THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BUTCH DYKES

The Life and Times of Butch Dykes is B&D Press series of fanzines about the lives and times of amazing women who could be considered icons against heteronormativity, in their very personal and unique ways. They're from different places/spaces and yet have as a common ground the fact that they're all accomplished creators, in work and life. They were and are brave people who tried to be authentic and faithful to what they perceived as their true identity.

They rock.
 



Chavela Vargas - Issue 1, Volume 1


BUY at Etsy








Gladys Bentley - Issue 2, Volume 1



BUY at Etsy








JD Samson - Issue 3, Volume 1


BUY at Etsy


JD's band, MEN, has a t-shirt with one of this zine's drawings. Get it here!





Gertrude Stein - Issue 1, Volume 2



BUY at Etsy







Claude Cahun - Issue 2, Volume2


 BUY at Etsy







You can also buy the zines at these brick-and-mortar shops and other online locations

I gave an interview to my alma mater paper, it was fun and I was very inarticulate.

The Link: Can you tell me a bit about the Butch Dykes project? When and how did you start it up?

Eloisa Aquino: Since my undergrad, I had not done anything like making a zine, but I just really love this type of independent micro-publishing thing. I decided to give it a try. I wanted to do some sort of biography because I didn't want to be writing fiction; I wanted to do a little research and do something that was reality-based. Then I went to identity politics—since I'm a dyke, though I'm not necessarily butch—but I decided to just talk about something I felt had connection with my own life, and my own identity, so decided to [write] about lesbians. Then I narrowed it down to butch dykes and finally narrowed it down even further to musicians, and that was it.

The Link: The Dykes of Micropress

Check http://tinyurl.com/ChavelaComic

CATCH THE REST OF THE DOC ON YOUTUBE.

From the Village Voice:

In 2005, filmmaker Daniel Peddle chronicled the lives of AGs in his documentary The Aggressives, following six women who went to lengths like binding their breasts to pass as men. But Peddle says that today, very young lesbians of color in New York are creating a new, insular scene that's largely cut off from the rest of the gay and lesbian community. "A lot of it has to do with this kind of pressure to articulate and express your masculinity within the confines of the hip-hop paradigm," he said.

Like most men in the culture, young lesbians respect Jay-Z's business sense, consider themselves to be hustlers like Jeezy, and take the no-holds-barred approach of Lil Wayne. For these women, there seem to be few older lesbians they can look up to, or organizations that mean much to them, other than the crews they create themselves.

SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE.