[The playwright Charlie] Josephine said the decision to make Joan nonbinary came after studying Joan’s life and realizing that Joan of Arc had been willing to die at the stake rather than stop wearing men’s clothing. This was “not a casual fashion statement,” Josephine said. “It was a deep need for them.” Josephine wanted to depict what it would have been like for “a young person in a female body, who is questioning gender in a very different society than what we live in now,” they said. “My younger self really needed a protagonist like this,” they added....
A quote from the Globe’s artistic director: “Everyone’s got an idea of how plays should be done and how historical figures should be treated. All 'I, Joan' was doing, [said], was asking, 'Who is Joan for now?'"
Do the play-makers care about Joan's identity — to herself — or are they appropriating her interest in her own identity for their purposes? I see an inherent contradiction.
Anyway, this issue has been around for quite a while. There's a long Wikipedia article, "Cross-dressing, gender identity, and sexuality of Joan of Arc." It cites scholarship from the 1990s. Excerpt:
The "holy transvestite" – i.e., transvestite female saint – was a common medieval archetype, and one of the grounds used to defend Joan's attire. Saint Marina followed the classic story: fearing for her virginity on her wedding night, she cut off her hair, donned male attire, and joined a monastery, passing herself off as "Father Marinos"....
The Condemnation trial found Joan's transvestism condemning....
The rehabilitation trial focused strongly on the transvestism charge.... As the trial noted, she wore "long, conjoined hosen, attached to the aforesaid doublet with twenty cords (aiguillettes)" and "tight leggings", with the cords being used to securely tie the parts of the garment together so her clothing couldn't be pulled off by her English guards. Guillaume Manchon testified, "And she was then dressed in male clothing, and was complaining that she could not give it up, fearing lest in the night her guards would inflict some act of [sexual] outrage upon her"....
One of the first modern writers to raise issues of gender identity and sexuality was novelist Vita Sackville-West. In "Saint Joan of Arc", published in 1936, she indirectly suggests that Joan of Arc may have been a lesbian due to sharing a bed with little girls and women.....
[Writing in 1996, Susan] Crane backs up the distinction between Joan and the holy transvestites, in that Joan lays claim to her virginity and her womanhood instead of burying it, identifying herself not with the traditional religious crossdressers – as Bynum notes, "as brides, as pregnant virgins, as housewives, as mothers of God"—but as a fighter. "Her continued engagement in secular affairs and her noninstrumental, secular cross-dressing queer her virginity – that is, they move her virginity beyond its canonical meanings in ways that suggest a revision of heterosexual identity."In her book, Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman [1996], transgender author Leslie Feinberg popularized the notion of Joan of Arc being transgender. Under the heading They Called Her 'Hommasse', Feinberg cites Evans and Murray on the "enormous importance" of Joan's male costume to her identity, and states, "Joan of Arc suffered the excruciating pain of being burned alive rather than renounce her identity ... What an inspirational role model – a brilliant transgender peasant teenager leading an army of laborers into battle."
In Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, transgender biologist Joan Roughgarden cites and agrees with Feinberg's assessment, describing Joan as a "male-identified trans person"...
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74 comments:
No better than a Penthouse Forum letter. They are just making this stuff up.
Directors have a wide latitude in how characters are portrayed. Why didn't they just put on the play without the announcement and let the audience figure out and judge what they see? Maybe it's because the true and highest art of our day is public relations and self-advertisement.
“Surprise, surprise”........in most best Gomer Pyle voice.
Did you know that before petard came to mean 'scheme' or 'plan' it was actually a frilly little piece of French women's lingerie? How ironic is that that women are being hoisted by something like that, isn't it! How delicious! What a funny little juxtaposition!
Lol, I'm just kidding. I made that all up. But who cares. It's the 21st century. It's a lie that identifies as irony. It's even taking pills to help it transition.
I see now that this wasn't a restaging of Shakespeare or Shaw, but a new play written by an actor in the company who considers themself(?) as non-binary. Still, Berlioz and Stravinsky let people hear how different their music was. They didn't just rely on press release and pre-performance interviews and op-eds to stir up controversy.
Margaret Thatcher was called the Iron Lady because... she was really a He.
90's tv courtroom drama judge: "I'll allow it".
