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

[Gymnopedie]

Dear God, when will it stop???

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.

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'd only just got my head around comprehending that Queen Elizabeth's mother was Black. Now this.

Reading that leaves me wondering why people like the author of that article think 'gender' is so important.

Gender is just a set of cultural and societal expectations of how someone should live or dress according to their sex. Where and when we live governs how much freedom we have to break away from these expectations.

In Europe in the 21st century we have a great deal of freedom in this respect. Why do people like Kit Heyam think gender is so important when we have so much freedom to break these rules? And why have they internalised 'gender' in this way, when it is something which is imposed on us from outside? What they are really talking about is personality. Is that what they mean by 'identity'? Why the need to compartmentalise into 'gender'?

I guess this is what feels dumb about what I can find out so far about the analysis in I, Joan. Dr Heyam's saying Joan was driven by what she experienced as an external spiritual force to present as nonbinary/to wear men's clothes and that it was part of the attack on her (I guess they would say a gender critical style attack) to treat her as if she were still a woman. That if the self identification as nonbinary/male had been accepted she wouldn't have been put to death?

Which does slightly suggest there's a female Joan who really rather deserved what she got, being still a woman.

Is it saying that she deserved what she got, or just saying that no matter how much she might have wanted to, she couldn't identify out of being a woman because it's not possible to change sex?

Are they just saying that they would like an ideal world where people can identify out of their sex, but because we can't change sex, they can't do that?

In which case they're agreeing with the gender critical view that people can't change sex.

I suppose the only difference is that they think they can browbeat the rest of the world into their belief system that people can change sex. And they don't see that this wouldn't be a utopia for women who would still be treated as second class citizens unless they identified into the 'trans' class.

As an aside, the You’re Dead To Me episode on Joan of Arc is a good listen.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07pj5m9

I'm just gobsmacked by the people who claim to know what dead people were thinking.
A woman dressing in historically traditional male clothing, or taking on a leadership role in a patriarchal society MUST have considered herself trans or non- binary; there cannot be any other reason.
FFS 🙄

And yet when there's any discussion about living people, those same people who are so keen to trans the dead insist that gender expression is completely different from gender identity and we can't make any assumptions from someone's clothing or behaviour.

Saw this earlier and thought you guys would appreciate it. My DD (15) sent it to me. She’s just created a new separate twitter account so that she can follow some GC feminists. She has always erred on this side of the debate but hasn’t realised until now just how funny and intelligent the posters were on this side of the fence! She’s been finding new peaks all day long. And she just showed me Debbie Hayton’s profile and said “hang on, I’m confused. This person has a trans flag on their profile but is actually making sense?”

I think the fact that Elizabeth I’s mother was executed by her husband because she kept miscarrying and wasn’t able to provide him with a male heir likely has more to do with Liz’s decision not to marry or risk pregnancy by taking a male lover than any modern idea of “gender”

Yes, I think this is the real issue. It's not a robust enough idea to really produce anything interesting. It just seems like political posturing.

More than anything it reminds me of the film Amorite, which decided to transform the biographical subject into a lesbian, apropos of nothing. Really just to make it seem edgy and interesting, because obviously a single Christian woman who was a caregiver for her mum wasn't interesting enough in herself, whatever she accomplished for science.

I have wondered what they might make of mitered abbesses. It strikes me that part of the issue is a real lack of understanding that women's roles historically were actually not as consistently limited as many people think, there was a fair bit of scope for women to have power in some periods, or to behave in different ways, though not always in the forms modern people recognize. In fact many men in these periods didn't have much power either, or it didn't come in the same forms as modern power and political autonomy, and their social roles were also not something they had much choice over.

Exactly this.

What's interesting is that is usually explained as an example of blind casting.

It's difficult not to be suspicious though that it was actually a very canny attempt to be edgy.

Yep
Her dowry was the crown and a kingdom and surrender of her royal powers.

Her marital risk was ongoing rape, beatings, imprisonment for marital disobedience, death in child birth, death post birth from complications, have any children used as hostages.
I have no idea why a child who grew up Royal and declared bastard knowing that she could be killed at the whim of those in power would not think that a grave as dower land was a great idea.

