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

[ChristinaXYZ]

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.”"

This is what I find most disapointing about this stuff. It makes the people involved seem stupid. It's not some playwright exploring some interesting themes, it's the Globe theater being right on.

And it's throughout the theater world. I have a daughter who is a talented actress, but we've withdrawn to a large extent from those activities because she has struggled with this stuff and the amateur groups for teens are just full of it.

I tend to agree with this.

Plays or literature re-imagining historical people, or even historical literary characters, in modern ways are very common. But a lot of the time they aren't actually all that good. They can be very "let's make this story relevant for modern audiences" but in the end what you get is a not very insightful flash in the pan kind of production. Say Jane Austen as all vampires. Well, maybe slightly amusing but really not anything interesting and mainly drawing on the interest in vampire fiction at a particular moment in time. Chances are it's not going to be performed 20 years from now. If anything it takes a story that manages to transcends it's own moment enough to become a classic, and makes it firmly a thing of a particular moment.

It works better as humour, when it takes itself seriously the effect is often that it is treating the audience members as if they are stupid.

Mine was taken down earlier too. If TRAs can say 'woman' means whatever they say it does, I feel I can say transgender doesn't mean anything.

I’ve just seen I had a deleted post. I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it was in response to MangyInseam
talking about her daughter:

*This is what I find most disapointing about this stuff. It makes the people involved seem stupid. It's not some playwright exploring some interesting themes, it's the Globe theater being right on.+

And it's throughout the theater world. I have a daughter who is a talented actress, but we've withdrawn to a large extent from those activities because she has struggled with this stuff and the amateur groups for teens are just full of it.

I had said something about it being very difficult to find creative groups for children that are not linked to transgender ideology; and I described a local arts and performance group that looked attractive but then saw it was for LGBTQIA + / trans gender 11 - 15 year olds. I’d looked up the person who started it and they were also head of the local centre for dancing. I lamented how it is difficult to find a place for creative children to go without this … what word did I use that was offensive?

Bloody hell, it's like the snap. Posts seem to be disappearing randomly. Is Thanos working for MN?

Having asked about this, I got a 'oh nothing to see here' response from Hebe. So I'm not sure if there's an actual policy change or a rogue moderator they're trying to downplay the impact of.

I don't know if someone's already made this point, but by making Joan of Arc non-binary, aren't they literally misgendering her? And isn't that literal violence?

@ScrollingLeaves I think you may have mentioned the g word. A person who looks after a horse? I know people get deleted/banned on Twitter for using it.

@SwissBall · Today 21:02
@ScrollingLeaves I think you may have mentioned the g word. A person who looks after a horse? I know people get deleted/banned on Twitter for using it.

Ah, thank you. But I think I used it in the context of their looking after foals so badly as to make them try to scrape their own coats off on the fence, and causing them to go blind so they would not recognise the mares and the stallions around them anymore.

Not in the sense of the stallions setting about mating with the colts and follies.

Fillies

The “monitors” and TRAs that patrol these threads are getting dumber and dumber. This is tbh going to be their eventual downfall — just being so thick that they end up erasing any sense of their own ideology in a frenzy of cancel modding and hissy fits.

Well I don't know what Duo the Duolingo owl is going to make of it!

I'm trying to learn French, I'm staying well away from neopronouns. 'On' blew my mind, they never mentioned that at school.

Just treat on as one and pretend you're the Queen.

"One does one's best". Which would be "on fait..." something.

On fait de son mieux. Or on fait pour le mieux? Because son is masculine and... that is the limit of my French. It annoys me how often French defaults to masculine, especially when referring to mixed sex groups.

I find the plural form very handy in French since it means you don't have to remember the gender of a word, which is a stupid concept anyway (no offence, French people but it is, and why on earth is the vagina masculine?).

Just assume the monitors report every post, ergo it is the moderators who are in effect deleting posts according to their whims.

‘ One’ is very useful. It is a pity it sounds useful now.

I wonder if the French Academy that rules language will be able to stop ‘iel’ etc?

I wonder if their equivalent of NHS information has been de-womanised?

One sounds pompous now, I meant.

Eggs and bees are masculine as well, and milk. But beards and moustaches are feminine, probably something, something latin roots.

grammatical gender really has nothing to do with maleness and femaleness, is what it comes down to.

Given that I have met people who genuinely think Anne Boleyn was black after seeing her played by a black woman on TV, I think this is actually very dangerous.

And part of a growing trend to say that various major historical characters were gay or trans when most historians say we have little to no evidence of it. There's acknowledging that history was dominated by white, straight men and investigating the experience of other groups and then there's just plain rewriting history to suit your preferences.

Article in the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/aug/29/blaspheming-saint-charlie-josephine-non-binary-joan-of-arc-globe

I think French bees are actually feminine, as they should bee🐝, just correcting my earlier assertion.

Where to start with that article 🤔
Ok just a couple of points saying that you could of had real horses but that they would upstage your writing is not a good advert for your show. Also this "writer" needs a history lesson if they think that there were middle class people during the 100 year war 🤣

The use of "they/them/their" pronouns for both the play's writer, Joan as a character/historical figure and the female non-binary-identifying actor playing the lead role makes the article a very confusing read.

I also find the description of online criticism as "abuse" and "attacks" to be disingenuous.