With much attention finally being paid to sexual harassment and labour issues within the restaurant industries, it’s easy to view restaurant and food culture simply as being rooted in misogyny and patriarchy. But there are many feminist restaurant and coffeehouse spaces, some incredibly long standing, that serve to really challenge the structures and spaces we operate in. So what does a feminist coffeehouse or restaurant look like?
My guest this week, Dr. Alex Ketchum, is here to unpack that question more. Dr. Ketchum is currently a faculty lecturer at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at McGill University. Her doctoral dissertation from McGill focused on feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses in the United States and Canada from 1972-1989. Searching through women’s lesbian, and gay travel archives, she creates a data base that built a series of maps showing where American and Canadian feminist restaurants and cafes were located. She has a newly launched DIY guidebook, How to Start a Feminist Restaurant, that gleans the lessons of what makes an intentional feminist restaurant space work, and what to consider.
Today she’s on the show to explore some of the key findings from her research, and how she used them to launch the feminist restaurant project website to share her findings to highlight how past feminist restaurant owners navigated gender and racial barriers to opening restaurants, and what these takeaways can offer for today’s feminist communities.
Get Social with Dr. Ketchum!
Website: www.alexketchum.ca
Twitter: @aketchum22