What a bunch of morons. Joan wasn’t insistent upon men’s clothing because of gender dysphoria or whatever. It’s because the men’s clothing she chose was intrinsically linked to being a warrior. That was her statement, not that she was a man or non-binary, but that she was a fighter, and she would not have that status taken away from her.
Small quibble.
We know a surprising amount about what Joan thought from her own lips and we have a quite complete record of what her friends and her enemies thought about her.
Joan never claimed to be anything other than a woman.
Ever.
Just saying, maybe that should count for something.
And, not for nothing, it isn't like the Medieval period is lacking in females living their life in disguised as men. In fact there is more than one female saint who, in order to protect their virginity, cut their hair and entered monasteries under a male name.
Catholics have a long history of watching their saints and religious traditions appropriated by modern culture to push its own agenda.
If a woman who was an actual warrior wore men's garb so she could more easily fight and to discourage men from raping her, then maybe that's all there is to the story.
Historians are so tedious and apparently have abandoned all interest in historical facts in pursuit of imposing modern concerns on people who had very different motives consistent with the context of the times in which they lived. She wanted to be left alone and determine her own future and the only way to have such agency, and perhaps some anonymity at the time, was to be a man. Then the expectations and restrictions of what a young lady should and would do were gone, replaced by the assumption that he as a young man could and should do whatever he needed to do to survive and be left to his own agency.
I would simply ascribe Occam’s razor: she was simply a woman who wanted to do - and was capable of doing - ‘mens things’ so had to dress and act like a man to do them, and also simply didn’t proscribe to the gender roles of that time.
All this is doing, today, is trying to legitimize absurd notions by using a powerful historical figure as a role model - an appeal to authority. Ironically, this undermines the whole of women’s rights and equality (why do these minority groups keep on wanting to fight that fight? Always finding some edge case - that is experienced by both men and women - to keep the battle raging).
There are numerous women who don’t wear makeup or wear women’s clothing because it is impractical and serves no purpose. They are not trans-gender or any other gender, except what they are.
realizing that Joan of Arc had been willing to die at the stake rather than stop wearing men’s clothing.
so, the whole fighting the english, and saving france; was all just a smoke screen?
THE REAL REASON why she fought, was that she was gender dysphoric ?
As i asked earlier; can we STOP with the stupid fictitious stories?
Heinlein predicted that we would enter "The Crazy Years" as IF! we are stuck in "The Stupid Years"
Joan may have been trans/social with cause, but is there evidence that she entertained surgical, medical, or psychiatric facilities to corrupt her body, her mind?
The social progressives are exercising liberal license to normalize their modern model, but can they abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too? The Rainbow of rarefied division and exclusion was well chosen. Time will tell if followers of the Pro-Choice ethical religion avoid scalping themselves with the double-edged blade.
The ouroboros effect of progressive liberalism: woke and morally broke, but ethical.
Why did Joan not wear dresses? - reason
They don't make good war garments.
The interpretations all sound very modern to me, and rather facile. I'd be more interested in the medieval outlook. There were sumptuary laws at that time. As to sleeping many in a bed, that was common right into the last century. Heck, my father shared a bed with an older man until he was about six, at which point he was given a cot in the kitchen.
Everybody with a brain knows Joan of Arc was just a bureaucrat.
Men's clothing or soldiers clothing. Seems to be an important distinction that's ignored.
The gender benders are now taking off after saints. The movies are now featuring women How do we know they are women?) warriors. I understand that NetFlix LOTR spinoff is unwatchable.
It's come to a place where history written after about 2010 regarding such topics is presumed to lack credibility, and been replaced by some correct affirmation of current thought.
"They Called Her 'Hommasse" but she called herself "la Pucelle".
Sex and sex-correlated gender attributes (i.e. physical and mental). Clothing choices are a social construct, distinguished by sex in societies to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes. Placing women and children first serves an evolutionary purpose. Think of the babies, the future of organized free carbon in human fashion.
Sigh. I’m so weary of people using historical figures for their own agenda. And I’m tired of women being diminished in the name of trans or assuming a woman can’t behave or dress a certain way without being lesbian or trans. A friend was at a dinner party in SF last night, and guests were extolling the virtues of a Pete Buttigieg…hoping he’ll be President. I guess the desire for a woman President has now faded in favor of a gay man.
