Lifestyle
Inside the all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue electrifying L.A. nightlife
At around 1 in the morning at the Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood, four masc lesbians in cowboy hats and chaps were dancing on top of the bar while bartenders attempted to continue making espresso martinis beneath them.
One performer crawled into the crowd and between the spread legs of an audience member, licking the air between their thighs. Another wrapped a belt around their girlfriend’s neck while thrusting against her to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The ravenous audience, almost entirely women, fluttered dollar bills all around, while easily filling the saloon’s 300-person capacity.
Across Los Angeles, countless strip clubs and revue shows were unfolding at that same hour, though none quite like this and likely few provoking this level of frenzy. The night had all the riotous energy of a scene from “Coyote Ugly,” with the choreographed masculinity of “Magic Mike.” Playing on the latter’s name, this was the doing of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue, by sapphics for sapphics.
Skye Valentinez, from left, Alexa Legend, Daddii Syd and King Captain are members of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian collective, that started in February.
“Our idea was to give lesbians what men get all the time at a strip club, but instead of just sitting around and singing ‘Pink Pony Club,’ actually going wild,” said group founder Daddii Syd, a.k.a. Syd Latimore.
The performers, self-described “daddies” — Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend, Skye Valentinez and King Captain — formed Magic Mascs in February. The performance at the Saloon was their third overall, but the group has already become an institution within lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles. They will make their debut during a Pride Month performance on Friday at Womxn Pride’s rooftop party in downtown L.A.
The members come from professional dance backgrounds. King Captain entered dance school at age 12 and taught dance for nearly a decade. Daddii Syd has danced since childhood. Alexa Legend spent years go-go dancing across clubs in the city before joining the troupe. Skye Valentinez, the baby of the group — cherub-faced, smiling through braces — is the newest to performing, though she steps into it naturally, exhibiting the same living, breathing caricature of masculinity as the rest of them.
“No one’s trying to be cisgender,” King Captain makes clear. “We’re not trying to be the kind of men who are born into and fed by patriarchy,” Daddii Syd added. “We’re redefining masculinity.”
King Captain gets their underwear stuffed with dollar bills from the crowd.
Magic Mascs’ success follows a broader trend of lesbians confidently stepping into masculinity before hungry eyes. In the past year, performative masc competitions have appeared across the country, with lesbians — hair slicked back and carabiners dangling from their Carhartt jeans — showing off in front of leering crowds. Magic Mascs feels like a more professionalized version of that phenomenon, less tongue-in-cheek — just tongue.
“We always knew there was a huge hunger for this,” Daddii Syd said.
Their first performance, in San Diego, sold out fast.
“I knew right away we were onto something special,” Daddii Syd said.
Videos of the troupe traveled far across sapphics’ algorithms, especially clips of King Captain, whose devoted fan base — known collectively as “The Castle” — make arduous trips just to see them in the flesh. One fan drove more than 20 hours from Dallas to San Diego to see Magic Mascs. Another sent an edible fruit bouquet from Australia.
Backstage, every gesture from the troupe was ultra-confident. Captain, wearing briefs stuffed with a sock full of rice, talked to me with a leg cocked on the footrest of my stool. Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez stood pelvis-forward, hands behind their heads, flexing ropey muscles. They loved the camera, eyeing it like prey while tipping the brims of their cowboy hats. (“You guys are like the modern-day Beatles,” our photographer said.)
King Captain gets the Hollywood crowd into a frenzy during a recent show.
Everything in the show revolved around their hips. The performers rolled and glided before delivering sudden, mechanical thrusts powerful enough to rattle nearby glasses. Their bodies were taut with effort and exaggerated lust. Daddii Syd performed with her girlfriend Jamie in matching plaid, not leaving much to the imagination as they licked whipped cream off each other.
Alexa Legend, who described herself as shy offstage, eventually stripped down to nipple pasties and a cowboy hat, firing confetti from her crotch into the crowd. King Captain swerved their hips like a powerful mechanical bull. “Oh, Captain, my captain,” someone in the crowd said, hand pressed dramatically to her forehead.
They paid particular attention to a woman in a wheelchair in the crowd — typical of their performances — asking if they could sit on the wheelchair. They received keen consent. “That was, um, very nice,” she told me after, still a little lost for words.
“We’re huge on consent,” Daddii Syd said. At the start of the show, they told the crowd to cross their arms in a Wakanda Forever pose if they didn’t wish to be touched. They checked in constantly while moving through the crowd, leaning close to ask questions like, “Is this OK?” and “Anywhere you don’t like to be touched?”
Captain learned these habits through work in intimacy coordination and under the mentorship of Tonia Sina, among the first professional intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. That ethos of care extended beyond their interactions with the audience and into the way they interacted with one another offstage.
“We want everyone in the crowd to feel gorgeous,” King Captain said before the recent show at Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood.
King Captain, left, and Lauren Henson, a stage kitten for the Magic Mascs, perform together on the bar.
