And after Joan of Arc we bring you - ta da - Elizabeth I

Good stuff though, challenging to me.

I don't actually think these pieces are particularly insightful in relation to modern day debate. Nothing in his article (or anywhere else) suggests that Joan was at odds with her biological femaleness.

All the references to clothing are not about that, rather gender as a social construct, signified by clothes, which is not a new thought at all and far short of what TRA are promoting now.

I think to use any mechanism to hide the fact that she was female removes the ability of the author to explore war from her female perspective.

Eg There was a very intresting thread on here, about a woman trying to explain to her young sons why if they lived in the Ukraine she and her daughters and female relatives would be allowed leave but that her husband and of age boys would not, as they were expected to fight.

Can the writer explore means to be a woman in a war zone, on the front lines?
In Joan's time she was as likely to be gang raped and killed by her own "side" as listened to. Yet it in battles where she obtains social advancement via military valour and pays the ultimate price for being a sucessful soldier who was a woman.

Dr Kit Heyam's article about the play and Joan's words - though not very many of her words. Good stuff though, challenging to me.

Why would tilder be/not be (can’t work out which one you are suggesting) under the age of 35?

If I'm honest I do think that it's perfectly reasonable for theatre to play around with this stuff

I'd be more convinced it was just playing around with ideas if the entire cast hadn't declared their pronouns, and if both the actor playing Joan and the writer weren't 'they'.

www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/joan-2022/#cast-creatives

If I'm honest I do think that it's perfectly reasonable for theatre to play around with this stuff and
mix up contemporary and historical information.

I agree it's reasonable to apply contemporary thinking to historical information.

The problem is if the contemporary thinking is as muddled and full of holes as this is, applying it to historical examples really shows it up as utter nonsense.

Elizabeth I knew, better than almost anyone else who ever lived, that she couldn't identify out of the reality of being female.

Um the story about Joan of Arc being non binary, the stuff about Bill in Mallory Towers, George in famous 5, Elizabeth 1st. Etc. Lots of women in history (real and in literature) who challenged stereotypes and dared to suggest women can be other than a narrow stereotype of gender. All have been in the media in recent times as non binary or trans.

Not sure what my age has to do with it? Feminism is ageless.

I knew it!

Cleopatra - that's no asp, honey.

Did anyone ever wonder why Mary conceived without having sex? Clearly, Mary was male and used a surrogate.

Catherine the Great. She must have been trans Took the throne by force,ruled Russia with as n iron hand, went to war in a military jacket, brought the Enlightenment to Russia, had her pick if lovers, played men at their own game. .
she must have been trans - no woman could have done what she did.

And lots of rather non-plussed tourists wondering if their English teachers had taught them pronouns all wrong.

Imagine actually sitting through this play with the kind of audience who would be going to see it.

Precisely, women are essentially useless so anyone who does anything of merit must actually be a man. It's pretty simple really.

Yes. It's about power, isn't it?

Look, obviously anyone who has the guts, intelligence and wherewithal to do anything interesting or political or powerful is secretly a man, or wants to be one.

Women, thoughout history, have been the ones who are quiet and look pretty and sexy. That's all they do.

Know your place, women!

To say a woman who doesn't conform isn't a woman but is instead a man or nonbinary is the antithesis of that and to me is deeply offensive and antiwoman. But in trans ideology is something to be celebrated.

This is because trans ideology is anti-woman.

Any woman rejecting womanhood is celebrated, as she has escaped from the inferior class.

Any man adopting a woman identity is to be pitied as one of the most marginalised because his 'gender identity' gives him no choice but to enter the inferior class.

Do you really need examples? Every instance of a woman saying she is nonbinary or a man is celebrated by believers in trans ideology.

It’s episode 5 entitled 1981, it’s about 34 minutes in. I think it’s Dominic Sandbrook speaking.

Our entire military, clergy and judiciary are women. Look at those uniforms, look at those papal hats, look at those frilly collars, look at those wigs. It’s obvious.

Please can you provide some examples to back up your final sentence? Thanks.

Also, are you by any chance under the age of 35 or so? I’m just idly curious.

It's things like this that make me realise how wide the gulf is between trans ideology and GC thinking.

For me, gender is all constraining. Expects women to behave and be a certain way. I celebrate examples of women who don't conform, especially historically when it was much harder to do so. Because women can be all those things and more. If they choose to be. Nothing wrong with being gender conforming, but you shouldn't have to.

To say a woman who doesn't conform isn't a woman but is instead a man or nonbinary is the antithesis of that and to me is deeply offensive and antiwoman. But in trans ideology is something to be celebrated.

If I'm honest I do think that it's perfectly reasonable for theatre to play around with this stuff and* mix up contemporary and historical information. That's theatre's job. I don't want to see this production particularly but maybe I will. Or at least read a biography of Joan.*

This is how I feel about it too Permanent, but something about this doesn't sit well with me. The announcement shoehorning in they/them pronouns as a definitive element of the production (and/or Joan's entire existence) just made me cringe. All well and good to look at things in a different way, but this just seems like performative, agenda-driven queerwashing, a virtue-signalling trend of little substance.

The production is certainly getting talked about more than it ever would otherwise.

But I thought being trans or non-binary was nothing to do with stereotypes, and was just about a feeling in someone's head. Have they now changed their minds and decided it is all about stereotypes after all?

What a ludicrous anachronism. This “trend” is becoming very tiresome.