Brief Biographies of Badass Bitches - Volume II: Women You Should Know More About But Probably Don't: Brief Biographies of Badass Bitches, #2

By Lisa Lee Curtis

You may know who this actor is, and yes, you may really love this musician. Or, hey,
you may actually despise them.

But do you know about their contributions to civil rights causes?

Or to science?

Or what they've overcome just to survive in a world that saw them as lesser because of
the body they were born into?

Did you know that one of today's greatest activists started her political activities
picketing with Girl Scouts to protest racial segregation?

Or that one of the great singer-songwriters of our time overcame a near-fatal encounter
with polio which affected how she learned to play guitar?

Did you know that this television chef not only served in the United States Navy but also
held a top-secret clearance and created a shark repellant that is still used today?

Join me in discovering more about women you may have already heard of and many
more that you might not have.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uppertown Press
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223413158

Book preview

Table of Contents

Content Warning

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

Acknowledgements

Photo Credits

About the Author

Content Warning

Just like Volume I, this book contains swear words if you haven’t already figured this out. I make no apologies for the way I utilize language, and if the fuck-word gives you the vapors, you might want to tap out right about now. I don’t use colorful metaphors (live long and prosper, motherfucker) to be edgy, this is just how I speak, and I’ve grown fully disinterested in censoring myself for puritanical idealism.

Secondly, yes . . . this book is chock full o’ my personal biases. A review on Volume I stated that the stories stand on their own and they would have preferred not to read about my personal opinions. To that, I say thank you. Truly. Hearing that the bios stand on their own is fucking fantastic. But if you don’t want my personal bias, perhaps an encyclopedia (wait, do they still make those? Fuck, I just aged myself) might be a better option for you. And that’s ok.

Thirdly, if you haven’t tapped out, you should know that this book has probably a hundred references, give or take, to sexual assault. And that’s because this book is about women: cis women, trans women, women of color, women who glow-in-the-dark, etc., and way too fucking many of us, as girls and as adults, have been on the receiving end of everything from harassment to full on violent sexual battery at the hands of terrible fucking people, mostly men. #mefuckingtoo

According to www.rainn.org:

1 out of every 6 American women have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.

82% of all juvenile victims are female. 90% of adult rape victims are female.

Females ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

Women ages 18-24 who are college students are 3 times more likely than women in general to experience sexual violence. Females of the same age who are not enrolled in college are 4 times more likely.

21% of TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, nonconforming) college students have been sexually assaulted, compared to 18% of non-TGQN females.

And these are just American statistics.

From www.endsexualviolence.org:

Women of color appear to be at greatest risk for rape. A nationally representative survey indicates that while almost 18% of white women and 7% of Asian/Pacific Islander women will be raped in their lifetimes, almost 19% of black women, 24% of mixed-race women, and 34% of American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped during their lifetimes.

Additionally, undocumented immigrant women who are raped often cannot turn to the authorities because they fear deportation. Moreover, they often lack linguistically appropriate and culturally relevant victim services within their communities.

So what I’m saying is this: This book highlights those who are at the greatest risk of sexual assault. And for many of these women, while the act does not define them, it is a part of many of their stories, stories of overcoming adversity and thriving in a world that absolutely did not want them to thrive. And I chose to include the violence these women suffered at the hands of men in their stories because we’ve been expected to shut the fuck up about it for waaaaay too long and we’re done shutting up.

If men are so fucking worried about people speaking out about their rapes and their rapists, they should probably consider not raping people. Just a thought.

Introduction

Let’s use this quick Q&A here as the introduction to this book full of badass bitches, expletives, and what is clearly my own personal opinion on a few things. I wrote a version of this introduction for the first volume, and I’ve tweaked it for this volume because the more things change, the more things stay the same, yada, yada, etc.

Many of these questions came from folks who have commented on the social media posts I’ve made about these women over the last few years. SOMETIMES, they would even bless me with direct messages or email, usually when they were just way too shy to share their hot takes out in public.

Q. Why do you think anyone wants to read about any of these women?

A. Well, Billy, I think people want to read about these women because they tell me so via feedback on social media and also because they bought a fuck-ton of Volume I. Stick to your coloring books if books about badass women make your dick fall off.

