This story originally appeared in our June 10-23 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
Since 1819, Cincinnati has been lovingly called the “Queen City.” It’s a name that at once calls to mind a sense of regal femininity, though that royal sense may contrast with the muddy waters of the Ohio. Back then, thanks to the riverboat traffic on those brackish tides, Cincinnati was a booming city on the frontier of the United States.
Today, Kelsey Ference, known to her 22,000 Instagram followers and countless newsletter subscribers as Midwestern Lesbian, is on a type of frontier of her own making. A queer frontier, at that.
“Cincinnati is so gay,” she said.
Ference started the Instagram page and associated event planning business in 2021, while they were running Rhinegeist Brewery’s social media.
“I was creating a weekly calendar of all the events we were doing in the taproom,” Ference said, “and I thought to myself, ‘Why don’t we have a calendar like this for all the queer events happening in and around the city?’”
That led her to create the first Queer Weekly Calendar, which quickly went up on the business’s new Instagram account. The Calendar is still updated weekly, though it’s now called the Cincy Gay Agenda.
Ference and their partner, Caitlin Chrisenée, who started dating in 2023, began organizing specifically sapphic events (meaning events for women who love women) when the pair noticed a severe lack of spaces — especially bars — for their audience in Cincinnati. The Sapphic Sips Series, their inaugural events, showed off some of the classic hallmarks of what makes the duo’s work so wonderful: a clever name, a great venue and a welcoming, joyously queer atmosphere.
“I want to create authentic connections with people so they can meet other queer people, make friends, be in community, and just feel loved, and seen and welcomed,” Ference said.
However, in light of the passage of Ohio Bill 249 — the Indecent Exposure Modernization Act — in March 2026, which explicitly criminalizes public drag and cabaret performances as first-degree misdemeanors, Ference noted that queerness itself is under attack on the state and federal level.
“For a lot of freshly out people, and people who aren’t even out, the first thing that they think of when they want to go and be in community is going to drag shows,” they said.
Ference, who has organized drag performances throughout the city, argued that drag artists are one of the pillars of queer culture; and that the policy passed in Columbus seeks to fuel hatred towards not just those performers, but the entire culture they represent. Sixteen people made similar remarks during hearings on the proposed bill back in April, where they advocated for the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee to kill the law that the speakers said targets trans Ohioans in addition to performers.
“It’s incredibly disheartening,” Ference said, “but I think that our community is strong enough to fight back and show people that there’s no danger in a drag show. At the end of the day, what we want is to be surrounded by people who know us, love us, and respect us.”
To do that, we need more queer spaces, Ference said— and not just bars or clubs. Midwestern Lesbian seeks to incorporate locales throughout the city, including places like The Porch in Washington Square Park, which will soon be hosting Sapphic Sunday Funday on June 14.
Looking further into the future, Midwestern Lesbian intends to expand to other Midwest cities and states in need of sapphic events. A newly created Instagram page for the soon-to-be-released Columbus Gay Agenda already has four hundred and sixty followers.
Midwestern Lesbian has events all Pride Month long, though the good times don’t stop when July rolls around. If you know of any upcoming queer events that need more attention, you can submit them on the Midwestern Lesbian website.
This article appears in June 10-23, 2026.