The correlation between the increase in women's rights and profile in society with the rise in the gender ideology movement is clear. In the last century women came a long way in fighting for our rights and freedoms, our safety, recognition in the arts, sport, business and our contribution to history. Just as things are improving, suddenly males are claiming this space and it feels like they're cancelling out our achievements. Just as we escape from the gender stereotypes which have dictated men's and women's lives, they are suddenly being reinforced. I'm all for artistic exploration in the theatre but surely to take Joan of Arc's actual gender away from her is to detract from the extraordinary nature of her story.

I don't have a problem in the abstract with theatre playing around with anachronisms.
If this production existed in a cultural moment where this debate was not so present and so hotly argued, I'd probably feel more charitable towards it. In its context though (as someone points out, the whole cast has declared their pronouns and the writer is self-declared non-binary), it cannot seem like anything other than a cynical exercise in stirring up controversy and titillating those who are titillated by stuff like this (reference the promo image of a clearly female and young person in ye olde version of a chest-binder).

Yes I thought that would be coming. A strong ruler, not married, not a royal brood mare - can’t have been a woman.

I haven’t read Elizabeth I speeches in a long time, but from what I call when she calls herself “your Prince” it’s usually when she’s quoting Machiavellian principles of governance and low key warning them that she’s quite capable of an off with your head order. I don’t recall her referring to herself as “king” or “your king” but sometimes talking about “kingship” which is really synonymous with “regnant monarchship” only much easier to say and be understood. I feel this academic may not be very widely read in the literature of the times or the education of English royalty then. Because it’s almost like they had an agenda and then did a “find on page” search of transcribed speeches and writings of Elizabeth I and skimmed about without really looking at context.

For all, that Elizabeth I certainly lived as a woman and was treated as one. So there’s no evidence from her actions she was non-binary. The dressing in masculine/mens clothes was actually a fashion trend amongst the court during part of her reign…and it wasn’t the first or last time such a fashion trend hit high society in England. So that means very little as well. Donning armour to speechify and lead an army- also not uncommon amongst royal women of the era. In fact a big deal was made about her step grandmother, Queen Isabella of Spain, because not only did she don armour and lead her army from horseback, but she was also heavily pregnant when she sacked the city of Grenada.

Very interesting.

Can you imagine what we could have said to them ‘in the mid 1900s you’ll be able to fly in tin boxes with wings around the whole earth (cos it’s a globe). Many people will have tin boxes on wheels that you can drive from London to Edinburgh in less than a day. We will have clean running water in our homes for decades, multiple toilets and a sewerage system, electricity power to machines that wash clothes and dishes. Central heating. Then contraceptive pills. Antibiotics. Vaccinations. ’ Explain all that and at the end say oh yes and then in the 2020s there’s gender ideology….

Is the original essay to be found somewhere? I can only find articles about it.

It’s here.

Meh. I am as bothered about this as I am about history from a modern feminists/class/socialist/whatever perspective. Using historical figures to explore whatever ideology is what some academics do- and I say that as a very run of the mill historian. Exploring J Of A and Elizabeth I from a trans perspective is to be expected. You don't have to buy into it.

In my opinion Joan of Arc is not particularly a heroine and her story has been rewritten a million times. She is what modern people want her to be -pious saint, religious fundamentalist, mentally ill teenager, feminist icon, pawn of the patriarchy. It's what some historians do. And this isn't even history its a made up play.

However I agree with this

@DameHelena If this production existed in a cultural moment where this debate was not so present and so hotly argued, I'd probably feel more charitable towards it. In its context though (as someone points out, the whole cast has declared their pronouns and the writer is self-declared non-binary), it cannot seem like anything other than a cynical exercise in stirring up controversy and titillating those who are titillated by stuff like this (reference the promo image of a clearly female and young person in ye olde version of a chest-binder).

Great, thank you!

Well she did say she had the heart and stomach of a King (and a King of England too!) So many she was gender fluid. Like Pips Bunce but with a better wig

Honestly I can't take any of this stuff seriously. These people claim to be feminists but can't get to grips with women's liberation looked different in different eras.