This past New Year's Eve in Berlin, the local collective Lecken teamed up with Lisbon's mina crew to throw a party called Fully Automated Luxury Of Oblivion. From the time it started on the 31st till the last track 2 PM on January 1st, the rave formed, in the words of the organizers, a "temporary autonomous zone." Here, people could exist without economic output, sexual oppression, heteronormative standards and so on. This was the time to misbehave on the two basement dance floors of a club called Maze. The coat checks were stuffed full, revealing much skimpier outfits inside. There were red vinyl short-shorts and handmade fringe tops that hung to the floor. Some people let their nipples out; the rest enjoyed looking. When the police came at one point, they were mistaken for strippers.

Resident DJs and up-and-coming locals bashed out trance, techno, UKG and a few donk edits of pop hits. Objekt also played the main floor, at one point delivering an unforgettable blog house moment with the sleazy Switch remix of Spank Rock's "Bump," which rolled onto the dance floor with all the subtlety of an Escalade limo. Suddenly, from a small stage across the room, three nude performers, elegantly wrapped in bondage ropes, emerged with cakes held above their heads. Each put their cake down on a chair and walked seductively around it. They gave their cakes lap dances. Hoots and hollers erupted as they got closer to the baked goods, but refused—over and over—to actually touch them. Objekt mixed in SOPHIE's "Faceshopping." The room shook, and the performers mounted their cakes with a straddle. As the beat dropped, they began pounding each one into mush.

Fantastical moments like these are making a new era of queer nightlife sparkle. Historically, the most popular queer parties have been created by men, for men. Many people have questioned why this is and worked to change it. Now more than ever, though, a different kind of future seems clear. A new generation of queer-feminist collectives is producing nightlife for women, trans and gender non-conforming folks. For this piece, I spoke to six of them: BOAR in Berlin, Bound in New York City, Flesh In Tension in Leeds, Maricas in Barcelona, mina in Lisbon and Lecken in Berlin. There are many other notable collectives, some of which have been written about on RA in the past. I chose these six for their specific focus on sexuality and eroticism.

A sexy party might seem clichéd in our porno-centric world, but a closer look reveals how these collectives approach pleasure with a radical calling. They critically challenge sexual repression and exploitation, putting femme-perversion and gender non-conforming freakiness on a pedestal, one that they own and control. In the process of reclaiming that power, they call into question our states of being, whether we can be freed of restrictions, our social and psychological conditions reshaped. Writing in 1988's Macho Sluts, Pat Califia, one of the pioneers of lesbian sadomasochistic sex, put it this way: "Sex may seem like a trivial part of a radical, futuristic vision, but if we are not safe to indulge in this playful, vulnerable, and necessary activity, pleasure ourselves and others who fascinate us, how safe can a society be for women?"

Maricas in Barcelona

On a spring evening, in a quiet nook of Berlin, I met with the Lecken collective before they began to plan their 13th party. At the far side of a one-room apartment, we sat under a big lantern on two low couches and a red pouf. A giant light box, bearing DJ Sprinkles' Midtown 120 Blues artwork, leaned unplugged against the wall. One of the organizers brought me tea. Cigarettes were rolled.

Lecken, whose members prefer not to be named individually, is made up of a visual artist, a political scientist, "a writer slash party dweller," a contemporary dancer and two experimental musicians. They are intellectual hedonists who speak philosophically about poly-sexuality and post-contact improvisational choreography. They also make a bunch of silly stickers and refer to themselves, unofficially, as the Lecken Spice Girls.

The party started in 2016 at Ficken 3000, a Kreuzberg gay bar with a dark room. Traditionally, this downstairs area, like most dark rooms, was only open to men. But why? Is there a biological difference between the sexes that precludes women from engaging in what Lecken's founders call "anonymous hive sex"? Or can we boil it down to social constructs? And if it's social constructs, can they be undone? This is the kind of thinking behind a Lecken party. The crew felt lucky "to be able to squat the infrastructure built by gay men—bars and clubs with dark rooms—and queer it up." Their goal was to get more femme-identifying people to enter these spaces and indulge, making the culture of public and anonymous sex more inclusive. Now their main question was, "How do we do that?"

