Inside Skirt Club, the Secret, Worldwide Sex Party for Bisexual Women

Cosmopolitan spends a night in the exclusive sex party where (mostly straight) women ditch their male partners to explore their sexuality in private.

The four women in the bathtub are so preoccupied with going down on each other, they don’t seem to notice me watching them. I’ve been walking around naked in this stranger’s penthouse for several hours now, and tucked away in every nook of the apartment, groups of women are equally engrossed in one another. In a closet across from the tub, a woman is using a vibrator and moaning loudly. The rest of the master suite is crowded with limbs and faces buried between legs. The air smells like sex, but sweeter—perfume, plus sweat, minus men—and marijuana.

Five years ago, Skirt Club’s founder, Genevieve LeJeune, was working as a branding consultant in London and going to sex parties with her then-boyfriend. He was interested in having threesomes; she was hoping to explore her bisexuality. It didn’t take long for her to notice how limiting those parties could be.

“Almost every time I met a bi woman there, it was her boyfriend edging her on to do something for him to watch or indulge in,” LeJeune says. “I thought, How do you really explore your sexuality if you’re constantly performing for someone else?” LeJeune began to imagine a different kind of environment: A safe, judgment-free space where women could act out their desires on their own terms, away from the male gaze.

At first, LeJeune spent a lot of time meeting women for coffee, convincing them about her idea. The first parties were with LeJeune’s friends and friends-of-friends. As word quickly spread, demand increased, and soon, LeJeune was hosting her first US party in Miami. And then Los Angeles, Berlin, Shanghai, and more cities every month.

Now, LeJeune says more women than ever are applying for Skirt Club membership. Joining is free, but attending any of the official parties ranges in price between $150 to $180. Demand could be so high because Skirt Club’s founding mission seems predestined to appeal specifically to the current mood among women in America: As men are finally being held accountable for bad behavior and the rules around sexual power dynamics are being rewritten, more women are taking ownership of their right to explore their sexual sides. Is it possible that Skirt Club—a sex party where men are explicitly refused—is the best, safest, most progressive way for women to take care of their own pleasure?