BUTCH Voices: The Organization

The identities of Butch, Stud and Aggressive are complicated beyond the concepts of femininity and masculinity, which are further limited by language to fully describe them. These identities and others along the same lines cannot be defined in this mission statement. Our identities are layered and influenced by race, class, ethnicity, access, ability, sexual boundaries, and age, as well as by our bodies. BUTCH Voices seeks to celebrate and honor our diversity by bonding together and building community across our perceived divisions due to identity.

Butch, Stud, and Aggressive have traditionally been assumed to be predominantly visual identities and not as often heard or understood. BUTCH Voices is committed to increasing positive visibility and providing support and space to those willing to share their voices through activism, performance, media, oral history, spoken word, art, photography, and other collaborative means. BUTCH Voices is intended to be by, for, and about self identified Butches, Studs, Aggressives, and their allies.

The identities surrounding Butch, Stud, and Aggressive have been used to describe various communities and intersecting groups, including — but by no means limited to — lesbian, same-gender-loving, queer, bisexual, homosexual, and heterosexual. Identities within this community can be female, male, intersex, transgender, genderqueer, gender neutral, genderf*cked, all of the above, and none of the above. It would be impossible to list all of the identities that may fit us as a tribe. Our identities are often labeled as butches, AG’s, drag kings, dykes, birls, tombois, studs, queers, bulldaggers, diesel dykes, bois, grrls, touch-me-nots, stone, soft, hard, fags, lesbians, boys, Daddies, men, myn, bois, womyn, women, wimmin, she-bois, he-shes, and many other terms.

BUTCH Voices is dedicated to creating a positive and accepting environment for those identifying along the spectrum of Butches, Studs, and Aggressives, in part by selecting programming that will respect our differences, yet create opportunities for discussion. We hope to bring together people of various identities and backgrounds, inclusive of our differences, to create safe space to discover, discuss, examine, and deconstruct our concept of self and others.