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Lecken in Berlin

Lecken started with books. Once a quarter, the crew has held a book club to discuss texts on gender, sexual and, recently, rave politics, organized into a syllabus with subtopics like "scandalous feminism" and "permanent queer becoming." (The whole thing is diligently recorded on Lecken's new website.) Reading materials, though not explicitly related to party themes, still inspired some elements of event production.

Take chapter four of Tim Dean's Unlimited Intimacy, entitled "Cruising As A Way Of Life," which explores the gay subculture of barebacking and stranger sex. "We read this at a time when we were still trying to operate a dark room in a way that was different," said a Lecken member full of bright energy and elegant insights. "If we're reappropriating the term"—cruising—"in a femme or non-cis male oriented context, what is a kind of acceptable sexuality that we want to pursue that is appealing to us and also pushing those boundaries?"

Answering this question was a slow journey in uncharted waters. In Lecken's early parties, they remember giving women tours of the dark room. Most of them didn't know it was open to them, let alone felt comfortable using it. They tried to encourage discourse on femme-sexuality through social media, posting materials from prominent feminist thinkers—but in the wake of SESTA/FOSTA, a poorly considered anti-sex trafficking bill signed into law by President Trump, Lecken's Facebook page was shut down twice. When the party moved to a bigger venue, the crew experimented with different dark room configurations, using fabrics to create ambiance and experimenting with scents, but neither was the catalyst for women cruising.

Surfaces were a big conversation. "Queer sex practices, or those that don't necessarily involve a penetrating phallus, require a bit more flexibility in how you position yourself," one of the Lecken crew explained. Whereas men could get busy on two feet, women preferred to sit or lie down during sex. For that, the surfaces needed to be big, comfortable and, most importantly, clean.

Lecken in Berlin

Once base needs were met, next came stimulation. All of the raves I spoke to put immense effort into their visual production, from video, installation and performance art, to hosts, drag artists and dominatrices. Politics aside, the artistic and conceptual muscle behind each party is impressive. From a Skype call to Barcelona, Eloisa, Isabella and Gina, the founders of a queer night called Maricas—meaning "faggot"—went over some of the sexy but silly performances from their party's past. There had been a Catholic confessional booth (where the priest gave kisses), a live-streamed toilet stall (where people got naked) and a make-out session from two costumed figures (who were also covered in paint).

Across the Atlantic, at BOUND in New York City, there's even more cake twerking to be had. The party, a queer fetish night for non-cis men, sets out to normalize sex work on a large scale, with over 1500 people passing through its doors each night. At Elsewhere, BOUND puts on big techno artists—DJ Stingray, Fixmer/McCarthy, Dax J—alongside dominatrix experiences. With a live techno act in the background, you can try out electro-play, while also learning about sex work industry customs. ("If you could just make the title of your article Tip Your Dom, I'd appreciate that," said founder Katie Rex.)

Artist and sex worker Lindsay Dye is the most recent performer to permanently join BOUND. Her medium is "public sittings." Rex elaborates, full of praise: "If you take a stripper pole, but make it a cake, that's what she's doing. She covers herself from head to toe in cake. It becomes a paste almost. Her performance is a half an hour long, and what ends up happening is you're watching this thing, and it's so stimulating and hot, and then the entire room smells like cake, which is such an amazing sensory experience."

BOUND in New York City

Does all this work to get women in the mood? Back in Berlin, Lecken, whose performance pieces have included a "book spanking" and a dildo-wearing group dance, say yes. "Not only have more female-identifying people joined the darkroom activity, but also more gender fluid and trans people. We've had a lot of trans friends say they feel very comfortable at Lecken to take clothes off. People taking their shirt off for the first time after surgery. People feeling comfortable enough to hook up in a darkroom when they've never done that. Or gay men having sex with women, or going down on a woman and having their first encounter with a vagina at Lecken. This has happened."

