Let's go to the lesbian museum!

22 Jun, 2026

For some reason, New Zealand is home to the only lesbian museum in the world—the Charlotte Museum (Te Whare Takatāpui-Wāhine o Aotearoa). Well, it's more like a museum of the very specific lesbian culture of Auckland in the 1980s - 2000s and it only has two rooms, but I like visiting it nonetheless.

Permanent exhibition

The permanent exhibition space features Venus/Goddess replicas from the Natural History of Vienna on one side, and old LGBT publications on the other. On the walls are some boards on lesbian poetry and the annual Lesbian Ball, which ran from 1984 to 2013.

The museum also has some merch for sale and a cart of lesbian books free to take home.

I call it a permanent exhibition, but they change it from time to time. Sadly it's currently missing my favorite former exhibit, the defaced Chlöe Swarbrick sign. In place there are some collages and a photoboard with a printer so you can add your own memories. The research library is also here, though it was closed at the time.

Temporary exhibition

The temporary exhibition room is a bit bigger. It changes out fairly often, so if you're in the area its worth revisiting every couple of months.

At the time I visited, they were hosting the OUT OF THE GUTTER: A COMMUNITY RETROSPECTIVE exhibition with Auckland Pride.

Bathroom

Could this be the most interesting bathroom in a museum? Actually, that award goes to Sydney's Qtopia, which has an exhibit set in the underground public bathrooms formerly used for cruising. But you could spend ages looking at the bathroom in the Charlotte Museum too.

I love old posters that were limited to using solid lines. It makes the distinction of prints and posters as art forms so much clearer.

The bathroom is covered with posters from past lesbian events, mostly pre-2000. It really makes you realize just how local LGBT culture used to be.

On or offline LGBT

Auckland's last lesbian ball was in 2013, the same year that same-sex marriage was legalized. I don't think these events are related, but rather that the decline of IRL LGBT spaces was due to the rise of the internet.

In a broader sense, LGBT people could simply meet other LGBT people online, and in a dating sense there was no need to go out to bars or clubs to experience a lesbian relationship. So there are currently no lesbian bars in Auckland and probably New Zealand as a whole.¹

The idea of a lesbian club open 7 days from 4 PM to 4 AM is astounding. Forget gay bars, even straight bars don't do that here.

I never know how to feel about the internet's impact on the LGBT individual and culture. Unless you have the most supportive family in the world, being LGBT will involve anxiety and distrust. The internet offers and escape from that, where you can be who you are even if you can't in reality.

But it's very easy to just want to stay there instead of existing in real life, when two decades ago you—even as an anxious introvert—would have to go outside to be with others who share the same experience, in a community where you'd inherently be recognized as who you are. Now even extroverts don't have such spaces to be, at least not regularly.

But that might be a romanticized view of things anyway. Auckland's the biggest city in the country; what were you gonna do if you lived in bumfuck Masterton back then? Not to mention the many places where being LGBT was and still is life-threateningly unsafe.

Of course, I am not a lesbian so I can only speak to the experience of bisexual men. Gay bars are still a thing but the internet is a thing more and it just perpetuates the most vile, racist, transphobic, sex-obsessed, and body image-focused of gay male culture.

The lesbian flag

But back to internet culture and lesbianism specifically, the lesbian flag is probably the biggest symbol of just that.

Most people know that very few gay men actually use the toothpaste flag IRL (or even recognize it), but the same could be said about the lesbian flag to a lesser degree. It's not even a decade old! My cousin who tells me to draw Kpop boys on Instagram is older than that! And it was entirely created online, the result of a Tumblr poll of all things.²

Because of that, it quickly spread online, but Tumblr is pretty niche in the big scheme of things so I don't think it had as big of an impact on the IRL world as netizens like me would have thought. I was pretty surprised when I went to both Auckland Rainbow Parade and Sydney Mardi Gras earlier this year and saw the lesbian flag only a few times at each event, but it makes sense when you think about how it isn't rooted in any IRL communities—they're still representing themselves with shades of purple and double-headed axes.³

That being said, the lesbian flag is still probably the most impactful thing Tumblr ever put out. Plenty of lesbians do use it to represent themselves online and off, including the Charlotte Museum itself from time to time. The colors are gorgeous too.

You could also say something about the sheer amount of lesbian discourse online but I do not want to get into that because I am a male who has a job and doesn't use Twitter. But to be honest, looking into lesbian history, they've always been debating the use of the term lesbian so this might simply be a forever war.

Let's go lesbians!!!

Though I joke about the Charlotte Museum's size, I still see it to be an antidote to the impact of the internet on local LGBT culture: the one community space in the country that is permanently dedicated for lesbians.

While not nearly as lavish or as lively as balls and clubs, it regularly holds events where local WLW can meet other WLW for friends, though probably not for fun! ⁴

Would I recommend this to Aucklanders? Absolutely yes, you could even visit it multiple times a year.

Would I recommend this to New Zealanders? Sure, it's pretty interesting if you like NZ LGBT history.

Would I recommend this to international visitors? It's very small and local-focused so no but there's also like nothing to do in Auckland and it's close to Queen Street so you might as well visit it while you're here.

#2026 #internet #new zealand #rant #review