Steering Committee – 2011

Founder, BV Board – Resource Development Chair, Conference Co-Chair

Joe LeBlanc is a Cajun Genderqueer Butch who believes in personal story-telling as a significant method for people to share experiences and solidify a better understanding about LGBTIQ identities, issues, and concerns. Joe is the Founder and Resource Development Chair of BUTCH Voices. He has served as a member of the University of Michigan’s Spectrum Center Speakers’ Bureau and TransGender Michigan.

A graduate from the Out in Front Seattle LGBTQ leadership program, Joe is one of the Founders and Coordinator for Q Patrol PDX, Portland’s first ever LGBTQ community foot patrol.  He has presented panel workshops at the Borders & Bridges Conference (2008), the Femme Conference(2008), and various BUTCH Voices Conferences (2009 – 2010). Joe is currently working as the Trans Justice Fellow for Basic Rights Oregon, and also volunteers as the Co-Director for Hollaback PDX. He was most recently awarded the 2011 Pride In Action Award by Pride NW. Joe also enjoys endless conversations about gender and sexuality, interlaced with talks about pop culture and fighting prejudice..

BV Board – President & Cheif Strategist, Conference Co-Chair

Krys Freeman is the founder of theDefinition.org, a social network bringing masculine of center people and their allies together in safe, positive and affirming space online. A child of the digital age, s/he likes to be thought of as a web 2.0 evangelist. Krys spends her free time testing and exploring new ways to employ web technology to bring about social change. Since 2008, s/he has developed and facilitated workshops dealing specifically with the intersection of web media and social activism at both adult and youth LGBT conferences; including the National Black Lesbian Conference (2008), Phillips Academy Andover’s 30th Anniversary GSA Conference (2009), BUTCH Voices (2009) and Models of Pride (2009 & 2010).

In 2007, Freeman completed an undergraduate degree in Urban & Environmental Policy, with a minor in Critical Theory & Social Justice at Occidental College. In 2008 s/he served as a Media Fellow for Communities of African Descent at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation where s/he helped to develop the voices of straight ally, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people for media outlets like the New York Times and Essence magazine. In 2009 s/he served as the Logistics Chair for the first inaugural BUTCHVoices Conference. In 2010, Oakland Local called her a “Phenomenon.” In 2011, she plans to take over the world. Just kidding… but she does intend to do her part to make BUTCH Voices 2011 bigger and better than we’ve seen yet. (We hope that you will too!)

BV Board – Treasurer, Finance Chair

Mary Stockton has been a successful Financial Services Professional with Stockton Financial for more than a decade in San Diego. She has earned the award of top producer and continues to thrive in the financial marketplace. Prior to moving to San Diego in 1996, she owned and operated the women’s bookstore, Crones’ Harvest in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her business became a valuable cultural center and she was honored with the Helen Diner Community Leadership Award. Her community involvement also extended to the arts, where she took pleasure in producing plays, poetry slams, concerts, and witnessed the burgeoning talent of many successful progressive artists’. She has served on the Board of Directors at Stepping Stone of San Diego, volunteering for four years in an effort to promote alcohol and drug rehabilitation for the LGBT community. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of The San Diego LGBT Community Center and is Board President of Diversionary Theatre, the third oldest LGBT theatre in the country and recognized as one of San Diego’s best theatre’s.

Mary has been a self identified butch for more than 25 years although she has been living as a butch her entire life. To help create space has been her work as an activist for more than two decades and to now have the ability to devote her energy to her Butch brothers and sisters is a dream come true. Mary is blissfully married to her wife, Alison McManus, a Family Nurse Practitioner and an activist in her own right. They have made their home in the North Park area of San Diego.

