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While the dudes of history were pretty awesome (or spectacularly horrible) in their own right, the ladies that were left out were badass.

This is an attempt to grow my own knowledge of strong, courageous, weak, scared, scarred, and imperfect women that history has forgotten about.

Check out the submit and ask features! Submit the names of badass women from history that you want me and other people to know about and submit stories of the badass women in your life!

Icon is of the bad-ass Dr. Crusher from Star Trek: TNG, and taken from this lovely source.

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Gladys Bentley

The famous bulldagger of the Harlem Renaissance, Gladys Bentley was a lively, piano-playing blues and jazz singer. Hailing from Trinidad, Bentley performed at speakeasies (including Clam House, the most notorious gay speakeasy) across the country, clad in her famous tuxedo and top hat, boasting her sexuality, raunchy lyrics, and play on gender identity. Bentley penned a memoir, If This Be Sin, joining the ranks of other queer black intellectuals and performers in Harlem, including Langston Hughes andEthel Waters.

Bentley married a white woman, garnering an uproar of gossip and media attention over miscegenation. However, after recording music for more than 20 years and performing with drag queens, she felt the heat of McCarthyism, being harassed by the police and publicly scorned for her gender presentation and sexuality. Trying to save her career, Bentley published an article in Ebony, claiming that she had been “cured” of lesbianism and was a “woman again.” The singer tragically passed in 1960, but her legacy lives on.