Le Stud: Montreal’s Leather and Bear Bar, After the Women-Out Rule

Le Stud, also called Bar Le Stud, is in Montreal’s Gay Village, in Quebec, Canada. It opened in 1996 and has long served gay men, especially bears and people in leather. Boots, vests, beards, a masculine cruise. It is not a mainstream dance floor with a light show. It is a standing address if you are looking for a bear den or for men whose masculinity sits next to leather. Gear here is a social signal, not a novelty outfit.

Dress-code fantasy and the marketing of a clientele sit on top of each other. The leather runs along a line: motorcycle jackets, harness nights, and a simply masculine crowd that is friendly to gear. “Bear,” in this room, means larger, hairier men who built their look against the gym-clone aesthetic. Across North America, leather space and bear space overlap a lot. Montreal put that overlap into the Village, and both locals and travelers use it. The customers are adults.

Early on, Le Stud had a rule that women did not get in. Owner Michel Gadoury described it as a way to keep a masculine room for the clientele he wanted. That explanation is common in the history of leather bars. In 2007 Audrey Vachon filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Quebec. The case settled in 2008. The terms were not made public. The commission’s conclusion was that a business may aim at a particular clientele, and may not discriminate by keeping other customers out at the door. Le Stud dropped the old rule. It did not drop the leather. It is still a place that gathers an erotic crowd by dress code, and it redrew that line under human-rights law.