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.”"

Bit late for this but over the holidays near me there was a charity subsidised, weekly drawing class aimed at 7-11 year olds. Subject, ‘how to draw anime’

it was reportedly organised by an older primary aged child in conjunction with a Nonbinary 20 something (both biologically male).

Well it's interesting about the musical group, because just this morning on the radio here I heard about a huge workshop, fully funded, for "queer" kids to get involved in music. When they interviewed the directed he was talking about how important it was to get kids into music making to be able to express themselves.

There was no real explanation at all why this wouldn't apply to all kids equally? It wasn't even poor queer kids. In fact all summer they have been talking about groups doing workshops for kids from different identity groups - which are built around topics that would be of interest to kids from any background.

It's interesting too because I was talking to my friend who is involved in a cultural musical group that no longer gets much funding - because it's not on trend. They are in fact open to kids from all backgrounds, despite coming out of a specific cultural tradition.

It seems like a really dangerous game to me on a much higher level than just pushing gender politics.

I don't think we should be conflating trans and gay. If someone is repeatedly saying "I'm a woman, I'm a girl, as a woman" then pushing a transmale identity onto them is a pretty big stretch. Historical figures weren't exactly going around saying "as a heterosexual person..." since that didn't exist as a concept and wording. Who you love and are sexually attracted to is inherently fairly private, especially in eras that had very different perspectives on sexual orientation than we do today.

There are a ton of historical figures who very blatantly had same-sex affairs, relationships, and even meaningful long-term committed emotional relationships with people of the same sex, cases where deeply sexual and lustful or emotional letters between two men or two women exist, and historically it's always been passed off as "they were just good friends."

No one's suggesting making say say Henry II gay, but Edward II, Richard I, Richard II, James I, Queen Anne to name just a few, plenty of evidence to support an interpretation of them as being interested in their own sex. I honestly have not seen many if any cases where historical figures have just randomly been reimagined as gay without any historical evidence; it's still far far more common for historical figures who were gay/bi to be perceived and presented as being heterosexual and for non-heterosexuality to be oppressed and ignored.

MangyInseam · Today 16:16
Well it's interesting about the musical group, because just this morning on the radio here I heard about a huge workshop, fully funded, for "queer" kids to get involved in music. When they interviewed the directed he was talking about how important it was to get kids into music making to be able to express themselves.

There was no real explanation at all why this wouldn't apply to all kids equally? It wasn't even poor queer kids. In fact all summer they have been talking about groups doing workshops for kids from different identity groups - which are built around topics that would be of interest to kids from any background.

It's interesting too because I was talking to my friend who is involved in a cultural musical group that no longer gets much funding - because it's not on trend. They are in fact open to kids from all backgrounds, despite coming out of a specific cultural tradition.

It seems like a really dangerous game to me on a much higher level than just pushing gender politics

I completely agree.
I picked up a flyer for what looked like an interesting creative arts group for children where I live. It turned out to be for 11-15 year olds LGBTQA+/ gender fluid. As you say, why not all children - ((among whom [when they grow up for goodness sake] some may be LGB.)

This is so wrong, on so many levels, that I find it almost evil.

Sorry, I had been away from this thread for a long time and not realised Mangy seam was already replying to me saying the same thing.

That Guardian article!! Apart from the bit about not having horses in case they ‘upstage their writing’ my favourite line is for the wonderful superfluousness of pronouns is:

“There’s enough space for all of us,” Josephine says, leaning back in their chair, certain in themself and their show.

I can’t imagine Charlie Josephine knows many nuns. The nuns I knew had very short ‘man-style’ hair under their habits and wore no make up. They were all women but ‘married to God’ so there was no need/desire to be or devote time to being feminine/attractive and the hairstyle was actively chosen to represent that. Looking back, I think some nuns I knew had had bad experiences with men.

Jane would have started her periods and she would have been very aware she was a woman and it’s limitations. It is known that Jane was inspired by lots of stories of virtuous religious women. Dressing ‘as a man’ would be both practical and safer.

I am all for adaptations but the problem with this adaptation is that is doesn’t make any sense for me. I suppose aligning the devotion of god with the devotion to modern gender ideology? They both are not based on science and are belief systems.

I am interested in the reviews which I suppose is a ‘win’ for their marketing. At first glance it looks a bit too movement-based for me.

Actually, there is a great deal of information about Jeanne, from contemporary records , hostile and admiring. We also have the transcripts of her trial, where she explains her motivations for her behaviour and presentation very clearly.

How does the author think the ‘they’ thing was managed in Medieval French? Because there is no gender neutral in the French language, everything is declined as either male or female , even if it is an inanimate object. So la table ,fem, Le lit, masc. I have often tried to get French friends to explain how they actually think of objects , they obviously don’t think about the chair being attracted to the bed and having little footstools, but it seems that they, like us, think in words, and those words have male/female pronouns and adjectives.

so if Jeanne was to refer to herself as they, she would just have to say Elles instead of Elle. Which shows how silly it all is, really.

so if Jeanne was to refer to herself as they, she would just have to say Elles instead of Elle. Which shows how silly it all is, really.

