"Stud" versus "Butch"

[*Anya*]

I also encourage you to watch a documentary that is a few years old called The Aggressives.

It followed a group of multi-identified POC in New York City over a period of years.

It was an education for me for me about a part of our culture that I knew nothing about.

Many of those featured, did identify as Studs (also trans, butch, lesbian).

I watched it on Hulu but believe it is also Netflix streaming.

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

I also encourage you to watch a documentary that is a few years old called The Aggressives.

It followed a group of multi-identified POC in New York City over a period of years.

It was an education for me for me about a part of our culture that I knew nothing about.

Many of those featured, did identify as Studs (also trans, butch, lesbian).

I watched it on Hulu but believe it is also Netflix streaming.

I saw it at the Film Forum on 13th Street in the West Village, back when it came out.

I was struck by how much the women were struggling economically, and how they talked about getting their GED.

Later I started a free GED class at the LGBT center in NYC and I think there are studies that back up what I saw, that people who are outliers on the culturally defined, gender-expression scale are more likely to struggle with education and poverty.

Also, they are more likely to go into careers that are less typical for their sex, which shows their perseverance and resourcefulness.

At some point in the late nineties, young studs and aggressors and other lesbian and butch/femme women of color began frequenting Henrietta Hudson's, a lesbian bar in the West Village, and its demographic changed dramatically.

I heard a white lesbian complain about the change and express her racist dismay (I got into a huge argument with her...lets just say I didn't fit in well with that particular girlfriend and her crowd, kinda funny as I look back), but to me when I walked past the long line out front of the bar, all I saw were incredibly young, it seemed, butches, studs, and aggressors in little groups dressed for a night out in the clubs, probably hoping to impress girls, like the kids in my classes at that time.

It's not my culture but I am surrounded by many cultures here in NY and somehow in all morphs into something that does feel like my culture, because when I get into a less diverse cultural setting I feel uneasy, like I will be "found out" and not welcome there, though I pass for fitting in at first, which yes, I know, is a privilege I can work to my advantage economically and career wise—and my GED students including the studs didn't have that option.