my gyrl wrote a piece that was supposed to be posted for the Independence Day. but i’m glad i waited. it works so much better now. so i’m gonna turn over today’s post to her.

After Further Reflection…
by Danielle Jones

I have always had to fight..fight for space in my mother's womb..fight to be seen as one, not two..fight to come out at fifteen..fight to express my talents creatively..fight fear..fight love..fight to just be..me..
Now I live confidently...

Hard Candy Calendar has produced beyond our wildest dreams. Our models have been featured on stage, in films and on the runway. The pathway that HC models have tread is truly making an endellible mark on our community. What began as merely an artistic expression with a charitable intent has created a space where dominant women are presented beautifully and authentically.

And after further reflection, I am celebrating seven years of healing now.. I actually finished my final treatments in June 2003. I guess last year was about celebrating the lessons of the process..this year..this year is just a celebration. I made a movie , "Genderblind", that features gyrls like me. One of our original and most influential models, Milon is now seasoned and has recently completed a highly successful runway show where she created an avenue to showcase LGBT community during Black Pride at a historic location, the DuSable Museum of African American History. Our own Brandee Young has been recently signed as a full-figured model. It is magnificent to see Jen's strange fruit, Hard Candy, take root and give seed to so much more than its original intent. It's all about growth... this is the Rise of the Stud. The Future is now.

Upon celebrating the seventh year of surviving the battle for my life, I feel healed..
We've made stars and had stripes..It is a revolution..gyrls like me are seen as we truly are..shining honestly..living free..

What's next... iono... enjoying the liberation..embracing the infinite possibilitites ...

Danielle Jones is currently starring in the movie Genderblind which is set to have it’s Atlanta GA premier September 4th, 2010

Sarah Emma Edmonds aka Frank Thompson
American Civil War Soldier, Spy, Nurse

Emma Edmonds was one of approximately 400 women who succeeded in enlisting in the army (either Union or Confederate) during the Civil War. Her uniqueness is that she not only succeeded in remaining in the army for several years, but was also eminently successful as a Union spy-all while impersonating a man.

Emma was living in Flint, Michigan, when the first call for Union enlistments went out. She wanted to answer the call. So she cropped her hair, got a man’s suit of clothing, took the name of Frank Thompson and tried to enlist. It took her four tries but finally she did in fact get sworn into the Union Army (at that time the physical consisted merely of asking the enlistee questions-no medical examination). On April 25, 1861, Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson became a male nurse in the Second Volunteers of the United States Army.

After training in Washington, D.C., Emma’s unit was sent south to be part of McClellan’s campaign in Virginia. Private Thompson (Emma) was assigned as a male nurse to the hospital unit of the 2nd Michigan Volunteers and had no trouble in maintaining her masculine masquerade.

On 5 July 1884, a special act of Congress granted Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson an honorable discharge from the army, plus a bonus and a veteran’s pension of twelve dollars a month. The resulting Special Act of Congress read:
Emma lived out the rest of her life in La Porte, Texas, where she died on September 5, 1898. She is buried in the military section of Washington Cemetery in Houston, Texas. In honor of her duty and devotion to her country she is the only female member of the organization formed after the Civil War by Union veterans-The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). In her own words Emma Edmonds said of her adventures: “I am naturally fond of adventure, a little ambitious, and a good deal romantic-but patriotism was the true secret of my success.”

Read her full story HERE

Cathay Williams was born in 1842 outside Independence, Missouri. Born into slavery she served as a house girl for a wealthy farmer. Things changed however when the Civil War started. Union soldiers would later take the plantation on which Cathay served. Several female servants, including Cathay, were taken to Little Rock, Arkansas to cook for the troops. Cathay dutifully served in this capacity, traveled with the army all around the South participating in all aspect of military life to the extent that a woman could. She was eventually sent to Washington to serve as cook and laundress for a general and his staff.

While with this general she was on the front lines with the troops as they raided the Shenandoah Valley and finally on to St. Louis for an extended stay. During this time, congress passed an act authorizing the establishment of the first all Black units of the military (two Calvary and two Infantry), later to become known as “Buffalo Soldiers”. In order to provide a living for herself and not be dependent on others, two very important principals to Cathay, she decided it was time to join the army.

In November of 1866 she enlisted in the 38th US Infantry as William Cathay”. Since there were little or no medical exams required, Cathay was able to successfully (at least initially), pull off this disguise. In an article about her in the St. Louis Times, Williams was described as ”tall and powerfully built.“
It is said that two others knew of her true identity, a cousin and a friend, but both loyally kept her secret.

During Cathay’s tour of duty, she performed assignments required of her fellow troops, such as learning to use a musket and guard duty. These skills were essential as her unit was soon deployed to Fort Curnmings in 1867. The 38 was sent to protect immigrants traveling one of the most dangerous routes to California at the time, Cooke’s Canyon. However, while at Fort Cummings, there was a mutiny among the troops. Several where brought up on charges or jailed. Cathay is not known to be among them. It did however take its toll on her spirit to serve and she decided it was time to get out.

She did so by reporting she was ill prompting an exam by the post surgeon. It was then her secret was discovered. Cathay Williams was honorably discharged on October 14, 1868 having made her place in history as the first female Buffalo Soldier to serve. (Excerpts taken from the West Texan Historian Society)

Gladys Bentley carved out a place for herself, playing at rent parties and the legendary speakeasies of “Jungle Alley” at 133 between Lenox and Seventh Avenue. She would transform popular tunes of the day with raunchy naughty playful lyrics. Dressed in her signature tux and top hat , she openly and riotously flirted with women in the audience. Although on her recordings she did not dare have lesbian lyrics , she certainly played up this image in the clubs and in public.