One sunny morning in Berlin, I met with BOAR organizers Landon, Ilya and Julian at a new cafe in my neighborhood where one of them worked. We were sitting at a big wooden table in the center of the room, Neukölln moms and babies around us, when Julian made a joke about fisting. "Fisting is the new kissing," he informed me, an allusion to Berlin's incredibly eager kink scene.

Julian, a Swedish sex worker with kind eyes and a self-aware demeanor, has been organizing and working at sex events since he was a teenager. Constantly surrounded by the rigid, often exclusive behavioral codes of men-only events, he has spent years discussing how to make a more inclusive space for everyone. BOAR, founded last September, is the outcome. The party only happens on the two biggest fetish weekends of the year, Easter Berlin and Folsom Europe. (The latter is modeled on San Francisco's infamous Folsom Street Fair for BDSM and leather subcultures.) While these events attract thousands of visitors and spawn dozens of men-only events—Snax at Berghain being one of them—BOAR takes a progressive approach by opening its sex party to all genders.

"You're not entering this space with a really strict history and culture," said Julian, commenting on the idea of a mixed fetish crowd. Maybe that's why the rave feels so fresh, full of vivid sightings and unexpected encounters. BOAR's last party, in April, took place at Polygon, a Berlin sex club whose entrance is the mouth of a tiger. Even in the guest list queue, it took an hour to get through the door. Once inside, a friend outfitted me with a leash to keep in the spirit of things. We wandered first into the toilets, whose sink was a circular fountain, and then through the club's several rooms and outdoor chillout area, walking past trans guys, leather dykes, older gays and more on the way. At the bar, I chatted to a woman rocking nothing but a thong. Later, on the dance floor, I watched two people in pet play masks and plaid skirts fondle each other, until my leash got pulled and we left for the techno room. When one of my big silver earrings fell on the floor, another woman picked it up. But rather than hand it back to me, she carefully re-threaded it through my ear.

BOAR in Berlin

Beyond a facilitated sex party, BOAR, by musical standards, is shaping up to be a forward-thinking club night. Landon, a sweet trans guy who DJs under the slutty name Dirty Daddy Don, leads the bookings, which he pulls from the queer community. For the party in April, highlights included LOFT, a wildly innovative UK producer, Russell E.L. Butler, a Bay Area artist with a refreshing approach to modular synthesis, and Femanyst, the hard techno alias of beatdown house producer Lady Blacktronica.

When I asked BOAR if they'd book a straight white dude, the collective shared a chuckle. One pondered out loud, "I mean, do we know any straight white dudes? Yeah, but he'd probably end up sucking dick somewhere in the end. So, 'straight'? I don't know. Maybe if it were an amazing sex worker activist helping migrants on the border."

From my kitchen table, I had a Skype call with Kat, who DJs as Sayang and is heavily involved in queer community outreach, and Gellar, a master's student in gender studies, whose mismatched nail polish flashed into the frame every so often. The two met in a non-binary support group in Leeds and now run a queer fetish night for non-cis men called Flesh In Tension. (Allies are still allowed to come, but are asked to hold back on buying tickets in order to prioritize the queer community.) As the youngest and only completely non-binary-run party I spoke to, some of Kat and Gellar's views on hot topics like inclusivity sounded harsh and taboo—a good sign that they're onto something.

