‘People use “butch” as a way of insulting queer women,’ says Esther Godoy. Her new publication aims to change that

Reclaiming 'butch': 'It’s surprising how much of a taboo it still is'

For years, Melbourne’s Esther Godoy felt shunned and ridiculed as a tomboy because of her masculine style. Now she’s launched a new publication aiming to reclaim the word “butch”.

Godoy, 30, says the annual anthology of essays and photographs, Butch Is Not A Dirty Word, is an attempt to create more positive representations of “masculine-presenting women”.



Butch Is Not a Dirty Word: masculine-presenting women – in pictures Read more

“All the media I’d ever seen for butch people was making a joke out of them, playing a very stereotypical character in some bullshit film,” she said. “It was always such a negative thing. They were always deemed to be very unattractive.

“Butch Is Not A Dirty Word is about breaking up the ideal that masculinity and femininity have to belong to male or female. Female masculinity is just as valid as male masculinity. It’s not really bound to your sex or gender. Yet it’s surprising how much of a taboo it still is, when you look like a guy but you’re a girl.”

In the publication’s first issue, released in March, Godoy describes being mocked by family and friends while growing up, and feeling invisible as an adult, until she took a trip to the US in 2008 and was shocked to find her “butch aesthetic” met with desire, not repulsion.

“When I came home to Australia and referred to myself as ‘butch’, there was a lot of backlash,” said Godoy, who this year moved to Portland, Oregon. “The word just holds completely different connotations in Australia. People [in Australia] use ‘butch’ as a way of insulting queer women or other queer people.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marina A. Skinner from Melbourne, featured in issue one of Butch Is Not A Dirty Word. Photograph: Georgia Smedley

“In Australia, I get questioned far more from queer people than I do from general society. That was the driving force behind this. Like, OK, if I feel oppressed and not accepted from my own community, then how on earth am I, or people like me, supposed to make it out there in the wider community?”

Butch Is Not A Dirty Word originally began as a photography project, inspired by San Francisco photographer Meg Allen’s similar series, Butch.

But Godoy said she expanded it into a journal after realising that while the “queer mecca” of San Francisco had a long history of feminine masculinity acceptance, Melbourne was “a much younger community and so the project needed more context and explanation”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Larceny Leighton from Melbourne, featured in Butch Is Not A Dirty Word. Photograph: Georgia Smedley

“I grew up with this ideal that I was different, that I didn’t fit in anywhere, that I wasn’t attractive. This didn’t come from anybody being like, ‘oh, you’re a filthy dyke’ or ‘you’re gross’, but from years of really subtle things, this constant questioning of your space in the world,” she said.

“People are now a lot more accepting of the idea of being gender queer or not bound to any gender, which is awesome. But I think that there’s a whole slew of people who get lost in that conversation, people who might not necessarily identify as gender queer, who might still identify as female but also identify with masculinity.”

Godoy collaborated with the Melbourne photographer Georgia Smedley and a small team of friends to create the publication, which includes essays from masculine-presenting women around the world.

The second edition, due for release in February, will focus on them and their families and relationships in a bid to represent a wider range of ages and backgrounds, including trans people.

“The whole purpose was to create community, to find other people and create queer space beyond social hierarchy and beyond getting drunk in a bar,” Godoy said.

“I didn’t really expect that it was ever going to be a big thing. It was really just a form of expression to vent some of the frustration that I’d felt for six years. But, after the launch, I definitely felt a lot of things start to shift. We had this little community forming and there was just so much positive energy.”

• The first issue of Butch Is Not A Dirty Word is out now