miscellany

Welcome to Butch Lab!

I’m so thrilled you’ve stopped by! I’m your host, Sinclair Sexsmith. I run the online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles, and I study gender and sexuality. I identify as butch myself, and a huge part of my journeys in recent years of coming to myself has been about my gender identity.

I’ve been working on Butch Lab for most of the fall of 2010, and I’m really excited to share the space with you.

I want to thank Kyle, Lauren, Yvette, Roxanne, and Sarah, who have been helping me set up this space and research hot inspirational folks who are featured on this site.

And I want to thank my lovely partner Kristen, who has been holding my hand since the beginning of this project, urging me onward and listening to my complaints throughout the process. I so appreciate the love and support.

Here’s some of the background about this project:

THE MISSION OF THE BUTCH LAB PROJECT

The mission of the Butch Lab Project is to promote a greater understanding of masculine of center gender identities, expressions, and presentations, through encouraging: 1. visibility, because we feel alone; 2. solidarity, because there are many of us out there, but we don’t always communicate with each other; and 3. an elevation of the discussion, because we have a long history and lineage to explore and we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

THE HISTORY OF THIS PROJECT

BUTCH LAB is the 2010 relaunch of Sinclair Sexsmith’s 2009 Top Hot Butches project, which was a list of the 100 “top hottest” butch, stud, AG, androgynous, genderqueer, and trans folks. What began as a visibility project, intended for fun and amusement and to encourage eye candy objectification, has evolved into a community-focused site discussing butch identity in its many manifestations.

Borrowing from the recent Butch Voices conferences, Butch Lab is a place for a myriad of masculine of center* identities, including, but not limited to, stud, macha, boi, andro, and genderqueer.

We are Butch Voices: We are woman-identified Butches. We are trans-masculine Studs. We are faggot-identified Aggressives. We are noun Butches, adjective Studs and pronoun-shunning Aggressives. We are she, he, hy, ze, zie and hir. We are you, and we are me. The point is, we don’t decide who is Butch, Stud or Aggressive. You get to decide for yourself. (From ButchVoices.com

Cis and trans women who are masculine of center or not feminine presenting in some way are included. Trans men are welcome and included, as are cis men, gay or straight, who identify with butch or intentional, radical, responsible masculinities.

THE BUTCH LAB WANTS YOU! TO CONTRIBUTE!

Butch Lab is seeking submissions! Here’s what you can do to contribute:

  • Comment! Talk to each other, engage in the disucssions about these identities.
  • Submit an image, video, or other media to the Fuck Yeah Butches tumblr site. It can be a depiction of yourself, someone who identifies as butch, someone who represents butch identity for you, or someone who serves as butch inspiration.
  • Submit to the monthly Butch Lab Symposium. It’s a cross between a blog carnival and a link round-up. Monthly, there is a question posed on the Butch Lab blog, and blogs which write on the question are featured on Butch Lab the following month in a carnival-style roundup. In exchange for participation, please repost the Symposium; see the full guidelines here.)
  • Submit an article to the Butch Lab blog. It can be reprinted from elsewhere. We can’t afford to pay you (yet), but we will provide you a byline. We are seeking writings on topics such as, but not limited to: why I don’t call myself butch; dapper fashion on a dime; bridging butch and trans; being better in bed; navigating the health system’s gender discrimination; haircuts, grooming, and the best products; radical masculinity; and more.
  • Participate in the Butch Lab Interview series. Email butchlabproject (at) gmail.com if you’d like to participate.

Please, have a look around!

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

0 thoughts on “Welcome to Butch Lab!”

  1. ulla says:

    Well this place is looking great! I’m so looking forward to the next symposium prompt/question. I’m also hoping you’ll link me as a butch blogger, I will definitely be linking to this project. Thanks to you and your team for this gorgeous and worthwhile site.

  2. Kyle says:

    WhooooHoooo! Excellent work, Sin. Looking forward to exploring and participating.

  3. Jolie says:

    I like it.

    Well, obviously, since the entire site is dedicated to one of the topics nearest and dearest to my heart.

    Well done to all involved, and it’s about damn time.

    From a happy butch-lovin’ femme,
    ~J

  4. MEDINA says:

    FREAKING AWESOME! So happy I found this site. I will be passing this on. ~m

  5. Olivia says:

    Yeah ButchLab! So excited to see this project is operational, and looking forward to all of the development in this space. Nice job, Sin!
    O

  6. Julia says:

    So cool!!!

    Thanks for the work. :-D Lots of eyecandy for femmes, like Jolie mentioned, but also a great place for you butches.

    I’ll tell everyone about it.

    (sidenote, if you care to know about small errors?: the picture of Carrie Brownstein (page 4 pic 5) is not reduced in size, it covers the whole page and then the forward button doesn’t work…)

  7. Congrats Sin for pushing the butch movement forward with this great new place to talk to each other! We need this kind of round-up corral.
    I’ve started a new off & online project called “The Butch Library & Archive.”
    Probably turn into a book but for now collecting essays, papers, blogs, discussions about butch identity–focusing on thought & theory which poses questions aoubt who we butches are and where we are going in this generation. Please send your easays or prior papers to bvla2010@gmail.com
    And of course I’ll be saying your Butch Lab Symposium talk in this Archive…and giving stuff to our LGBTQ existing archives for all posperity to read about us!

    To read Dr. Judith Jack Halberstam’s amazing
    keynote address at Butch Voices LA 2010, plus
    Carmen Vasquez’ stunning reclamation of feminism by butches…go to bvla2010@gmail.com.

    Please link us up with you, Sin! great work.
    I’ll pulg into the next Symposium question.
    How about, “Does Masculine-of-center genderqueers describe us well? Who likes it,
    who doesn’t, tell us why?”

    praise da butch,
    Jeanne Cordova

  8. Greyson Vega says:

    I just found this site today. I am a Transmasculine Butch. I have been living the life of an out Butch, Queer activist for almost 30 years. I am going to read the entire site, then come back and post some of my thoughts. Thank you for creating and doing this.

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