One of their most unusual ideas is a consent policy borrowed from the kink world: the traffic light system. Used during BDSM scenes, this range of safe words—"red," "orange" and "green," meaning "stop," "slow down" and "go"—allows the dominant and the submissive to communicate with short-hand code. At Flesh In Tension, colored wristbands, handed out at the door, worked analogously, but instead of drawing boundaries for sex, they indicated your preferred level of socializing. Green meant "anyone can approach me;" orange, "I will approach you;" red, "I'd rather be left alone." The system was incredibly well-received. Gellar, as an example, cited someone with autism, who might want to go dancing without being socially overwhelmed. But even for a person like me, who can't stop talking, there seemed to be attractive benefits. My mind flashed to a regular scene in my life: I'm at a bar in a European club, when a random guy approaches me and asks, point blank, where I was born (I happen to be Asian American). If a little orange wristband can eliminate this, I'll take 20.

Flesh In Tension in Leeds

Kat, who talks excitedly about dubstep, techno and mixing, delegated their "right-hand queen" Gellar to answer some of the trickier questions. Gellar explained to me, for example, why labeling a party as "for women and non-binary people" can exclude someone who is non-binary masculine. When I asked about the hookup scene for non-binary folks, her answer was just as straightforward and sobering.

"It really is non-binary-led nightlife that needs to pick up the slack and present those spaces for people to come and explore their sexuality. Trans people often do get fetishized. For example, being a trans person and trying to go to a gay bar and pick up or flirt with people is an incredibly terrifying experience. Because the reality of dealing with cis people is you'll never know how they'll feel when they find out you're trans. It can be a really mundane thing to brutal violence."

Perspectives like this underly the need for safety at queer-feminist raves, especially as they become bigger and more popular, increasing the possibility of misunderstandings. Unlike wider party culture, where it's assumed hedonism and suffering go hand-in-hand, every collective here expressed a desire to care for their crowds. BOUND and Lecken, in addition to publishing safe(r) space and consent policies, have awareness teams who actively roam the club to diffuse conflicts and flag trouble causers. These people are not venue staff, but members of the community, demarcated, for example, by neon lanyards or little blinking lights. ("I don't want to ruin their look, so keep it small," said Katie Rex from BOUND.)

mina, a Lisbon-based queer party for "sexual and gender liberation," is another collective that takes its ravers' well-being directly into its hands. In 2017, the party's organizers insisted that their venue at the time, a former brothel, comply with the following rules: mina would bring their own door person, the toilets would be non-gendered and the strip tease booths would become dark rooms. When I spoke to one of the organizers, Pedro, AKA marum, who is both poetic and academic with their words, they repeatedly emphasized their desire to create a space that welcomes people "in context of their vulnerabilities." One actionable step towards this is the ravers' care corner, which offers free snacks, condoms, tampons, waters and so on. "At mina, you're among a community that will look after you," marum told me with warm sincerity. "This is what allows you to actually free yourself."

mina in Lisbon

That may very well be true. At Lecken's most recent party, in May, similar feelings of care, comfort and community hung in the air. The collective had innately addressed this in our interview a month earlier, saying that, at a Lecken party, "there's a lot of kindness and a lot of fucked up pervertedness at the same time. You think: but those two things don't go together. No, they do."

This is part of what made tunneling into the oblivion at Lecken such a layered experience. From midnight until noon, the crew threw the rave's first phase at their regular home, Untertage, a hidden sex club under an all-men's sauna. The dance floor was dark, the music hard, the air thick and erotic. An hour later, Lecken started its after-party across town, at a queer DIY community space called KAKE, where it revealed more of its colors. Up on the third floor of a crumbling building, soft summer light poured through dirty panoramic windows. KAKE was only the size of a living room, but new people, dressed in tattered and bedazzled looks, kept arriving steadily over the next ten hours. Fruit and hummus were put out on a table. We all kept dancing on a shabby pink carpet. Turns out, it was someone's birthday, so a circle formed and a guy got on a mic. We sang as the guest of honor slow-danced through the center with a friend, until it ended with a surprise blowout of Britney Spears' "Toxic." Everyone laughed. A birthday cake came around on a platter. This time, nobody humped it.