Alisha Stranges and Elspeth H. Brown
Leanne Powers, digital illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba for The Pussy Palace Oral Historical past Undertaking, LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory. 2025.
“Out of the blue, I heard nothing outdoors, and that was when the police had been strolling by way of that space. I heard a knock on the door, and I put myself in entrance of the one who was within the temple with me and stood as much as simply [maintain] as a lot management of the state of affairs as I may.”
—Leanne Powers, Temple Priestess
Round 12:45 a.m. on September 15, 2000, 5 plainclothes male cops entered the Pussy Palace below the pretense of a liquor licence inspection. They walked by way of the pool and sauna. They knocked on closed doorways. They recorded names and addresses.
For a lot of patrons, the violation was fast and visceral. However to know why the raid felt so profound, we have now to know what the police had been interrupting.
The Pussy Palace was not merely a celebration. It was an area intentionally structured round consent, orientation, and collective care. Volunteers greeted newcomers and defined etiquette. Safety circulated to not police pleasure however to help it.
On the fourth flooring, a small attic room housed two of the Palace’s most distinctive interventions. The Temple—overseen by designated Temple Priestess Leanne Powers—provided grounding rituals, non secular care, and a quiet place to recalibrate. Temporary one-on-one check-ins had been out there to anybody feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or just in want of pause. In a bathhouse organized round experimentation and publicity, the Temple formalized one thing uncommon: the popularity that need and vulnerability journey collectively.
In the identical area, artist Chloë Brushwood Rose’s Polaroid picture sales space allowed patrons to doc themselves on their very own phrases. Not like digital photos, Polaroids couldn’t be copied or circulated; what was captured remained within the arms of these photographed. In a second when queer sexual cultures had been routinely surveilled and sensationalized, the sales space provided a type of managed visibility—pleasure may very well be seen with out being seized.
The raid was not simply an act of policing. It was an intrusion right into a rigorously constructed experiment in queer security.
The Invasion
Watch “Raid on the Palace: Narrators Replicate”
“Raid on the Palace: Narrator’s Replicate.” Illustrated, animated, and edited by Ayo Tsalithaba. Produced by LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown). 2022.
Patrons recall male officers transferring by way of semi-dressed our bodies, staring, questioning, demanding identification. The selection to ship males right into a women-and-trans-only erotic area was not incidental. It remodeled what police described as routine inspection into one thing nearer to a strip search.
Media protection—unexpectedly sympathetic—targeted closely on this gendered violation. Mainstream editorials condemned the presence of male officers.[i] Queer press went additional, refusing to downplay the Palace’s eroticism even whereas denouncing the raid.
However narrators additionally keep in mind one thing else: how rapidly care practices activated.
Care as Instant Resistance
Temple Priestess, Leanne Powers, had spent the night serving to patrons orient themselves to the evening—smudging the room, calling the instructions, providing transient rituals of grounding and affirmation. Her position was not ornamental. She functioned as each non secular anchor and emotional first responder.
Earlier within the night, she remembers an interplay with a patron who, she later suspected, was one in all two undercover feminine officers despatched in forward of the raid. The patron twice tried to entrap her by asking whether or not she accepted cash for her providers. She didn’t. When the police returned in power, Powers heard footsteps within the hall. She positioned herself between the patron she was with and the door.
This gesture—easy, embodied—captures one thing important. Care on the Palace was not summary. It was practiced in actual time.
Powers shielded her consumer, redirected her to an alternate exit, then moved by way of the constructing checking on others who is perhaps triggered or overwhelmed. She later organized a circle upstairs so individuals may course of what had occurred.
Safety volunteers shaped protecting boundaries. Organizers had already distributed “know your rights” flyers on the door in case of a raid. A reporter had been invited in anticipation of police motion. Legislation professor Brenda Cossman recognized herself throughout the raid to watch officer conduct.
These actions weren’t improvised heroics. They had been extensions of the Palace’s present care infrastructure. The police didn’t encounter chaos. They encountered a neighborhood practiced in taking care of itself.
Watch “Care on the Palace: Narrators Replicate”
“Care on the Palace: Narrators Replicate.” Illustrated, animated, and edited by Ayo Tsalithaba. Produced by LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown). 2022.
From Violation to Mobilization
Two weeks later, safety volunteers JP Hornick and R. Atkins—each signatories on the occasion’s Particular Event Allow—had been charged with six counts every (all bogus) of violating the Liquor Licence Act. What adopted was not retreat however mobilization.
Watch “Give Til It Hurts”
“Give Til It Hurts.” Narrated by Chanelle Gallant, Hanlon Uafás-Álainn, Janet Rowe, Robin Woodward, Olivia Chow, and Pam Johnson. Edited by Alisha Stranges. Illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba. Produced by LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown). The Historical past of the Pussy Palace: A Digital Exhibit. 2024.
A whole bunch packed the 519 Neighborhood Centre for a defence fundraiser. Activists marched to 52 Division chanting “pussies chew again.” Fundraisers adopted: bar nights, oyster dinners, Satisfaction toonie drives. Homosexual males who had skilled the 1981 bathhouse raids confirmed up in solidarity. Hornick remembers the shift from shock to resolve: the raid had galvanized the neighborhood. But the authorized technique that in the end succeeded required a troublesome compromise.
Defence lawyer Frank Addario argued that the male officers’ presence violated patrons’ cheap expectation of privateness. To win, the case needed to emphasize ladies’s vulnerability within the presence of male police. This pragmatic method helped safe victory in 2002, when the choose excluded police testimony and dismissed all expenses.
However it additionally risked flattening the Palace’s trans-inclusive politics right into a extra essentialist narrative about “ladies’s privateness.”
Watch “Queer Justice Dilemma”
“Queer Justice Dilemma.” Narrated by Mariana Valverde and Brenda Cossman. Edited by Alisha Stranges. Illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba. Produced by LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown). The Historical past of the Pussy Palace: A Digital Exhibit. 2024.
As regulation professor Brenda Cossman and activist Mariana Valverde mirror, the case raises a perennial query: is it higher to win narrowly, or to argue radically and threat dropping? The defence succeeded—however at the price of sidelining among the Palace’s extra expansive visions of gender and sexuality.
Care, right here, took the type of strategic restraint.
Past Reform
The authorized victory laid the groundwork for a human rights grievance and class-action lawsuit. In 2005, a settlement awarded $350,000, mandated LGBTQ sensitivity coaching, and required new tips for the therapy of trans individuals throughout searches and detention.
Neighborhood members facilitated that coaching, sitting throughout from officers in tense workshops that uncovered deep ignorance—and, often, small shifts.
Watch “Bridging the Hole”
“Bridging the Hole.” Narrated by Anthony Mohamed. Edited by Alisha Stranges. Illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba. Produced by LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown). The Historical past of the Pussy Palace: A Digital Exhibit. 2024.
For some, these reforms mattered. Incremental adjustments may imply safer therapy for a single trans particular person in custody.
For others, together with longtime activist Anna Willats, the method underscored policing’s structural limits. The raid, she argues, was not an aberration however a part of a broader sample of focusing on marginalized communities.
Watch “Arms of the State”
“Arms of the State.” Narrated by Anna Willats. Edited by Alisha Stranges. Illustration by Ayo Tsalithaba. Produced by LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory (PI, Elspeth Brown). The Historical past of the Pussy Palace: A Digital Exhibit. 2024.
The Palace’s response thus unfolded alongside two tracks: working inside authorized frameworks to safe tangible protections, and recognizing that these frameworks may by no means absolutely ship justice.
What the Raid Reveals
It could be straightforward to relate the raid solely as state violence. It was that. However it was additionally one thing extra particular: an assault on an area constructed round collective care, erotic autonomy, and mutual accountability.
What the oral histories clarify is that care didn’t disappear when the police arrived. It intensified. It moved from orientation excursions and twine demos to authorized defence funds, protest marches, and years of neighborhood session. It took the type of shielding our bodies, distributing data, testifying in courtroom, and sitting by way of hostile coaching rooms.
The raid uncovered the fragility of queer area below policing. It additionally revealed the sturdiness of queer care.
Within the remaining publish of this sequence, we shift to a special set of questions: how can we inform this historical past—of enjoyment, violation, and resistance—in ways in which honour not solely what occurred, however what it felt like? And why did these embodied reminiscences push this challenge past textual content and into research-creation?
Alisha Stranges is a public humanities scholar based mostly on the College of Toronto. She serves as Analysis Supervisor and Undertaking Oral Historian for the LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory, the place her work bridges oral historical past, efficiency, and digital analysis creation.
Elspeth Brown is Professor of Historical past on the College of Toronto and Director of the LGBTQ Oral Historical past Digital Collaboratory. A scholar of queer and trans historical past, oral historical past, and archives, she is the creator of Work! A Queer Historical past of Modeling (Duke College Press).
To be taught extra about this historical past, go to our challenge web site or discover our immersive digital exhibit.
[i] Editorial. “Barging In.” Globe and Mail, Sep. 25, 2000.
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