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BINADW was created in response to the absence of nuanced butch representation within both mainstream and queer media. The project explores the cultural, emotional, and historical weight carried within the word butch, while constructing an alternative visual and narrative language that positions butches within frameworks of care, beauty, intimacy, emotional depth, and cultural significance.

A Word From The Creator

Esther Godoy

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The origins of Butch Is Not A Dirty Word were deeply personal.

Growing up in Australia, I often felt that my gender expression unsettled others, rendering me difficult to place and therefore unacceptable. Like many gender non-conforming people, I internalized the idea that this discomfort reflected something inherently wrong with me rather than the cultural limitations of the world around me.

In my early twenties, a trip to the west coast of the United States disrupted what I thought I knew about myself. For the first time, I experienced forms of recognition, desire, connection, and visibility that had previously felt inaccessible to me. In contrast to my experiences back home, these moments revealed how deeply the absence of belonging had shaped my sense of self.

Returning to Australia, that visibility disappeared almost immediately. Over time, what I had understood as personal inadequacy began to unravel, revealing itself instead as part of a broader cultural logic that marginalizes gender non-conformity, and specifically, butches.

I began photographing and interviewing people I met throughout my travels across the United States, Europe, and Australia as a way to externalize knowledge I had struggled to access myself. What started as a personal search gradually evolved into a living archive of butch life built through long-form conversations, sustained relationships, and community participation over the course of a decade.

At its core, Butch Is Not A Dirty Word is an attempt to create the representation, lineage, mentorship, and cultural visibility that many butches are denied. It was never only about documenting identity, but about creating space for complexity, tenderness, care, contradiction, and recognition within communities so often flattened into stereotype or rendered invisible altogether.

Over the years, the project has grown far beyond me. What began as a personal inquiry now exists as a collaborative cultural archive shaped in ongoing dialogue with the people and communities it represents.

May we all be able to see ourselves in our beautiful contradictions and complexities.

— Esther Godoy

Ethos

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Why This Work Exists
At its core, Butch Is Not A Dirty Word is an attempt to create the representation, lineage, mentorship, and cultural visibility that many butches are denied. It was never only about documenting identity, but about creating space for complexity, contradiction, tenderness, care, and recognition within communities that have so often been flattened into stereotype or rendered invisible altogether.
What We’re Exploring
At its core, the work moves like an invisible thread, carrying forward the accumulated knowledge of gender non-conformity held within butch identity itself. BINADW seeks to bring that wisdom forward during a period of time in which understanding of gender has fractured, expanded, and been fundamentally redefined in public consciousness. The work moves between documentary, portraiture, publishing, and cultural research, resisting easy categorization in much the same way the identities it documents often resist fixed definition. Rather than offering singular answers, BINADW creates space for contradiction, complexity, vulnerability, and collective recognition.
Where We're Going From Here
At its core, the work moves like an invisible thread, carrying forward the accumulated knowledge of gender non-conformity held within butch identity itself. BINADW seeks to bring that wisdom forward during a period of time in which understanding of gender has fractured, expanded, and been fundamentally redefined in public consciousness. The work moves between documentary, portraiture, publishing, and cultural research, resisting easy categorization in much the same way the identities it documents often resist fixed definition. Rather than offering singular answers, BINADW creates space for contradiction, complexity, vulnerability, and collective recognition.

Keeping This Work Alive

As social media platforms increasingly censor queer bodies, sexuality, and gender non-conformity, often without nuance or context, independent queer media spaces have become increasingly fragile. Much of the work we publish exists at risk of suppression, removal, or reduced visibility under platform moderation systems that disproportionately impact queer communities and independent artists.

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