Forming a sanctuary for themselves was just as important to the troupe as emboldening others’ desire. “It’s hard to find other masc friends,” Daddii Syd said. “Everybody’s weirdly competitive and trying to sabotage each other.” King Captain agreed, asking: “Why can’t we all be daddies at the same time?”
Daddii Syd and King Captain, who are both in their 30s, had little butch representation or friendship growing up and they have now become something like father figures to Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez, who are in their 20s.
“We have to protect each other,” King Captain said. “We have to look out for each other.”
Daddii Syd put her arm around Skye Valentinez and said: “Look at this beautiful baby we have.”
That tenderness carried straight into the night. There was a striking seriousness to the whole performance, which spanned from just past 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Unlike a bachelorette party or the typical male revue, there was no giggling in the room, and no wink of camp from the performers. Here was a rare claim to unabashed public sapphic desire; it was given the scale and seriousness routinely afforded to heterosexual display, like the gleeful bravado of a man striding into Hooters.
By the end of the night at Sassafras Saloon, the performers had stripped down nearly to nothing, pouring water over themselves while the audience roared. The atmosphere felt like one of collective release, a recognition that masculinity and desire don’t belong only to men — that a group of four masc lesbians can be horny, inspire horniness and ultimately stir a hysteria that once greeted Channing Tatum or even the Beatles.
It was the magnitude of the response that night at the Saloon, as on every other night they’ve performed, that’s inspiring their next moves: total domination in sum. The troupe is already planning a national tour through Florida, Dallas and Sacramento, though Daddii Syd’s ambitions extend much further.
“The idea,” she told me, “is to go global. Like a boy band.”
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By Helen Shaw, Vanessa Friedman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Sutton Raphael
June 2, 2026
It’s hot, school’s out, put your PTO in – summer’s here! And that means Brittany’s back for It’s Been a Minute’s annual summer books episode! This time around authors Sasha Bonét (The Waterbearers) and Cindy Pham (The Secret World of Briar Rose) join the show to give their summer reading recommendations. From wanderlust to first time love – there’s something for everyone.
Want more summer book recommendations?
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This episode was produced by Alexis Williams. The video was edited by Maya Dangerfield. It was edited by Nick Michael. Our Executive Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.
Sonja Lyubomirsky thinks the Valentine’s Day cards have it wrong. Most, argues the researcher, a distinguished professor of psychology at UC Riverside, say some variation of “I love you.”
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.
“We think all the cards should say, ‘I feel loved by you.’ Or, ‘You make me feel loved,’” says Lyubomirsky, co-author of the recent book “How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most.”
The difference is key, and vital, says Lyubomirsky, to our happiness. Being in love, for instance, is not the same as feeling loved, and “How to Feel Loved” documents the latter. For to feel loved is to truly be seen and embraced by another. It’s deeper, and greater, than passion. And we desire it.
Lyubomirsky, a longtime researcher in the field of happiness, together with Harry Reis, a dean’s professor in the University of Rochester’s department of psychology, have written a treatise on how to bring more compassion, acceptance and vulnerability to our relationships.
The bad news: We often go about it incorrectly. The good news: It’s fixable.
Sonja Lyubomirsky, co-author with Harry Reis of the book “How to Feel Loved.”
(Taea Thale Photography )
Too often, they write, we obsess over making ourselves more appealing to others — or more “lovable” — when we should be striving for stronger communication. “How to Feel Loved” outlines multiple mindsets to up our conversation game, each springing off of what they call the “sea-saw method.” Yes, “sea” rather than “see.” We unpack that and more with Lyubomirsky, below.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
A core tenant of the book is that sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. Things we think may help us feel more loved ultimately work against that goal.
Many of us are loved, but we don’t feel loved. Harry Reis and I created a survey expressly for the book, and we found that 70% reported wanting to feel more loved in at least one of their significant relationships, and 40% wanted to feel more loved by their romantic partner. That’s a problem. Feeling loved is so important to happiness. What are the barriers? Why don’t people feel more loved, and what do they do when they aren’t feeling loved? What we discovered through research is that we kind of go about it the wrong way. We think, “If I don’t feel loved, I need to change myself. I need to make myself more lovable. I need to get more attractive, richer, more accomplished and have more power, status, fame and beauty. I need to show the other person my wonderful qualities and hide my shortcomings and weaknesses.” It turns out that’s backward. That will not make us feel more loved. Our message is empowering. You don’t need to change yourself. You don’t need to change the other person. You just need to change the conversation.
I want to get into changing the conversation, but curious, is a reluctance to do so driven by a fear of rejection?
There’s something called the vulnerability paradox. We think being vulnerable and admitting our mistakes will make people like us less. But actually, often people like us more. So that doesn’t mean just go tell everyone your weaknesses. A lot of emotional intelligence is involved here. You have to read the person — at what point to be a little vulnerable? But right now, I want to impress you with this interview. I want you to think I’m smart, knowledgeable and a good person. That might succeed in impressing you, and maybe you might admire me, but it’s not going to forge a connection. It’s really that vulnerability of going deeper that makes us feel more loved.
