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Globe Theatre makes Joan of Arc non-binary in new play

320 replies

ChristinaXYZ · 11/08/2022 21:27

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/11/globe-theatre-makes-joan-arc-non-binary-new-play/

"Joan of Arc is represented as non-binary in the Globe show, and the pronouns of the French patron saint have been changed to “they/them” rather than “she/her”.

Women’s rights campaigners have raised concerns that the move is another example of female figures being “erased” from history.

Promotional material for the “powerful and joyous new play” sets the scene: “Rebelling against the world’s expectations, questioning the gender binary, Joan finds their power and their belief spreads like fire.”

The play is written by writer Charlie Josephine, whose web biography states: “My pronouns are they/he. I’m an actor and a writer."

The Telegraph writers, who like The Spectator staff, know their stuff on this and have included a Women's Place comment too:

"Campaigner group Women’s Place UK said in a statement on the issue: “Women are getting really tired of being erased from history and having our achievements diminished.

“Joan of Arc was an astonishing woman who rebelled against the authoritarian oppression she faced for being female.

“Theatre has a fine tradition of inverting reality to encourage us to look at life differently but the fact remains that Joan of Arc was a woman and was persecuted as such.”"

OP posts:
Whoops1 · 12/08/2022 13:39

Zerogravity · 12/08/2022 06:39

It's offensive because it's this kind of thinking that says it's impossible for women to fight against sexism or achieve anything. The moment a woman rebels against gender norms or fights back, she's no longer a woman. Imagine if we were told a black hero was actually white because he or she showed courage. That's what we're dealing with.

Show quote history

Thanks, well put!

PurgatoryOfPotholes · 12/08/2022 13:28

Helen Lewis has been investigating the Globe website. Elizabeth I has been they/them'd.

twitter.com/helenlewis/status/1558063174200528897?t=_R6A5wixVY-__5GHbnDK9w&s=19

ScrollingLeaves · 12/08/2022 13:26

From the end of the blurb where the writer says why they used ‘they/them’.

The use of ‘they’ to refer to a singular person has been traced by the Oxford English Dictionary to as early as 1375, years before Joan was even born

This is annoying because yes, they/ them has been used in certain contexts for a very long time, but these pronouns were not previously used to de-sex a known individual.

Madcats · 12/08/2022 13:16

Even the Globe managed to mis-gender Joan in their blurb explaining choice of pronoun.

www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2022/07/11/who-was-joan-of-arc/

1st para too!

I did toy with the idea of calling them out.

Snoozer11 · 12/08/2022 12:21

I once listened to a podcast presented by two beardy "feminist" gay men. They went to great pains once to not use pronouns to refer to an alien character in a TV show because they hadn't been explicitly stated.

Batshit.

I had to stop listening as they went around calling JKR "trash", indicated she wasn't a real feminist and were nauseatingly virtuous.

Discovereads · 12/08/2022 12:06

Joan of Arc didn’t lead any army ever. No king or general would give actual leadership to a 17yr old boy or girl and certainly not an illiterate peasant of any age untrained in warfare tactics, strategy or combat. She was used as a mascot, as proof God was on their side by the real French commanders Jean de Dubois, La Hire and John 2nd Duke of Alencon.

Feminists writing revisionist history liked to pretend she led the French into battle, but she did no such thing. Now history is being revised (yet again) to make Joan in a non-binary they/them person.

Justme56 · 12/08/2022 11:59

Strong women fight against the stereotypes and misogyny of society. NB’s try and identify out of it - a much easier route than changing things for the better for everyone. This is why in my opinion Joan would never be NB.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 12/08/2022 11:57

In the Huffpost article about Yentl there a link to the writer of the original story talking about the Streisand version. When he's talking about his character he uses she/her.

Yes. He simply didn't like Streisand's version. There was nothing about it being wrong because Yentl was 'trans'.

334bu · 12/08/2022 11:48

mobile.twitter.com/The_Globe/status/1557764534286401538?cxt=HHwWhIC-3eWlpZ4rAAAA

Getting roasted on Twitter.

IcakethereforeIam · 12/08/2022 11:43

In the Huffpost article about Yentl there a link to the writer of the original story talking about the Streisand version. When he's talking about his character he uses she/her.

IvyTwines · 12/08/2022 11:36

What's really sad is reading Charlie's RSC blog post from a few years ago, "Fighting the Female Fear'. Charlie comes across as fully aware, then, of the cruelty of the patriarchy's role in oppressing women, of stereotyping us and forcing us into behavioural boxes: "perhaps that’s just a public admission of my low self-esteem, but I can’t help but feel like it’s gendered.
I’ve been cast as my favourite ever Shakespeare part. Just as I’m coming into my own skin as a woman. Just as misogyny truly bubbles and boils over into a seething #MeToo animal cry. Just as my sister is about to give birth to a baby girl (please god, let it all stop before she enters the world)."

And then a few years later as the theatre scene sinks itself ever deeper into imported US gender ideology, Charlie decides to give up the fight, gives in to those regressive stereotypes - and the arts commissions that come with them, good dog, pat pat, here's a juicy bone - and now bats for the other side.

KittenKong · 12/08/2022 11:33

Nothing to do with women having to disguise themselves to get education, avoid being raped/kidnapped/married off, go to war etc etc etc

what don’t men understand?

YetAnotherSpartacus · 12/08/2022 11:25

There are and have been trans versions of Yentl too.

www.huffpost.com/entry/yentl-the-yeshiva-boy-a-m_b_5943198

Every women who dressed as or desired the power and privilege of men is 'trans' apparently.