BV Board – Vice President, Outreach & Media Chair

Logistics Chair

Redwolf Painter is a two-spirit mixed blood Heyoka retired punk from Alaska. Wolf grew up in a poor mixed blood American Indian/White family with deep Alaskan roots which reverberates throughout their writing and social justice work. For the last 15 years Wolf has been writing, performing and producing events for various non-profit organizations, including Sundance Film Festival, CineVegas, San Diego Film Festival and Frameline. Concerned with the disappearing Native Track at Sundance, Wolf founded the Native American Film Series while working for the San Diego Film Festival in 2004 which is still running today. Currently Wolf sits on the original Transmarch Steering Committee in San Francisco, volunteers with Frameline and is working towards a degree in their spare time.

Logistics Coordinator

J. Jayes is a Masculine of Center genderqueer who has recently relocated to the East Bay from the desert of New Mexico. She feels unbelievably lucky and honored to be working with BUTCH Voices Conference this year. Operating out of her normal comfort zone as a Chef, she is excited for the opportunity to be collaborating towards social justice with other MoC people. Show, walk, be love.

Programming Chair

Jay Walls is a Butch abstract expressionist artist, social activist, film maker enthusiast, and a proud parent of 5 children. Born and raised in Texas, she and her partner of 11 years moved to Seattle in 2001 after Jay received a degree in Fine Art/Art History from Texas Woman’s University. Jay enjoys creating art in a variety of mediums, including photography, drawing, painting, and mixed media. Jay’s art work encompasses a variety of subject matters and ideas including the concept of her evolving identity through a series of self portraits she has created over the last 12 years.  Since 2005, she has been the Operations Coordinator for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.  In her spare time, she has created two short films Super Speed, presented at the 2006 SLGFF, and On the Cutting Edge, which was featured at the 2010 Seattle Erotic Art Festival. In 2009, she curated the BUTCH Voices art showcase Visually Speaking at the first national conference in Oakland. She joined the BUTCH Voices Steering Committee as the Programming Co-Chair at the end of 2009. In 2010, she was the Programming Coordinator for BUTCH Voices Regional Conference in Portland and curated the art exhibition A Taste of BUTCH Flavor. She is currently a stay at home parent of 5 adopted siblings, and has never worked harder in her life!

Programming Coordinator

Paris Harris is a butch native of New York City and a self-proclaimed music lover. She worked as a Host and Programmer for local radio station WBAI, New York (99.5 FM) on a show called The Loose Groove. Her more community focused work also includes a role as the HIV Data Manager for Callen Lorde LGBT health center.

Harris was married in Las Vegas, NV during the 2003 Butch Femme conference to her life partner and they are ‘Living the American Dream’ in the boogie down Bronx – you know with the house, truck, dogs.  Together they have fostered more than 16 teenage girls, and are now co-parenting one adopted daughter. Harris credits their co-parenting experience for offering personal development for her and her partner individually, as well as spiritual growth for them as a couple. Together they created a networking initiative called Positive Encounters (P.E.) through which they strive to offer the LGBTQ community original edu-tainment.

Inspired by the need for butches to have a support group to share experiences and to grow Paris also founded the Sophisticated Aggressive Gents (S.A.G.) in 2006. As a BUTCH Voices affiliate over the past few years, she has performed in Butch Burlesque shows and behind the scenes as the BUTCH Voices (New York Regional Conference) as the Programming Coordinator in 2010. We are excited to welcome Paris to the BUTCH Voices Programming Committee for the 2011 National Conference. Her participation and support only further demonstrates her commitment to community, or as she puts it, how much she is really “in it for the Bois.”

Performance Chair

Arnetta Smith is a Midwesten soft stud in love with social justice and equality. She is currently an undergrad at SFSU majoring in Africana Studies. In addition to the plethora of social justice issues found within the African American and Queer communities, she is concerned with the under representation of queer people of color in media. To help contribute to the solution of this issue, she created King Productions, a queer production company who has organized numerous fundraisers and shows directed at representing queer performers of color. Under this production company, Arnetta has contributed personally by performing as her male alter-ego “King McQueen.”  In addition, Arnetta is currently in the process of co-writing and producing a lesbian series called Dyke Central, a show dedicated to representing lesbians of color living in the Bay area.  She is also in the process of creating a new production and design company called Junkie Dreamers due to launch at the end of 2011.