“How to Feel Loved” from Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis.
(Harper Collins Publishers)
So how do we go about that? What’s the first step in feeling more loved?
If you want to feel more loved, you need to make the other person feel loved first. How do you do that? You show genuine curiosity in their day, in their inner life and what they’re all about. We all crave that. The key to feeling loved is truly being known. If you’re hiding your shortcomings and only showing your highlight reel, you’re not going be known. So, Todd, let’s say you only show me very positive sides of you, and never anything vulnerable. Then I express love to you. How can you trust that? What am I loving? I’m just loving this little piece that’s being shown to me. So you’ll always wonder, “Oh, if they only knew A, B, C or D about me, they wouldn’t love me so much.” So the first step to make the other person feel loved is to show radical curiosity. For example, I’ll ask, “Tell me about the last time you cried.”
And yet to ask that question — or to answer it — we need to feel that we’re in a safe space. The concept of radical curiosity seems to create that.
You feel safe because I’m really genuinely interested and I really care. We talk about the open-heart mindset, which is warmth and kindness. I really care about you. I believe in you. We call this the listening to learn mindset. I’m not just trying to respond or turn it back to me, like, “Oh, that reminds me of my story.” Most of us are not good listeners, me included, because we’re formulating an answer instead of just totally taking it in. Listen like you’re watching a film. When you’re watching a film, you’re just taking it in. You’re not formulating an answer when you’re watching a movie.
Some of these tips sound simple but they’re difficult to implement.
We have the “sea-saw” metaphor. The idea: Say you and I are talking. We’re sitting on opposite ends of an underwater “sea-saw.” The reason we’re underwater is because most of us is hidden. I only see the tip of you and you only see the tip of me. But when I’m showing curiosity in you, it’s as though I’m pressing down on my end of the “sea-saw.” I’m helping to lift you up and I see a little more of you. Then when you start talking, I don’t just listen to learn, I listen with warmth and acceptance — without judgment. That’s hard to do, because we’re all judgmental. But that lifts you up even more. Then this is the hard part, but the idea is you will reciprocate. Then you show interest in me and ask me questions and get me to open up. Feeling loved is being known, and you do that through a “sea-saw.” It’s a back and forth.
I like the “sea-saw” idea because a lot of times I get in my head, like, “Say something interesting.” But it’s really more about being interested?
It’s incredibly hard to really cultivate curiosity in someone else’s inner life. It has to be genuine, but it really makes people feel seen, heard and loved. Remember the last time someone was so curious about you. Maybe you’re telling a story and they can’t wait for you to finish a sentence. They’re leaning in. Their eyes are bright. Charismatic people have that. It’s compelling. But we’re not going to feel loved if we don’t share something of ourselves with others, but you want to start small. Pacing is critical. You don’t want to overshare and trauma dump. Maybe start with a little thing. They say, “How are you?” Instead of saying fine, say, “I had a rough morning.” Or, “I’m struggling with a little thing today.” It doesn’t have to be negative. It can be, “I didn’t really like that movie that everyone loved.” That’s a little bit vulnerable.
And it’s letting go of a fear of being judged.
One of my favorite mindsets is the multiplicity mindset. It comes from trauma research. The idea is when we have a trauma in our life, it’s part of you, but it doesn’t define you. We’re a quilt of positive and negative traits. I’m generous at times, but sometimes I’m selfish and sometimes I’m loyal and sometimes I’m narcissistic. That’s true about me, and it’s true about everyone. But one trait doesn’t define us. So use a multiplicity lens when you’re talking to someone, and use it on yourself. Humans are messy, very complex, and full of bad and good traits. The opposite of that is to be judgmental. Being judgmental is something we have to overcome, so using a multiplicity lens takes some effort. So when you want to make someone feel loved, when they’re revealing something about themselves that they may be afraid to reveal, you make them feel accepted and that you see them in all that complexity. You feel loved when a person knows your secrets and still loves you.
And the book provides valuable insight into those moments when maybe you didn’t feel loved.
A couple of early readers of the book — we had finished the book but it wasn’t published yet — shocked me. They were both friends of mine. They said they loved it, but both of them decided to break up with their girlfriends after reading the book. One said to me, “I read your book and I realized she’s not sharing and I’m not sharing.” The other person said, “I realized my girlfriend stopped asking me questions.” We thought of this as prescriptive. “Here are the steps you can take.” They used it as a diagnostic. Were both of you sharing? Were both of you listening? Were both showing an open heart? And multiplicity: If you reveal something negative, is it seen with compassion? This really breaks it down. I don’t want people to break up with people, but if this sheds a light on a relationship, hopefully that means they can talk about it and improve it.
(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)
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