Chavela Vargas was a queer Mexican singer who is best known for transforming popular Culture Ranchera music with her smokey, sultry voice, resistance to changing to pronouns of the subjects of the music (to make her music straight), and lack of requisite Ranchera instruments, preferring to go acoustics. She is known to have wooed Frida Kahlo and other female celebrities and marched entirely to the beat of her own drum.
Read MoreRajkumari Amrit Kaur was an Indian Activist who worked alongside Mahatma Gandhi and used her privileged status and upbringing as a princess to shine a light on the atrocities of British colonial rule and helped usher India into a new era of government independent from Britain, revolutionizing the country's health as India's first Minister of Health. She was tireless, ambitious, and utterly invested in making life better for everyone, not just the upper class. She was a true Good Witch.
Read MoreLeona Vicario was a well-educated young woman of nobility who grew up in Spanish colonial Mexico. After beginning a relationship with a revolutionary named Quintana Roo, Leona made it her mission to help Mexico gain Independence - and spent a majority of her fortune funding the revolutionary effort. When Spanish investigators learned of her involvement, she fled, and continued her fight for independence as a boots-on-the-ground revolutionary. Leona was one seriously bad bitch.
Read MoreTracey "Africa" Norman is a trans woman whose modeling career was on a roll in the 70's and 80's, with Vogue and Essence covers and even her face on one of Clairol's most popular box colors of its time - until someone learned her secret, and outed her to the rest of the modeling world. Years went by and other activists, models, and actors like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox learned of Tracey as their own careers began to rise, and took huge inspiration from her. Now her modeling career is blossoming once again thanks to changing national attitudes about gender, beauty, and identity. We have a long way to go, but people like Tracey are helping to create systemic change just by unabashedly being who they are.
Read MoreLeslie Feinberg brought the complicated conversation about gender to the public when she published Stone Butch Blues in 1993. In addition to her communist beliefs and writings, Leslie dedicated her life to the protection of gender nonconforming and transgender people.
Producer’s Note: This episode contains a lot of text referenced from the research and article written by Jeffry Lovannone and his piece on Leslie Feinberg: https://medium.com/queer-history-for-the-people/leslie-feinberg-transgender-warrior-fcb1bcaf15b2
Read MoreElizabeth Van Lew was a Union-sympathizing Quaker living in Virginia during the Civil War. Mary Bowser was a free woman posing as a slave in order to spy on the Confederates and, most notably, Jefferson Davis himself. These bad bitches got up to all sorts of crazy shit - ultimately earning Mary a posthumous place in the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame!
Read MoreAfter a malicious dictator in the Dominican Republic retaliated against Minerva Mirabal's rejection with imprisonment of her family members, torture, financial ruin, Minerva and her sisters turned to rebellion against the totalitarian regime. Las Mariposas, or, The Butterflies, are now remembered throughout the Dominican Republic as martyrs, whose death finally aroused the nation to action, and brought down a dictator.
Read MorePetra Herrera was a soldadera and hero of the Mexican Revolution who was known as a great leader, a fabulous marksman, and a destroyer of bridges whose story has been put together from eye witness accounts because the official papers conspicuously left her achievements out. We say screw That! Petra Herrera was one seriously bad bitch and we are gonna tell you about her.
Read MoreIn the early 1900’s, the United States instituted a policy that involved dousing Mexican immigrants and day workers with toxic chemicals in order to “delouse” them. The practice continued for decades, but in 1917, maid Carmelita Torres had had enough. And so had thousands of other women.
Read MoreQiu Jin was a poet, a feminist, a revolutionary. She liked wine, swordplay, wearing men’s clothes, and teaching others to fight for the revolution that would ultimately bring about the downfall of China’s Imperial system. She was a seriously bad bitch.
Read MoreLady Anne Farquharson-Mackintosh was a Scottish Jacobite who helped the Bonnie Prince Charlie (even when he didn't always deserve it) raise an army and stay safe from the long reach of England. She is remembered fondly in Scottish history, and is a certifiable bad bitch.