Q. If you want equality, why are you only writing about women? What about all the cool shit men have done?

A. Gosh, I’m terribly sorry, you’re so right. Museums, libraries, and whitewashed textbooks in our educational systems are completely devoid of men’s accomplishments. I’m not sure how I overlooked this. Maybe we should talk about this on your podcast. Tell your mom I prefer the supreme pizza rolls over pepperoni.

Q. You know anyone can just go online and find this information.

A. No shit, Brantley, like I mentioned in my Volume I introduction, that’s exactly what I did. These bios are an elaborate set of book reports. For the research part, I literally sat here for every one of these and Googled the shit out of their names until I found enough info to slap together a halfway decent bio. You’re welcome.

Q. Then why should I buy your book when I can go find this information online?

A. You shouldn’t. Go sit in a dark room until 4 a.m. every night for hundreds of nights (so far), going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole digging up info on these ladies. It’s especially fun if you have to get up in a few hours for work. Do it. Go nuts. Make sure you drink a lot, because your liver should also suffer. Make sure your browser history ends up really fuckin’ questionable while you’re at it.

Here, let me help you out. Start here:

www.thefamouspeople.com

www.wikipedia.org

www.biography.com

www.history.com

www.theguardian.com

www.npr.com

www.brittannica.com

www.imdb.com

www.achievement.org

www.rollingstone.com

www.womenshistory.org

Q. Maybe your next book should be about women who did terrible things. You know, like evil women throughout history. A book of badass bitches who are bad people.

A. Women are vilified and scapegoated enough by men and by women who are still convinced that You’re not like the other girls is a compliment. In fact, many of the women I write about have fallen victim to this brand of misogyny. With few exceptions, I have no interest in attacking women, even when they’re complete shit-weasels.

Q. Why do you hate men so much?

A. I don’t hate men, I hate you. You, Michael. Now get off my porch.

Q. If you’re such a feminist, why do you eat dairy products?

A. *blank stare*

Q. I don’t think you should be glorifying behaviors like this (and yes, I’ve gotten this complaint the most) in these bios. It really seems like you’re condoning or encouraging drug use and sex and violence and other things I don’t like.

A. Big whoop. Also, that’s not a question.

Q. Seriously, why do you keep writing these books?

A. Because people keep asking me to. And I’m nothing if not obedient . . . ahhh hahahaha! HOO BOY, I nearly got through this sentence with a straight face.

ANYHOO . . . like I mentioned in the previous volume, it’s because I would have liked a book like this when I was younger. I for sure needed a book like this shoved into my face by someone well-meaning who would say, Hey, look . . . women have done a lot of cool shit. No really, check this out.

In my twenties, I was still such an internally misogynistic cool girl who thought feminism was just angry women—not realizing that I should have been angry about a lot of shit myself—and didn’t care to learn about the history of women and what they did to even SURVIVE before carving out a place for themselves in this patriarchal shit show. Yeah, it would have been nice to have an earlier nudge into deprogramming my own default behavior of assuming the masculine in professions like doctor, firefighter, soldier, attorney, astronaut—behavior which, of course, was cemented as a child with the audio and visuals we were peppered with, the stories we devoured. Men were the default. He is even in our language for the otherwise innocuous.

Maybe it would have made me aware of how I unconsciously fell into step with male expectations and perceptions of the feminine. As a friend recently mentioned when referring to herself, maybe I STILL wouldn’t have acknowledged it because programming runs deep. But maybe I would have.

Q. I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand all the swearing and blue language and think that maybe this is a bad example for young women. As a man, I don’t like the B-word and don’t think ladies should use it either.

A. 1.) I’m not a lady.

2.) Go fuck yourself.

CHAPTER ONE

Mermaids and Sirens

and Yemaya . . . oh my!

I’m going to start with this: I’m not at all surprised that, at the time of this book’s publishing in 2023, bigots, en masse, lost their collective shit over the entire idea of a *checks notes* oh that’s right, a Black mermaid in a children’s story. The same folks are still calling Disney woke for casting a Latina actor as Snow White for all the obvious reasons this would give them the vapors. So yeah, I’m not surprised, but holy fuck, these people are exhausting.

Daniel: This is stupid, mermaids can’t be Black!

Grown-up: Um . . . you know mermaids aren’t real, right?

Daniel: *angry mayonnaise noises*

One of the biggest issues here for these numpties is that, like everything else, they color all things with whiteness, and anything that deviates is an intrusion.

Serial dickbag and walking hate crime, Matt Walsh, a talking scrote from the klan-approved rag The Daily Wire, even entered the chat with something to the order of, I, a faux intellectual with a deep misunderstanding of science, don’t think it makes a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean. This is paraphrased of course.

Never mind the fact that an actual intellectual and Smithsonian zoologist and her team identified 16 new species of deep-sea fish with skin so black that it reflects less than 0.5 percent of the light that hits it. Yeah, don’t worry about all that.

And folks who have never actually read a book storm forth with their latest pet literary outrage, yelling shit like, Uh . . . Hans Christian Andersen was Danish, he didn’t write about a Black mermaid. Because apparently Black people have never existed in Denmark. I don’t know what their fucking damage is (other than willful ignorance and that whole racism thing).

I mean Hans Christian Andersen was also a deeply closeted bisexual man, and when he penned The Little Mermaid, it was absolutely an allegory for his own feelings for a man before he married his wife, but they don’t want to have THAT conversation either.

Another issue is that, especially with a certain brand of men, they sexualize the literal fuck out of everything including mermaids while ALSO scapegoating the hell out of them as the ruination of men -because OF COURSE they fucking do.

And which is it, bro? Are women powerless, fearful, weak, and useless in your imaginary fight scenario, or are they terrifying creatures of horror stories who lurk below the surface in the briny depths of the sea so that they can bamboozle you and feast upon your flaccid wieners while performing an aquatic, erotic rendition of The Electric Slide and/or Cotton-Eyed Joe, where did you come from, where did you go?

Hurray! Let’s ruin the men!

So yeah, we’ve been hearing forever how men were lured to their doom by mermaids and by sirens. Multiple self-proclaimed alpha males have penned manifestos about how, as one of them states, there’s a mermaid archetype in every feminine woman on earth, yearning to ignite her masculine man’s heart through his surrender to his own death. Eh . . . ok, dude.

Men who have gone AWOL from the military/their wives/their lives? Sirens, you see. They were lured away by the sweet song of the siren; it was too beautiful to resist! FUCK, they love music.

Why can they never just admit that they followed their dick? Why does there have to be, in the great words of the late, great Jimmy Buffet, a woman to blame?

Of course, some sailors are said to have mistaken manatees for mermaids and fucked them silly, the colonizing shitfuck of a rapist, i.e., Christopher Columbus, being among them. The penchant for drinking their bodyweight in rum combined with the lack of available human vagina aboard the ships might account for their wandering, fish-penetrating peen, but when they woke up the next day in the arms of a sea cow, well . . . MERMAIDS, I SAY, IT WAS A MERMAID. A SIREN YOU SEE. DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE TELL ANYONE I FUCKED A MANATEE, BOB, SO HELP ME . . .

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have been blind-fucking-drunk and woken up in the entirely wrong zip code before, next to humans I would not have otherwise gone home with, but Jesus Tapdancing Christ, I’ve never mistaken a manatee or any other non-human animal for a woman, what the literal fuck . . .)

ANYHOO:

There are so many versions of these tales stemming from different cultures, and while they all share common threads, there are distinct differences based on their maritime origin.

And there’s one oceanic legend, one you might not have even heard of but who has a fuckload of clout and hasn’t had her story completely bastardized by horny seafarers or Walt Disney.

Oh, and guess what, bigots? She’s Black, too.

Meet Yemaya.

Often depicted as a mermaid, Yemaya is considered the Ocean Mother Goddess in the Afro-Caribbean religion Santería, in Haitian Vodou, and also found in the Brazilian African diasporic region of Candomblé in the West African religion of the Yoruba people, which is considered by some as the religion of the orishas, the force of nature demi-gods who are more akin to a supernatural force than an anthropomorphic entity, which seems much too limiting considering the power they are said to wield.

Yemaya is widely considered the patron spirit of women, especially pregnant women. It’s said that, as the mother of humanity, it was her water breaking that created the very waters of the rivers and seas that sustain our planet and those who live on it. And while she is kind and slow to anger, once you’ve fucked around, you will proceed to find out that, like an ocean storm, she is intense and destructive: Do not underestimate the power of the ocean, and absolutely do not underestimate the power of Yemaya. She will fuck you up.

