1. Can you introduce yourself and Butch Is Not a Dirty Word?

My name is Esther Godoy. I’m a photographer, artist, and creator deeply interested in unfiltered representations of queer and sapphic life. So much of what we see online has to be commodifiable in order to reach the masses. Queer culture has become trapped in the same playground politics where the most marketable bodies and identities are rewarded with visibility, which to me feels deeply anti-queer.

My work pushes back against that. I use the visual language of mainstream media—high production value, polish, and style—to center bodies and identities that wouldn’t otherwise be uplifted within it. I try to create spaces where queer people can be seen as they truly are: complex, messy, beautiful, and entirely self-defined, while still demanding attention through professional presentation. That’s where Butch Is Not A Dirty Word came in.

I was gender non-conforming from the moment I was born, but growing up in 1990s Australia, there was no language or support for that. I internalized a lot of shame about how I looked and presented, just from how people reacted to me. When I came out as a lesbian, I hoped things would shift, but instead I still felt invisible and undesirable. In most queer media, butches were either seen as emotionally unintelligent or entirely stripped of desirability. Mainstream culture misrepresented us, and queer culture often did too.

Butch Is Not A Dirty Word was my response—a reclamation, and the resource I needed when I was younger. The project shares the truths I’ve learned, the self-esteem I’ve rebuilt, and the unlearning it took to feel worthy as a butch lesbian. In many ways, it’s a love letter to the versions of ourselves who were told we were too much, too ugly, or too different—and a reminder that we were never the problem.

2. What is the archive project you're hoping to fund?
& 3. When did you realize this project was necessary, and why does this project matter now?

Over the past year, we’ve seen a growing wave of censorship targeting queer and sapphic communities online. Since the administration change last November, words like butch, dyke, and lesbian are being flagged as “inappropriate,” and images of butch bodies—even simple portraits—are labeled as “sexually explicit.” Our peers are having their accounts deleted left, right, and center. What’s at stake isn’t just visibility; it’s our ability to document truth.

If social media remains the main home for queer history, then platforms like Instagram and Facebook—and people like Mark Zuckerberg—will end up curating what the future knows about us. That’s terrifying.

A lot of people assume Butch Is Not A Dirty Word has big resources behind it because of how polished it looks, but the truth is, it’s been completely DIY. Everything has been built through my own unpaid labor, out-of-pocket costs, and a small Patreon that covers essentials like paying writers, designers, and hosting fees. Every dollar goes straight back into the work—nothing about this project has ever been about profit.

That’s why the next phase of Butch Is Not A Dirty Word is so crucial. We’re building a custom, independent digital archive, free from Big Tech and its censorship rules. Not through Patreon, Squarespace, or Instagram, but through a completely self-hosted system that we own—a permanent digital home where our stories can live freely and be accessed forever.

With my background in technical production and systems architecture, I’ve designed and guided the entire framework for this archive myself. The build is already about 30% complete, but I’ve reached a point where I can’t do it alone. I work full-time, and the hours I can dedicate to BINADW just aren’t enough to get a project of this scale across the finish line. Getting this archive built would be a turning point: a one-time investment in sustainability that will allow the project to exist for decades to come.

The only way to do that is to ask for help. But help costs money, and I’m deeply committed to not commercializing this project or asking the very people it’s for to pay for it. Butch Is Not A Dirty Word is not a business. It has never been capitalist or for-profit, and it never will be.

This fundraiser isn’t about monetizing queer identity—it’s about protecting it. Funding this project means we can finally complete and launch the archive, ensuring that ten, twenty, fifty years from now, butch and queer histories are still accessible, uncensored, and ours. Once it’s built, it will be free for everyone, forever.

4. How has BINADW changed and grown over the past ten years?

When Butch Is Not A Dirty Word started ten years ago, it began as a print magazine. It’s funny—we’ve almost come full circle. Back then, the stories and portraits we were sharing felt too sensitive to live on social media. People needed that extra layer of protection to feel safe being vulnerable and honest about their identities. In a way, even then, social media was already shaping how we documented our histories—what felt acceptable to share publicly, and what didn’t.

Over the years, social media became an incredible tool for connection. It helped us reach the people who needed this project most and build a global community around butch identity. But a decade later, we’ve hit the limit of what those platforms can offer. They can amplify our voices, but they can’t be the home for our work. The next chapter for BINADW is about taking back ownership of how our stories live and ensuring they’re preserved safely—on our own terms, in our own space.

5. What are some other ways you're hoping BINADW grows in the near (or far) future?

I want Butch Is Not A Dirty Word to keep expanding beyond the digital space—through more in-person events, exhibitions, and fine art experiences. There’s something about seeing this work in person that does justice to the weight, beauty, and celebration of it. When people hear “archive,” they often think of something old, academic, or static—but this will be the opposite. It’s going to be alive: fine art, emotional, sexy, and deeply celebratory. I want it to be a space where butch identity is presented with pride and power, something people want to be part of. A space that reclaims desirability in the face of a society that’s spent decades telling us we’re not.

At the same time, I want this project to continue documenting butch identity as it evolves over an entire lifetime. It’s been ten years already, and there’s no reason it can’t continue for another twenty, thirty, or fifty more. But to make that possible, we need a functional system—an archive that’s easy to maintain, update, and grow with. That’s what this next phase is about: building the infrastructure that will allow BINADW to sustain itself long-term, so that the work—and the people it represents—can keep thriving well into the future.

6. What does BINADW mean to you and its readers?

For me, Butch Is Not A Dirty Word has always been about visibility—but also about belonging, not just within queer circles, but in the wider world. It started as a way to make sense of my own identity—to create something I desperately needed when I was younger—and over time it’s become a shared home for so many others who’ve felt unseen or misrepresented.

It’s not just a magazine or an archive; it’s a mirror, a love letter, and sometimes even a lifeline. For so many of us, it’s the first time we’ve been able to feel not only tolerated but desired—to see ourselves reflected as beautiful, hot, complex, emotionally intelligent, worthy, and whole. That’s an incredibly rare experience as a butch.

We’re so often positioned as the ones who have to make up for the world’s misogyny—expected to be caretakers, fixers, protectors—never simply allowed to be. This project gives us permission to exist outside of that, to take up space without apology. It’s something made by us, for us—and that alone feels revolutionary.

Esther Godoy is a photographer, artist, curator, and creator—most widely recognized as the founder of Butch Is Not a Dirty Word, the world’s only editorial platform dedicated to butch identity, visibility, and voice. A first-generation Australian and now based in the United States, Esther has been immersed in queer communities across three continents. Her lived experience spans multiple cultural landscapes, shaping a nuanced understanding of how place, lineage and social structure, influence queer identity and expression. With over a decade of experience in artistic production and curatorial practice, Esther’s work moves beyond conventional content creation, positioning queer narratives as immersive, affective experiences rather than passive consumables. Engaging with print publications, digital media, photography, film, and immersive events, her practice interrogates the commodification of queer culture, advocating for a reclamation of identity beyond corporate appropriation. By centering queer individuals as living archives of their own histories, Esther’s work resists the reduction of identity to a marketable aesthetic, instead asserting independent platforms as necessary spaces for authentic, un-censored self-representation and storytelling. https://www.esthergodoy.com