26/10/2025
DIVA Magazine, the top selling lesbian magazine in Europe and the UK, reports that online archive Butch is Not A Dirty Word is running a fundraising kickstarter in order to save the online content they have built up over the last decade. They say that their web pages rely on tech giant corporations that are no friends to minorities. Here's what they have to say:
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or nearly 10 years, Butch Is Not A Dirty Word has been the most extensive living archive of butch lives in the world—a lifeline, a mirror, and a gathering place where our community sees itself reflected accurately, beautifully, and unapologetically. Proof that WE EXIST.
We’ve built something rare: an unfiltered record of butch identity that has reached millions, shifted conversations, and made our presence impossible to ignore.
But this history is fragile. Our entire library lives scattered across platforms we don’t control — where every algorithm tweak and policy shift edges us closer to erasure.
If our Instagram disappeared tomorrow, ten years of work and community memory would vanish with it.
Social media has never been a safe home for our work. But since the administration change last November, censorship has intensified to a point we can't survive in. Portraits are being taken down. Stories are being suppressed. Entire accounts vanish without warning. And it’s not just us—queer creators everywhere are being pushed to the margins. And it's going to get worse before it gets better.
We can’t even use our own language — words like butch, dyke, or lesbian are routinely flagged as inappropriate, our bodies mislabeled as sexually explicit. Our history is being rewritten before our own eyes in real time. Being forced to censor or disguise our own identity markers distorts how our history is documented. Big Tech is actively shaping what we’re allowed to say, and every flag is a strike against us, pushing us closer to being taken down entirely.
Now is the time to act, before what we’ve built is taken away.
What we’re doing is counter-cultural. We’re divesting from Big Tech and building our own independent digital archive — a permanent home for a decade of history, built by us and belonging to us.
This isn’t a business. It’s not a product. It’s art, it’s archive, it’s history — created to exist outside the logic of profit and control.
A living record of butch life no corporate sponsors, no paywalls. Accessible to everyone, and free forever.
Honest. Raw. Explicit. Not softened to meet “community guidelines,” not contorted for algorithms, not made palatable for the profit of Big Tech. We are not for their consumption.
This is the next evolution of Butch Is Not A Dirty Word — real life resources created not for the fleeting economies of influence, but for the slow work of history — to sustain, to demand presence, to endure.
Step 1: The Digital Archive
An authentic record of queer lives now and for future generations.
Our history, preserved in perpetuity — a custom-built platform created by us, for us. Free from gatekeepers and algorithmic mediation. Beyond the extractive economies of Big Tech, it will exist as an unfiltered, authentic record of queer life.
Step 2: The Book
An authentic record of queer lives now and for future generations.
Because survival isn’t only digital — it’s embodied. Books outlast platforms, trends, and even servers. A printed record cannot be shadow-banned or deleted. It stands as material proof that we were here: ink and image made flesh, something to be held, passed down, and studied long after the internet forgets.
How often have you, as a butch, gone searching for proof that people like you existed, that joy like yours was possible? We grow up surrounded by stories that make us smaller: the punchlines, the villains, the cautionary tales. Rarely do we see butches who are happy, desired, full.
This archive, this book — they’re for the ones who come after. So that when a young butch goes looking for a reflection, they don't fulfill prophecies driven by shame. They finds us: complex, tender, proud, and alive.
This is proof for the future.
Reaching our goal isn’t about one huge donor — it’s about all of us showing up together.
Just 1,000 people giving $5, $10, $20 or more can fully fund the archive.
That’s barely 1% of our following.
If BINADW has ever inspired you, supported you, or made you feel seen — this is your moment to give back.
From $5 to $500, every single donation matters. Together, these small acts become something powerful: a community protecting its own history.
This work is an act of cultural preservation — and refusal. We are building a permanent, queer-owned home for a decade of butch life and culture — uncensored, un-sanitized, unassimilated.
Your support ensures that future generations inherit not a filtered record, but a living archive of our truth — a testament to endurance, self-determination, and collective memory.
This project is personal.
It’s political.
It’s about legacy and survival.
Donate Today.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/butchisnotadirtyword/butch-is-not-a...
