Words by Phebe Barnum-Bobb

Cast your mind back to the summer of 2024. With the release of Billie Eilish’s ‘LUNCH’, BBC’s I Kissed a Girl and the opening of new lesbian bar La Camionera, “lesbian” was suddenly the word on everyone’s lips, a moment suitably coined the Lesbian Renaissance. But while lesbians across the world began redefining terms historically used to harm them, “butch” remained weighed down by negative connotations, fetishisation and misunderstanding.

Enter: Butch is Not a Dirty Word. For the past ten years, founder and creative director Esther Godoy has been creating a photographic archive of butch identity. Her aim is to represent butches in a positive light, challenge decades of harmful stereotypes and create a mirror in which butch bodies can be seen, recognised and reflected.

“There was no space that held butches as complex, desirable, emotional, intergenerational, culturally vital beings,” Godoy tells GAY TIMES. “I wanted to create a place where butch people could see ourselves reflected back with dignity and depth — not as symbols, but as whole human beings. And I wanted to build a record of our existence that couldn’t be revised out of queer history, again.”

Yet with increasing censorship on social media — particularly of trans, non-binary and butch bodies amid a rising right wing — platforming and protecting these images has become increasingly difficult. In response, Godoy has launched a fundraiser for an independent digital archive to preserve ten years of butch history. Rather than relying on fleeting platforms and unpredictable censorship, they are taking matters into their own hands.