Except because of the misogynistic French rule, if she felt even a little bit like a man she'd have presumably had to call herself ils.

But there is an early thirteenth-century French text about an ambiguously gendered person (Silence is born a girl, raised as a boy, and the personae Nature and Nurture argue over which - if either - gender Silence is). In the text, grammar is used to generate some ambiguity. It's not precisely by way of pronouns, but rather because the name 'Silence' (as opposed to something like Silentia or Silentius) doesn't sound obviously either masculine or feminine.

So people have been playing with these ideas in the original language. It doesn't seem that out-of-the-way to continue that line of approach?

(There is literally a passage in the text I'm talking about where they discuss whether Silentius or Silentia would be appropriate names.)

Is that really what that text is about? You talk about Nature and Nurture but don't mention Reason and survival as motivators.

Well, yes, it's what the text is about? Why do you think it isn't? Am I missing something about Reason and survival?

I am not a historian, nor an expert in literature whether medieval, English or French. So I will happily accept to be talking bollocks if anyone who is actually an expert would like to tell me I am.

But the existence of that story seems to me as a non expert to fit into context of other stories before and after that play with deception and gender roles. Viewing it as evidence of widespread and well understood thinking about non-binary or trans identities in the era of Joan of Arc seems to be a stretch.

I wasn't suggesting it as evidence of that, though? I was simply pointing out that medieval French speakers had already tackled the question of how you deal, in a language with grammatical gender, with the question of someone whose gender seems to shift, or be unfixed.

I think there are all sorts of issues with reading contemporary ideas about identity back into history, but I am bemused by the idea that the problem is grammar in the language, or pronoun use - neither of those would have struck medieval English or French speakers as issues, because they already had an interest in thinking about grammatical gender and its implications.

I'm not suggesting you're talking bollocks at all - I just don't follow what Reason and survival have to do with anything? I am literally talking about a text where the personified figures of Nature and Nurture argue about whether someone is a boy or a girl. Reason and survival don't appear.

I shouldn't have capitalised Reason as if it was a character, apologies, that was an error on my behalf. The sex of Silence is exactly known to the reader throughout though, and Silence becomes publicly known as female and a Queen by the end of the story. It's a discussion of gender roles, the limits placed on men and women during that era. Nature and Nurture appear as characters to argue over whether one can force a child born female to become male due to a pressing need. The ultimate answer in this text is that sex is real and ultimately women in that era will return to their gender roles.

The discussion about gendered grammar and pronouns is interesting but there's no evidence that Joan referred to herself as anything other than female. So even if people of that era speaking French of that era had a sophisticated grasp of gender roles and sex, Joan didn't use any of that ability to refer to herself as genderless or as anything other than female.

Ok, we're talking cross purposes.

You seem to think I desperately want to claim Silence, and Joan, as 'non-binary,' as if being 'non-binary' were some stable, transhistorically verifiable state.

I don't claim any such thing.

But I do think it is absolutely ridiculous to argue that this play can't work because French doesn't have a medieval gender-neutral pronoun. That's just a daft argument that ignores the way people have been interested in grammatical gender and its relation to social gender and to the sexed body, for centuries.

We have very little idea of what Joan did or didn't think about herself (and no reason to think she used male pronouns). That's because most of what's known about her is heftily fictionalised/written with a big slant. I think it's perfectly fair to say you don't warm to a play where she's not written as a woman, because she seems to you a significant female figure from history. But I don't think you can make that argument, and then insist on imposing very post-medieval ideas about language onto medieval French grammar. Either you want to say 'history is history, she was a woman, we must never change that, even in fiction' or you want to say 'we must impose modern ideas onto older texts; in modern French you don't mess around with grammar rules to indicate unstable gender, so won't accept it in a medieval context either'.

I get the impression you're thinking about this in a lot more depth and nuance than the creators of the show though. Or maybe it's the reporting of it.

I get the impression from the Guardian interview that the show's creator has thought about the sex/gender issues in some depth and did research them related to Joan (OK, "working class" is a clunker). I might not agree with her but her take on it is thought provoking and the play could be interesting. I could disagree but not dismiss.

That strikes me as an extremely polite way to tell me I'm over-thinking!

And perhaps I am.

Review in the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/sep/02/i-joan-review-globe-theatre-london-non-binary

What has ladylike behaviour got to do with being a woman,

Or why does wearing trousers means you aren't a woman

For, above anything, I, Joan is a space that lets the usually voiceless speak.

"Usually voiceless"?

This makes me so cross

Female figure challenges stereotypes- ah she's they ain't female after all

Take our heros away one by one

from the guardian review:

Beginning with a monologue on the divinity of trans people

good heavens