country), but COVID-related deaths remain near record lows.

At last season’s statewide rate, Greenfield could expect roughly one COVID death a year, possibly none. That “roughly one” person will most likely be in their 80s and 90s and already suffering from underlying medical conditions. I could be wrong, but I don’t imagine nursing homes are busing too many patients to the Last Ditch Bar on a Saturday night—or on any other night.

Who Is Actually at Risk

Like the elderly, immunocompromised people are at increased risk of complications related to viral infections. So, they deserve special consideration. The Last Ditch Bar requires masks six nights a week.

COVID in Massachusetts, Then and Now

For further context, consider the overall trends in COVID cases and deaths in Massachusetts since the beginning of the pandemic:

Massachusetts went from 6,578 COVID deaths in 2020–21 to 322 in 2025–26, a 95% drop. This season has 8 deaths so far, half of them among people 80 and older. In the vast majority of people, vaccination, prior infection, and better treatment have largely broken the link between COVID and death.

A Theory of the Case

So, what are “our immunocompromised disabled divas” all worked up about, and what should our nearly destitute bar owner do about it?

Here is my theory of the case:

The pandemic was not a bad time for everyone. Among the people who not only tolerated the COVID pandemic but enjoyed it are those for whom isolation and disconnection are a way of life. For “our immunocompromised disabled divas,” COVID likely created a rare sense of social belonging and connection. During the pandemic, their lifestyle became the norm.

In my experience, those who continue to insist that COVID constitutes a “pandemic,” and that we should continue to wear masks (both indoors and outdoors) and isolate, are inherently paranoid people. For them, scientific data (and any other official/government generated data) is a Trojan Horse. Something bad is always inside it.

For the long-COVID paranoid, a hermeneutics of suspicion is not merely a methodology. It is a way of life.

The Virus and the Phallus

The bad inside of the Trojan Horse we should always be suspicious of is, I further speculate, the phallus. Like the phallus, the virus is always threatening to penetrate us. Fear of (having) it is, as Judith Butler contends, at the root of paranoia-powered divisions (see Who’s Afraid of Gender, chapter 5, “TERFS and British Matters of Sex: How Critical is Gender-Critical Feminism”). In my view, the mechanics of the fear of COVID at issue here and the fear of Trans* women that Butler diagnoses are surprisingly similar.

One More Last-Ditch Effort

Instead of playing along with paranoia, I would suggest that our bar owner grow her clientele by going through with the transition. In fact, I think she should add Friday nights to the mask-optional menu. The bar belongs to more than one type of belonging, and it is worth one more last-ditch effort to preserve it. And the only thing she has to lose is an “intersectional” community uninterested in her poverty.