Here come the lesbians, here come the leaping lesbians...

[Heart]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Butch Voices wants to include butch women and female identified butches- on their own terms. It's always been that way.

If butch women were involved from the beginning, and I believe they were, then who was dictating the terms of their inclusion? Why were butch women not articulating those terms? Why/how did women end up in the back seats?

I don't know the inner workings, but I wonder if the fact that the founder of BV does not identify as a butch woman, and that there seems to be a top-down kind of structure to BV muted the voices of women involved.

One of the things I've learned in the years of anti-violence organizing I've done is that women need to be in the leadership positions. Otherwise sexism takes over. The men I've worked with as allies understand this on a very deep (and feminist) level.

So now, it seems re BV, that women who have been involved are pulling out in order to re-establish their leadership elsewhere. Why they did not have successful leadership roles within BV is not clear. I have also read posts from a number of butch women who did not get on board to begin with because there was a lack of trust in the BV leadership and their agenda.
None of this is addressed in the BV response.

Heart