Volunteer Chair

Blaze Martin, is a masculine identified lesbian of color, currently in s/his junior year at California State University Bakersfield, majoring in Sociology, with an anticipated graduation date of June 2012, and obtaining s/his 2nd Associates Degree in Criminal Justice in the spring of 2011, is on the track to fulfilling s/his dreams of becoming a youth counselor/probation officer.

Blaze was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA and moved to California in 2006. S/He currently volunteers as a case manager for the New Beginnings Outreach Foundation, based in the antelope valley, a program that provides work & life skills training programs to help individuals in developing resumes, obtaining interview skills, job searching, career planning & re-entry services for those who are transitioning from incarceration back into society. The program is also committed to raising the awareness of legislators and the public to the problems and concerns of an ever increasing number of underserved individuals in our community.

In giving back to the community, once Blaze has completed s/his Maters in Social Work, s/he also has plans of opening a 20-25 bed group home for LGBT youth that have been cast out of their home/communities/schools and for those foster care children who are cast out of the system at the age of 18 with nowhere else to go. With ages of the residents ranging from age 13 to 24, the focus of the group home would not just be to provide counseling services but to provide them with the resources needed to get back on their feet, survive, thrive and maintain. The program would offer GED classes, college prep classes, technical training and opportunities for internships, help with job placement as well as financial planning and investment classes so that when the individual is ready to leave they will have a “nest egg” to start with.

Youth Outreach Chair

Jay-Marie Hill is a Mixed (Black/White/Puerto Rican) Masculine of Center Woman, originally hailing from the East San Francisco Bay Area. She is a recent graduate of Stanford University where she received a B.A. in Drama and a minor in African & African-American Studies. She was the Co-President of Black and Queer at Stanford for three of her four years on campus and is proud to have increased visibility of Queer issues as they pertain to communities of color on and off the Stanford campus. She served as the Executive Director of Stanford’s Blackstage Theater Company and wrote a senior thesis and stage play on the topics of Gender non-conformity and queer identity in South Africa versus The States. Jay is currently attending the University of Southern California for a Masters Degree and California Teaching Credential and will finish in May 2011.

Now at 21 years old, Jay-Marie’s life experiences and her new career path in education have inspired her to use her resources to help spark a network that reaches out to other young Masculine of Center women. She hopes to use her knowledge and awareness of Art, (Her)story and Struggle to reach out to Youth and eventually bring more people into the overlaps of academia and queer (folk of color) community. As a member of the Brown Boi Project Spring 2010 Cohort, Jay’s mission now aligns with theirs: to bring about gender and racial justice. She also strives to help spread the word that we gender non-conforming and queer folk come in all shapes, sizes, colors, backgrounds, gender identities and religious beliefs. Oh, and that some of us have a bit of style, too.

Awareness & Accessibility Chair

Cara Thaxton was born and raised in Chicago, IL surrounded by laughter, love and chaos. She is the youngest of five kids and an aunt to six nieces and nephews. Cara has ten years of experience as an anti-oppression and anti-violence advocate working with survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, police abuse and misconduct and hate crimes. In 2006 Cara moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and transitioned to a career in development. In her most recent position, she served as an Assistant Vice President of Development for the United Way of the Bay Area. Currently Cara is excited to bring her passion and talents to the Shriver Center where she can help fight social and economic injustice.

Cara holds a Bachelors of Arts in Sociology and a Bachelor of Arts Communications from Aurora University. She currently lives in Belmont Heights with her partner jen, their three cats, and whatever family member has happened to drop by for the day.

Registration Co-Chair

My name is Mahogany Catherine Ruthie Corina and I was born August 19th, 1977. I graduated from Riverside Polytechnic High School. After high school I attended Dillard University in New Orleans Louisiana for two and a half years. Then I returned home to Riverside, California and continued my education in Computer Science/Engineering at Cal State Fullerton. I have been employed with Verizon Wireless for almost 7 years.

I became a member of the Regal Womyn of Alpha Lambda Zeta Fraternity, Inc. in April of 2008. Since then I have been a Co-leader of the Local Los Angeles area. I have been working doing community service such as graffiti removal, feeding the homeless, helping low income children with clothes and school supplies. I am recently the Vice President of the Western Region and we are working on getting scholarships for the gay and lesbian youth. We are committed to changing our vision in our community and I am glad to be a part of it.

Currently moved to New Jersey to peruse her career with the company Verizon Wireless. In 2010 Mahogany became a member of Butch Voices Steering Committee.

Registration Co-Chair

Adriana Batista was born and raised in Mexico City; she has a master degree in Public Health from California State University Fullerton, and worked at the HIV/AIDS Prevention Services Manager for The Gay and Lesbian Community Center Orange County in California for several years. Adriana has combined her writing and creative abilities with her public health expertise becoming the editor and co-author of the comics Sida No Se Quita, about HIV/AIDS prevention sponsored by the California State Office of AIDS, and Empieza con Fuerza Tu Dia to promote physical activity and healthy eating among Latinos sponsored by the CDC thought the Center for the Promotion of Healthy Life Styles and Obesity Prevention at CSUF.

Batista has represented Mexico as a lesbian author at the 3, 4, and 5 International Feminist Book Fair, Montreal, Barcelona and Amsterdam and at the 54 PEN World Congress, Canada. She is the coauthor of Liberacion Homosexual, (Posada Press, Mexico 1984) and the poetry collections, Epidermic Nihilisms (Quiero Mas, USA 1998) and COLORS (Xlibirs, USA 2009) that combine humor with irony and many other publications in Mexico, USA, Germany and Canada. She has designed diverse health promotion interactive presentations using humor as an approach to raise awareness in topics such as HIV/AIDS, asthma, smoking cessation, safe-sex practices, and emotional and mental health. Adriana calls herself a Public Health Poet, community health comedian.

Sponsor & Vendor Chair

Veronica Garcia has lived, worked, and played in Colorado for over fourteen years. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Colorado State University and a long history of volunteer and paid work addressing issues of violence, immigration reform, health disparities, and economic inequity as they impact queer communities and communities of color around the state and across the country. In her spare time, Veronica enjoys long-distance running, gardening, and exploring Colorado’s great outdoors.

Art Show Curator

Ty Chance is a 30-something, Asian, adopted, Italian/Scotch-Irish, New England, queer artist and educator who has resided in Portland, Oregon for 11 years. Ty was formally educated in New York City and San Francisco art schools and feels more comfortable in a pageboy cap and tie, than in a dress and heels, any day of the week. Ty’s gender is not apparent at first glance and people often get flustered when searching for a pronoun when addressing. Ty doesn’tt mind because any opportunity to open up a discussion about gender identity is a good one.Ty is a gender anarchist and doesn’t subscribe to any specific pronoun or gender role. Help Ty to obliterate the binary roles we were raised to embody by joining Ty in the mission to erase those little white boxes forever.

Film Night Curator

Desiree Buford is an aficionado of spot-on execution, overseeing Operations for Frameline’s signature Film Festival. She jumped on the film festival circuit right after earning her BA at UCLA, with a degree in Theater and a minor in LGBT Studies. Since she joined Frameline in 2002, Des has played a crucial role in the organization, overseeing the inner workings and behind-the-scenes excitement of the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. As a member of the Frameline Programming team, Des curates Festival Docs & Shorts in addition to overseeing Frameline at the Center, our year-round screening series. Des can also be found performing around the Trans Francisco Bay Area as award-winning drag king Delicio Del Toro.

Film Night Host & Moderator

Alexis Whitham held a supporting role in this year’s Frameline Film Festivel, assisting festival programmers for Frameline35 in the selection process, welcoming guests to the festival, and coordinating Guest Services throughout the festival.