KittenKong · 12/08/2022 11:15

The whole story IS that she was a young girl (unless you listen to Old Harry’s Game) who led an army.

Not some navel gazing ninny (most of their ilk seem to be only capable of issuing death threats from afar or dressing up in faux paramilitary gear and peeing their pants if you say ‘boo’).

A theybe leading an army - give me a break!🙄

Cismyfatarse · 12/08/2022 11:11

It is like we killed her twice.

IcakethereforeIam · 12/08/2022 11:08

The picture used to publicise the play, could be Joan wearing a binder but it also looks like those cheesecake pictures of women squeezing there tits together (possibly due to the photo being touched up..fnar!).

I suppose there's nothing wrong with transing Joan except it comes on the back of all the other erasure of women. Also, it seems particularly heinous because she was a real and very young woman, who was used and treated horrendously and who suffered an appalling death. The poor girl doesn't need to be further used for this particular agenda.

RoyalCorgi · 12/08/2022 10:30

then she got arseholed with Lord Blackadder if my history lessons are correct Grin

I take it back. Blackadder is an entirely reliable source.

Abhannmor · 12/08/2022 10:21

ScrollingLeaves · 12/08/2022 09:52

SarahandQuack
I could see how I might feel cross about this play - even as fiction - if I thought it were absolutely incompatible with the historical person and the historical context. But it isn't. In this period, writers were quite clear that sex wasn't binary, and that women who were spiritually privileged (like Joan) were a category of women unlike other women, and closer to masculinity.

I don’t agree that women who were spiritually privileged (like Joan) were a category of women unlike other women, and closer to masculinity.

The Virgin Mary could not have been more exalted at this time, or in Catholic countries now, and this never made her closer to masculinity.

I don’t know off hand enough about all the female saints revered in the 15th century but I don’t think they were closer to masculinity.

Here is a saint who had not really existed, but whom people followed, who had a beard! So she would be useful for the idea of trans saints, if she had existed. Maybe she represented the idea of escape from oppression for women by looking like a man. People prayed to her in particular if they had abusive husband.
Wilgefortis (Portuguese: Vilgeforte) is a fictitious female folk saint venerated by Catholics whose legend arose in the 14th century,[1] and whose distinguishing feature is a large beard. Her name is thought to have derived from the Latin "virgo fortis" ("courageous virgin").[2] In England her name was Uncumber, and in Dutch Ontkommer (meaning one who avoids something, here specifically other people from suffering). In German lands she was known as Kümmernis ("grief" or "anxiety"). In Poland she was called Frasobliwa ("sorrowful"). She was known as Liberata in Italy and Librada in Spain ("liberated"), and as Débarras ("riddance") in France. In places such as Sigüenza, Spain, she was sometimes conflated with another Saint Liberata, the sister of Saint Marina of Aguas Santas, whose feast was also celebrated on 20 July.[3] She was never officially canonised by the church, but venerated by people seeking relief from tribulations, in particular by women who wished to be liberated ("disencumbered") from abusive husbands.

This idea that spiritual women are sort of honorary men might come from Gnostic writings like the Gospel of Thomas. But of course Joan was a Catholic and Gnosticism was a heresy.

Paul says there will be neither Jew nor Greek , male or female. Of course he is talking about the kingdom of heaven not some earthly non binary paradise. Nope. Joan was a woman.

AgnestaVipers · 12/08/2022 10:18

trans women - I mean women who consider themselves trans.

The language, of course, is designed to be nonsensical.

AgnestaVipers · 12/08/2022 10:17

I feel so annoyed with these non binary/trans women. It feels like a betrayal. It feels like cowardice.

Imnobody4 · 12/08/2022 10:16

Here's a clip of Charlie talking to the director. Ì suppose it will depend if it's any good for me.

However! I hope the Globe are not counting Charlie as female when they count up the number of women playwrights they staged.

Deliriumoftheendless · 12/08/2022 10:15

RoyalCorgi · 12/08/2022 09:43

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too

Not the main point of the thread, I know, but Queen Elizabeth almost certainly didn't say that.

Back to Joan - yes of course playwrights and novelists play around with history. But it's part of the trans activist project to rewrite history. The Stonewall riots were started by a trans woman, for example (they weren't). They are absolutely determined to have us believe that trans people have always existed, and therefore any gender nonconforming woman is claimed for the trans cause. Look what happened to the biographer who insisted on referring to Dr James Barry as "she". (Funnily enough, they find it much harder to find gender nonconforming men from history who they can recruit as trans women. I wonder why that might be.)

It is Orwellian. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Joan of Arc was non-binary.

You are correct, Royal Corgi, what she said was
“I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman. But I have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant.”
then she got arseholed with Lord Blackadder if my history lessons are correct 😏

ControversialOpening · 12/08/2022 10:06

it's simply a fact that many medieval people would have understood someone like Joan as being neither male nor female

It is not a fact. Medieval people clearly understood that Joan was female.

it's also clear that many people would have been entirely at home with the idea that a person's gender could be quite other than what their sexed body might suggest

Well yes. That’s basic. Everyone has known masculine women and feminine men. Even school kids know about this.
it doesn’t mean these people are ‘neither men nor women’ though, or that they have changed sex.

NitroNine · 12/08/2022 10:04

I mean, there’s having Main Character Syndrome, & then there’s, well…

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