The legend of Yemaya is said to have arrived to the new world on the backs of those African bodies kidnapped during the Atlantic slave trade of 16th to 19th centuries. For reasons of self-preservation, many of these religions were only softly spoken of for generations due to fear of repercussions by those who colonized North America.

One of the eldest, badass daughters of Olodumare, the genderless supreme god and creator of the universe—genderless, that is, until Christianity fucked it up and stained it with patriarchal bullshit (this is why we can’t have nice things, Chad) in the late 1800s—Yemaya is considered both the most powerful and the most nourishing of the Orishas, and is associated with crystal beads, pearls, conch shells, and the colors blue, white, and silver to represent the colors of the sea.

The description of Yemaya, her origin story, and the pronunciation of her name and even how it’s spelled varies wildly depending on what region of the world you’re in. She’s also referred to as Mother of Water, Mother of all Orishas, Patroness and Protector of Children and Fishermen, and other titles depending on who you speak to. In West Africa, Yemaya is seen as a river deity. In Cuba and Brazil, she is worshipped mainly as a goddess of the deep seas.

The manner of how she’s worshipped varies as well. The São Paulo state of Brazil celebrates Yemaya during the first two weekends in December. Much like in Uruguay, the Brazilian municipality of Salvador, honors Yemaya every February 2nd with a massive street party, before which their ocean mother is showered with offerings of flowers, perfume, jewelry, combs, lipsticks, and mirrors, which are gathered and taken out to sea by local fishermen. Elsewhere in Brazil, people gather on beaches to celebrate on New Year’s Eve.

And in Cuban Santería communities, Yemaya is the mother of all living things as well as the owner of the oceans and seas, and she is celebrated on the 7th of September.

What’s fascinating to me is how this depiction of the mermaid somehow hasn’t (yet?) been commercialized and given an entire product line. Perhaps it’s because she’s Black. Perhaps it’s because Yemaya’s not even remotely based in Christianity. Perhaps because her stories aren’t steeped in sex, but rather in feminine power that has nothing to do with sailor peen.

Whatever the case: Sorry, Matt Walshes of the world. Life must be terrifying when everything, including cartoons about fish women, aren’t modeled specifically for you and your demographic.

CHAPTER TWO

Laverne Cox

Born in Mobile, Alabama, she and her twin brother were raised by their single mom and their grandmother. She always had a love for dance, but she switched gears in young adulthood when the acting bug hit her.

She would go on to be a pioneer of sorts with many firsts in show business, including but not limited to being the first openly transgender woman to win a Daytime Emmy as an Executive Producer.

Meet Laverne Cox.

She was dancing from the time she was tiny, and officially began studying dance when she was eight years old. By the time Cox was in the third grade, she was performing in dance recitals and talent shows. Her childhood dreams all revolved around finding fame and performing on Broadway, in movies, and on the great stages of the world.

She struggled with her outward physical appearance conflicting with how she felt internally, and it was hell sometimes trying to fit in. Cox recalls being chased home and being the target of homophobic slurs, and at one point a teacher informed her mother that if she didn’t get Cox into therapy, that she would end up in New Orleans in a dress someday (oh no). At the age of 11, she attempted to end her life due to feelings for male classmates that she couldn’t reconcile. That and she had been bullied for several years for not behaving in a way that someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act.

Cox continued to immerse herself in dance and performance, earning a scholarship to study at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA), a boarding school in Birmingham. She spent her time there focusing on classical ballet, and she credits that move with saving her life.

After graduating from ASFA, she once again earned a scholarship, this time a dance scholarship, to Indiana University at Bloomington. From there she transferred to Marymount Manhattan College and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance.

During her first week at Marymount, Cox was spotted in the hall by a guest teacher who wanted her to perform in a play he was putting on with the school’s theater department. She agreed, and that started her down the acting path, performing in many more plays even though she was majoring in dance.

Cox says this wasn’t looked upon favorably by her advisors at the school, but that she never played by the rules. She went on to do her first film during her senior year after being spotted on the subway sporting a look that caught the director’s eye: long box braids, heavy make-up with long lashes, a paisley vintage coat with a faux fur collar, platform shoes, and a mini dress. She was exactly what they were looking for.

Cox lived and presented as gender nonconforming during her earlier school years, but began to become more and more femme, to the point where she became increasingly certain that her femme exterior was what matched her interior. She made the decision to start transitioning medically so her outside matched who she was. 

She wanted to continue to perform while in transition, and ultimately found herself performing in drag shows at a local night club. She didn’t particularly identify as a drag queen and found the work degrading as, she says, the place mostly catered to bachelorette parties where she’d be dancing for girls who came in to celebrate with the freaks. Cox had initially applied to be a waitress. But performing in the drag shows gave her the creative outlet she desired so she went with it for a while.

Cox appeared as a contestant on a reality show called, I Want to Work for Diddy. She was a hit and was approached by VH1 about show ideas. The makeover television series TRANSform Me came next, and Cox would become the first Black transgender person to produce and star in her own TV show. In 2009, both shows were nominated for a GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Award for outstanding reality program. When Diddy ended up winning, it was Cox who accepted the award. She gave a speech described by the San Francisco Sentinel as among the most poignant because it reminded us how important it is to tell our stories, all of our stories.

Then Cox landed the role that would blow the doors open to her future career; that of Sophia Burset in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, portraying a trans woman sent to prison for credit-card fraud to fund the medical costs that go hand-in-hand with gender confirmation surgery. She took the role because it was, unlike some roles she had passed on, written as a multi-dimensional human being and not just a token character to check a box. Sophia Burset was a character that the audience could actually empathize with and, as Cox has said, All of the sudden they’re empathizing with a real trans person. And for trans folks out there, who need to see representations of people who are like them and of their experiences, that’s when it becomes really important.

The role of Sophia gave Cox a platform to speak on the rights of trans people, though feeling the need to represent the trans community can be super fucking frustrating. Marginalized individuals are often forced to expend an fuckload of emotional labor in the process of helping educate people. 

But Cox feels so much pride about her position and tries to make the best of what can be simultaneously taxing and rewarding.

I felt a huge responsibility and burden of representing my community. And I still feel that burden, but the difference is that there’s more of us now with a platform, and so I feel like the burden isn’t just on me and a few other people. I feel compelled because there’s so much injustice. I feel compelled to try and educate as much as possible.

2014 ended up being massive for Cox. She joined model Carmen Carrera on Katie Couric’s syndicated show, Katie. Couric, who seemed uncharacteristically out of her depth, began asking invasive questions while also referring to transgender people as transgenders. After Carrera didn’t respond well to an inappropriate question about her genitalia, Couric failed to get a fucking clue and asked Cox about any reconstructive surgery SHE may have had done.

Cox’s reply was absolute perfection.

I do feel there is a preoccupation with that. The preoccupation with transition and surgery objectifies trans people. And then we don’t get to really deal with the real lived experiences. The reality of trans people’s lives is that so often we are targets of violence. We experience discrimination disproportionately to the rest of the community. Our unemployment rate is twice the national average; if you are a trans person of color, that rate is four times the national average. The homicide rate is highest among trans women. If we focus on transition, we don’t actually get to talk about those things.

Cox appeared on the cover of the June 9, 2014 issue of Time magazine and was interviewed by Katy Steinmetz for that issue’s featured article The Transgender Tipping Point. This made Cox the first openly transgender person on the cover of Time.

Later that same year, Cox was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, making her the first openly transgender person to be nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sophia on Orange Is the New Black.

She also appeared in John Legend’s video for the song You & I (Nobody in the World).

Cox joined a campaign against a Phoenix, Arizona law which allows police to arrest anyone suspected of manifesting prostitution, which many, including Cox, feels targets transgender women of color, following the conviction of activist (and transgender woman of color) Monica Jones.

All over the country, trans women are targeted simply for being who they are. Laws like this manifestation law really support systematically the idea that girls like me, girls like me and Monica, are less than [others] in this country.

Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, an hour-long documentary executive-produced and narrated by Cox, premiered on MTV and Logo simultaneously, and the following year, she won a Daytime Emmy as Executive Producer for The T Word, making her the first openly transgender woman to win a Daytime Emmy as an Executive Producer. And the documentary was also the first trans documentary to win a Daytime Emmy.

In 2015, Cox was the cover subject for the June 11 totally not-straight issue of Entertainment Weekly, the first issue of the magazine in 15 years to focus exclusively on gay, lesbian, and transgender entertainment.

Cox has also spoken about the expectations of trans people, transitioning, and how unfair and often unrealistic people can be. In response to the kudos that