The Atlanta Lesbian Health Initiative is partnering with several groups to make African-American female health more accessible to women who identify as butch or studs and are not as likely to respond, for example, to pink ribbons to raise awareness about breast cancer.

To promote the Stud Health Project, a spoken word event is slated for this Saturday, March 26, at the Rush Center, from 6:30-9 p.m. The event and health project is a collaboration of the ALHI and the Center for Black Women’s Wellness, the Vision Church, the LGBT Sigma Omega Phi Fraternity that caters to masculine identified females, and Agenda Benda Justice.

There will be light snacks and beverages available as artists share their work while participants also discuss “ideas on how masculine-identified, African American women can access needed health care and important screenings.”

The Stud Health Project will focus on specific breast and cervical health outreach and education and an Emory University researcher is working on the project this spring by developing focus groups to hear what masculine-identified women and their femme partners will respond to when it comes to listening to health related messages, according to ALHI.

Amber Moore of Sigma Omega Phi explains in a YouTube video why the Stud Health Project is important.
“The African American stud identifies more with the male in the relationship…it doesn’t matter that it’s two women,” Moore says. “When ads are put out about breast cancer, mammograms, pap smears, there may be pink on it …we find it doesn’t appeal to us so therefore we block it out.”

Moore goes on to say the partnership with ALHI is to educate the dominant, aggressive, masculine-identified women understand and learn to care for their female bodies.

Watch the entire video here: