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.”"

Charlie failed at the first hurdle of making honest art by queering Joan of Arc.

Is there anyone these people won't use to push their ideology......even a canonised saint whose only faith was in Christianity isn't safe.

Questioning gender great

Buying into it much less so

And people will always create stories / "art" with their own interpretations.

You only have to look at any fan fiction site to see this in action. But it happens frequently with historical events too. So and so was gay, so and so was a vampire, what happened if the Nazis won, the Nazis were dabbling in the dark arts. The Great, The Tudors, The Borgias - all TV shows based loosely on historical events.

We might think someone's interpretation is weapons-grade bollocks, but I don't think it takes anything away from the history or that they shouldn't be allowed to be creative.

This is what is so annoying. 'Inclusive' is now 95% about trans/ alphabet people.

I'm very much looking forward to going to see it. Love the Globe. They've been looking at women in history in their original work for a while. Emilia (about Emilia Lanyier) was fantastic.

I think having 'they' all through the play would just be massively irritating.

So pretending she wasn’t actually a woman? That she was - well I’m amazed they didn’t go the whole hog and - plot twist - she who pretended to be she was actually a he after all….

But isn't Sinéad an avatar of Jeanne D'Arc?

Sorry ....I love her really!

This news is terribly ironic , given the recent experience of the lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage. Her play about Joan was scheduled to be put on in Philadelphia - iirc - but was cancelled after a campaign by trans rights activists. She had made some gender critical comments , apparently. Back to the days of censorship and the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

Thank god! 😂

One can only imagine the total wankery being spouted in the "creative concept" stages of this stunning and brave production.

What a load of old shit.

Compare and contrast:

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.

It is not a non-event - it is part of the drip, drip, drip of the erasure of women until human being are men and others. FFS.

She wasn’t non-binary. She also wasn’t a feminist “fighting the patriarchy” either. She was in all honestly a mentally ill teenage peasant girl, suffering from hallucinations. It suited the French King Charles VII and the men around her to use her as a mascot. The King even had her at his coronation- portraying her as “touched by God.”

The French essentially paraded a pretty 17yr old girl with a banner about dressed like a boy soldier for morale. She never actually fought in combat, although she was wounded once. But when the French lost a battle, she was captured by the Burgundians who then traded her to the English who then burned her at the stake for heresy and talking with demons. She was only 19 when she was murdered/executed. She wasn’t important enough to the French for them to try and do a prisoner exchange or lobby for her release- after all she was a mad peasant girl, just a mascot and thus disposable.

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.

Arf ...astonishing resemblance

The blurb for this makes it sound like one of those identikit YA novels.

Is the audience for those also a theatre audience? This just doesn’t sound interesting. I’m occasionally partial to YA wish fulfilment type novels myself, or at least I used to be before they started including gender tedium, but I would never pay theatre prices for something like that.

Oh fuck, is that who Charlie is? I saw all three of those all-women productions (they were at the Donmar). They worked with women prisoners to develop the plays, and I think some ex-offenders acted in them too. It was a really important and profound thing.

What a pity that Charlie obviously feels that now Charlie can rewrite the history of another woman/girl exploited and imprisoned by men and for men's gain.

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

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.

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 😏

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.

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