10 female revolutionaries they didn’t teach you in history class

soldaderas 2

After Pancho Villa refused to promote her to General, Mexican revolutionary Petra Herrera left to form her own all-female brigade of soldaderas.

This is pretty much the only feminist list that you’ll ever need to read again. WhizzPast has created a list of 10 revolutionary women that are often excluded from popular historical narratives

Some of the women featured include Nwanyeruwa, a Nigerian woman who started a movement to challenge “looming taxes and the unchecked authority of warrant chiefs” in the 1920s — a protest that has been invoked as the first major challenge to British authority in West Africa. Sophie Scholl was a founding member of the non-violent, anti-Nazi group, the White Rose, which used leaflets and graffiti to resist Hitler. Puerto Rican Nationalist Blanca Canales is one of the few women in history to have led a revolt against the United States.

Credit for transformative movements and ideologies often goes to men, who were uplifted as leaders because… sexism. But this list offers some much-needed nuance and perspective on the role of women in our revolutionary history. Check out the rest here.

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Feministing's resident "sexpert", Sesali is a published writer and professional shit talker. She is a queer Black girl, fat girl, and trainer. She was the former Training Director at the United States Student Association and later a member of the Youth Organizing team at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She received her bachelors in Women's and Gender Studies from Depaul University in 2012 and is currently pursuing a master's in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. A self identified "trap" feminist, and trained with a reproductive justice background, her interests include the intersections of feminism and: pop culture, youth culture, social media, hip hop, girlhood, sexuality, race, gender, and Beyonce. Sesali joined the team in 2010 as one of the winners of our So You Think You Can Blog contest.

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