Rosa Strippe started in 1980 as a phone line run by gay men for gay men and is now a psychosocial counselling centre for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. It is one of the oldest queer organisations in the Ruhr and has been at Kortumstraße 143 since 2007, in a villa from 1896 behind the railway bridge north of the city centre. The building is barrier-free.
Most of what happens there is group work rather than drop-in: nahBAR for the families and partners of trans and non-binary people, WandelBAR for trans, non-binary and genderfluid adults, Ratz & Rübe for queer people with children or wanting them, ALTERnativ-LOS! for older lesbians, Senlima for young queer refugees and migrants. Café freiRAUM is the youth side, for anyone up to 27, with darts and table football for those who came to do something rather than talk. SCHLAU Bochum runs its school workshops from here too.
The unusual part is the wedding room. The city registry office holds ceremonies in the building, and couples can marry there whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity. The centre says no other German registry office has a room like it.
The people in this picture are AI-generated.