Bentley associated with many famous gay and lesbian African-Americans of the time, including author Langston Hughes, poet Countee Cullen and comedian Moms Mabley, and was rumored to have had an affair with singer Bessie Smith. She lived for a time in a Park Avenue apartment, complete with servants, and tooled around in a beautiful car, when she wasn’t parading down fashionable 7th Avenue dressed in men’s clothing.

Bentley was such a colorful cultural figure that characters based on her appeared in numerous novels of the time. She was also fodder for the gossip columns: Lois Sobel, a wannabe Hedda Hopper, claimed that the outrageous singer had even staged a “bull dagger wedding,” marrying an unnamed white lesbian lover in a ceremony in Atlantic City. Of course, Bentley was the one wearing the tux.

Beyond the wild aspects of her personal life, Bentley is an important historical figure for the way she integrated elements of lesbian and gay desire into her public performances. In 1930, a performer named Gene Mailin created an act in which he appeared as an openly gay man, igniting what came to be known as the “Pansy Craze” in New York’s speakeasies. Prohibition audiences, emboldened by their disregard of liquor laws and titillated by sexual differences, had an insatiable curiosity for nightclub novelty acts. Bentley rode the wave and flaunted her lesbianism in shows such as the Ubangi Club Revue, in which she was supported by a chorus of men dressed in female drag.

Audiences of politicians, European royalty, and high society followed Black and gay customers from Greenwich Village to Harlem just to experience La Bentley from 1925 to 1940. Then McCarthyism swept the United States and Bentley’s trademark lesbian act became a liability. Bentley , who for so long had been one of THE most open as regards her homosexuality , was of course a sitting duck for persecution. Out of desperate fear for her own survival( particularly with an ageing mother to support) she started wearing dresses , and sanitizing her act. In 1950 , Bentley wrote a desperate , largely fabricated article for Ebony entitled “I am Woman Again” in which she claimed to have cured her lesbianism via female hormone treatments and was finally at peace after a “hell as terrible as dope addiction”. She claimed to have married a newspaper columnist named J.T. Gibson ( a man who soon after publicly denied that the two had ever wed). These desperate attempts to survive do not diminish her previous accomplishments. For many years ,on a daily basis , she took risks that would not be common until the Stonewall era. Living as a lesbian must have been hard for a Black woman at that time. Near the end of her life Bentley became a devout member of The Temple of Love in Christ. She died of influenza in 1960.

as u all know the back of the wall calendar features a pic with all the femmes of the 2010 calendar. what some don’t notice is that one is missing. Brandee.
she’s the lady supporting our Virgo stud. she was also helped out in the 2009 calendar with the July spread.

bubbly, fun and outgoing, she’s surprisingly shy in front of the camera. so when she finally came thru 4 her personal photoshoot, i was beyond delighted. i could not resist sharing some of ms. brandee’s sexiness with with the rest of y’all. here she is…

Here’s more about it in the press release.
Conceived in the summer of 2003 and born December 2008, award-winning author, journalist and photographer, Azaan Kamau, releases, “STUD: Dispelling the Myths,” on the eve of a major political shift in the United States of America.

The groundbreaking, “STUD, Dispelling The Myths,” takes a philosophical walk through the life of a masculine-identified woman from a sociological, anthropological, and spiritual view point. STUD features guest commentary, images and interviews from some of America’s most prolific poets, writers, lyricists and performers such as DJ Nova Jade, Damnyo and Quandi Jackson of Afrikan Visions. STUD also includes a rare interview with butch icon, LEGEND-The Original Gender Bender.

STUD is jam-packed with historical pictures, humorous antidotes and truths about life lived as a female with a masculine exterior/interior and the writer’s own spiritual insights.

Writer Azaan Kamau speaks about the experiences that led her to pen STUD, “Stud is a term that identifies a lesbian woman whose inner being and outer persona magnifies what society sees as masculine. In the early days of the LGBTq movement, women like me were called tomboy, stud, butch, bulldyke, bulldagger and other terms. Many such women had to endure a life filled with judgment and pain simply because of how they looked. I am among those who endured these struggles, however, my experiences ultimately brought me to my own healing, triumph and victory and the birth of STUD!” Says Azaan.

The writer promises that whatever one’s ethnic background or cultural identity, they will find some part of themselves in STUD. STUD is penned in a fashion that will make readers laugh, feel more empowered and find a stronger sense of personal and spiritual awareness.

Living in a society where how one looks often determines one’s overall quality of life can make some folks feel invisible and silenced. This book gives a voice to the sometimes voiceless women who don’t exactly fit with society’s image of what a woman is supposed to look like. STUD takes you into the world of masculine identified lesbians and other women who defy their gender identity, and the difficult but wonderful lives they lead.

“STUD is for any woman who has ever made a life or career choice that defied her gender identity. From the female surgeon, construction worker, president, pilot or boxer to the everyday taxpayer, mother, judge and breast cancer survivor–STUD is for women who are forced to suppress the urge to express their womanness as they are inherently led because of what society might think. STUD is also for the women and men who love, praise and find the sensual-erotic in the expression of a STUD…..” Says author, Azaan Kamau.

Show some love and get the book.