Alice Mitchell was madly in love with Freda Ward - sadly, she was also Freda's murderer. On today's episode of GWBB, Hannah and Deanna discuss gender, sexuality, domestic violence. and murder in Victorian America!
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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.
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Marsha P. Johnson is a name we likely all know as the woman who threw the first shot glass at Stonewall, launching the Stonewall Riots and thus the Gay Liberation movement. But Marsha was much more: she was an activist, a performer, a Christian, a transgender woman, and so much more. Her history is as bold and vibrant as she was, and was ended too soon. We owe it to her to keep her whole, vibrant legacy alive.
CONTENT WARNING for violence against transgender people starting after 25 minutes.
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Gladys Bentley was a badass, gender nonconforming musician who knocked audiences dead in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance and later toured across the country. While at the end of her life conservative American politics forced her to reinvent herself as a more conventional, cisgender performer, you likely will still recognize her for her stark-white suits, top hats, incredible voice, and progressive lyrics. She is one of the great American musicians and we're lucky to have this bad bitch as part of our musical legacy.
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The Combahee River Collective revolutionized feminism as we know it - even though you've probably never heard of them. The concept behind intersectional feminism isn't new - Black activists and writers have been writing about compounded oppressions since the 19th century. But the Combahee River Collective was a coalition of Black feminists, many of whom were also lesbians, who fought hard to bring to light not only the idea that oppressions were interlocking, but also to elevate Black women and teach self-love to a generation that had been taught through systemic racism that they were not worth the same as their white peers.
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Welcome to our Halloween Special Episode! Building on the spooky historical women and the witch trials we covered last Halloween, we're jumping in time to the here and now, where things haven't changed much, and the scares are even scarier! Hannah and Deanna cover a range of wicked topics, from the Satanic Panic, a modern-day witch trials you don't know about, to the evolution of campy goth icon, Elvira! It's the end of the Spookin' Season and we're closing it out with a bang.
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Tracey "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.
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Leslie 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
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The Chevaliere D'Eon was a woman in 18th century France (historically known as Chevalier d'Eon) who, born as a man, was a soldier, a lawyer, and a spy for King Louis XV for many years before publicly declaring herself a woman, which was accepted as truth by the public. She acquired feminist works and did swordplay demonstrations in her heavy dresses. She lived as a woman for thirty three years in post-revolutionary France.
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Christine Jorgensen was born George Jorgensen and the first American woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. She went as far as Europe to receive confirmation from doctors there that her belief she was a woman was not a psychiatric disorder. She got it - and the surgery - and came back to the US a celebrity.
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For our very special 30th episode, we have Deanna's mother, Rayna, as our guest host! Rayna is herself a photographer and former instructor of photography and shares with us the story of Berenice Abbott. Berenice is known for her work as a portrait photographer, and later in life her scientific photography, but mainly she is known for her masterfully documented scenes in New York City.
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Queen Christina of Sweden was an ambitious ruler with radical ideas and a love of academia and the arts. She was very likely bisexual, if not a lesbian (though we’ll never know for sure) and hated the idea of marriage. She’s remembered as the most educated woman of the 17th century and it showed in her various endeavors across Europe, first as Queen of Sweden and later as a guest of the Vatican in Rome. She was a woman ahead of her time, at times a good witch and others a bad bitch – either way, we heart her.
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Osh Tisch, or, Finds Them and Kills Them, was a warrior, an expert in sewing, tanning, and all “women’s work”, a leader in her community, and one of the last of the Crow Nation baté, a Two Spirit spiritual leader of the Crow Nation.
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Josephine Baker displayed resistance in multiple movements and multiple decades – despite being American born, she fell in love with and moved to France, where she became a war hero for her work as a French spy during World War 2. Later, she was a huge part of the civil rights movement in America, despite the many challenges she faced there. In addition, she was a raging bisexual. In short, she was one bad bitch.
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Alla Nazimova was a Russian actress turned Broadway star turned early 1900’s Hollywood screen siren, who hosted elaborate parties at her mansion and had affairs with beloved Hollywood actresses and industry people. Later, her mansion was turned into a hotel that was beloved by artists, writers, and the mob.
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Julie D’Aubigny was an openly bisexual, sword-fighting, gang dueling, opera singing badass woman who did her thing despite societal customs and restrictions in 17th century France.
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Anne Lister, Aka “Gentleman Jack” was an out and proud landowning lesbian in the early 1800’s. She is known for renovating an estate called Shibden Hall and penning a 4 million diary in which she detailed not just her day to day activities, but her conquests, in graphic detail.
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Storme Delarverie was a dashing, androgynous lesbian famously photographed by Diane Arbus, a drag king in New York in the era of Stonewall who is sometimes credited with helping incite the Stonewall Riot, and a gay club bouncer until her death. She was involved in her community until her death and fiercely protective of everyone who identified as LGBTQIA+ .
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