Joan referred to herself as Joan the Maiden. She did not see herself as a male or even androgynous. She did not have a fetish about men’s clothing. She didn’t refuse to wear dresses when held captive by the English because she was “trans”. She was supposed to be guarded by women according to the laws of the time but she was guarded by men and had several rape attempts while wearing dresses so started wearing pants again to help ward off their advances. This was all recorded contemporaneously and was one of the reasons her trial was later ruled invalid and she was completely exonerated. All LGBT “scholarship” is trash.
Joan refused to shed “men’s clothes” because it would have compromised her identity as a soldier. Not because she wanted to be a dude.
More disappearing women.
The Christian trope of many saint's tales is the story of a woman willing to die or begging God to take her to avoid being raped. What she is defending is her faith and either her purity or her fidelity to a spouse.
Several Orthodox sainted women, such as Saint Argery, were resisting Islamic men who controlled Christian lands and enslaved countless Christian women in sexual servitude.
However, Joan of Arc led fighters in the Hundred Years' War between England and France. She only wore men's clothes on the battlefield and in captivity, explicitly to avoid rape. Clerics in Britain and earlier in France debated about her disguise, for different reasons. None of this had anything to do with being transgender, nor did her reason for pleading to enter battle.
Of course.
This is the Age of Uranus, where males impregnate males, females impregnate females, and females impregnation males, and fetuses are sequestered or babies are delivered at the time of profit or convenience, respectively.
The solipsism is staggering.
Simply baffling for anyone to say, with a straight face, that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she wouldn't dress in women's clothing.
Does it not occur to them that they couldn't give the real reason: that she had raised an army against the English?
Funny, I don't recall Aya Stark claiming she wore male clothing because she thought she was "really" a man.
Who is Moses for now?
Who is Caesar for now?
Who is Jesus for now?
Who is Mohammed for now?
Who is Charlemagne for now?
Who is William the Conqueror for now?
Who is Elizabeth I for now?
Who is Abigail Adams for now?
Who is Theodor Herzl for now?
Every one of those is a stupid question. Taking anyone out of his/her historical context renders them historically irrelevant except to solipsists who fancy themselves as The Chosen who would have, if they'd been alive at time, shown the way to true enlightenment.
We went to Julius Caesar at Shakespeare's Globe earlier this year. The company has gone totally woke. Asked by my wife what I thought of the production, which included gender-bending casting, I said, "Too many parts were miscast."
It is tricky with Shakespeare, because women were excluded from the stage, so all the female parts were originally played by boys. I am sure that many boy actors were accomplished and charming in the female roles. But it is hard to go the other way, and make male roles convincingly played by women.
A nonbinary Joan of Arc? Well, the maid of Orleans did what she did, and then she got burned as a heretic by the English.
It seems to me that the historic Joan was pretty nonbinary. As a symbol of France, I'll take Marianne* any day.
______
*The official busts of Marianne initially had anonymous features, appearing as women of the people. From 1969, however, they began to take on the features of famous women, starting with the actress Brigitte Bardot. She was followed by Mireille Mathieu (1978), Catherine Deneuve (1985), Inès de La Fressange (1989), Laetitia Casta (2000) and Évelyne Thomas (2003).
[The playwright Charlie] Josephine said the decision to make Joan nonbinary came after studying Joan’s life and realizing that Joan of Arc had been willing to die at the stake rather than stop wearing men’s clothing. This was “not a casual fashion statement,” Josephine said. “It was a deep need for them.”
Yes, it was, you pathetic ignoramus (Charlie, not Althouse).
As the trial noted, she wore "long, conjoined hosen, attached to the aforesaid doublet with twenty cords (aiguillettes)" and "tight leggings", with the cords being used to securely tie the parts of the garment together so her clothing couldn't be pulled off by her English guards. Guillaume Manchon testified, "And she was then dressed in male clothing, and was complaining that she could not give it up, fearing lest in the night her guards would inflict some act of [sexual] outrage upon her"....
And there we have her "deep seated need", not to get raped.
I'm a very trusting person. So when Charlie Josephine claims he made Joan of Arc "trans" for a reason that has no support in history, I believe Charlie that there actually is no legitimate reason to do it, and he just did it because he's a worthless scum bag.
And that the same will be true of anyone who defends it
It's Pat!
Let's face it, men are better at being women than women are.
My dream is that all women's sports are non-existent after about the 6th grade level.
That's the only way to reel things back in.
Too bad a generation of girls will have to suffer, but if you want to make an omelette...
'They don't make good war garments.'
How does one explain kilts?
I don't believe the Roman Legion wore pants...
But her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when she agreed to stop wearing men's clothing, then burning reimposed when she renounced her agreement.
So she was martyred for her bad fashion sense?
What. too soon?
Joan of Arc was told by God to don men's armor and lead the French to victory. She did not wear men's clothing to make a solipsistic statement about her sexuality and only wore it again in prison to resist violation. Chastity belts were real. She did what she could with what she had.
But even if you are ignorant of, or disbelieve her religious inspiration, consider the social-historiographical significance.
What makes this so enraging is that, for many centuries, the strongest force for asserting women's humanity, their education, their safety, and their social worth was the Catholic hagiography of female saints, the Convent, and the Marian devotion to the mother of Christ. Neither Muslims, Jews, nor Protestants accepted this view of women. Catholics elevated women and thus transformed the Western World.
And now a bunch of trans narcissists want to claim this extraordinary evolution as theirs. And distinctly not ours.
Do the play-makers care about Joan's identity — to herself
In my best Ricky Gervais voice:
to hisself
Meanwhile back in the real world: NYT opinionist wants to know "What is owed to Pakistan, now one-third underwater?"
Pakistan and Bangladesh go underwater every monsoon season, so our foreign aid outlays certainly are designed to help.
While the Pakistani government blames climate change for the flooding, communities are criticizing the government and local authorities for allowing builders to construct hotels and large structures on the banks of rivers.
The way the story came down to me, she promised — swearing on the Bible or holy relics or some such — that she would not ever wear men’s clothing again. Then they removed all the women’s clothing from her cell, leaving her with the choice of putting on men’s clothing or running around in her shift, a thin, white, cotton undergarment that concealed hardly anything. Like January 6th, it was a setup.
In search of some more delicious and nutritious history books I stopped by my friendly local bookseller. The post-church crowd was out in force--they also have a restaurant--and as I drove by looking for a parking space I noticed an individual smoking near one of the entrances.
A 30ish individual, very thin, with a wispy dark beard and hair, wearing a dowdy ankle-length sundress and sandals.
I thought for a moment that it was yet another national celebrate freaks and loonies day but it was just ximr.
I left the store with a pbk copy of Professor Roland Ennos's "The Age of Wood." It is in the vein of Postrel's "Fabric of Civilization" and Kurlansky's various titles--"Salt," "Cod," etc. I've learned a lot just from the first six pages.
I browsed some new hardback releases, including a study of Napoleon 1811-15 by Broers (second volume; I have not read the first) and a biography of Marshal Kutuzov by Mukharidze (sp?)
Go professors, go!
I find it particularly repugnant when cultural mafiosi from today appropriate dead people - unable to speak for, elaborate upon, or defend themselves (Abraham Lincoln was gay! Joan of Arc was trans!) in their efforts to propagandize for and normalize their own mental illnesses.
Evidently boys grow up to be better women than girls do.
You know, you can fuck a snake. I don't advise it, and it's not clear why you would want to, but it is undeniably possible, so I suppose we should give some idiot a grant to investigate.
As a Frog myself, I would appreciate it if the Brits would mangle the memories of their own patron saints and leave mine alone.
How about they work on St. George & St. Andrew, who no doubt had their own perversions to dredge up --- "No, no, St. George didn't kill a dragon. That's a mistranslation. He killed while in drag!"
serious question, for all you womb people...
Does it Bother YOU? That you are Officially LESS THAN HUMAN now?
When (if) you worked and struggled, to make things better for women..
Did you realize, that the only women that will benefit, are chix with dicks?
The Trans movement is all about erasing women. They believe men can and are better women than women are. This play is just a recent and powerfully illustrative example of this.
Anyone that cares about women being tr5eated as equals should reject and fight the rans movement. I hope this play fails.
At Wesley Yang's "Year Zero" SubStack, his undercover education correspondent, nom de plume "Moonlight Piglet" says...
There’s a lot about gender theory that I have problems with, but this in particular is what makes me really furious. Every one of my colleagues, if asked, would immediately say that gender stereotypes were harmful bullshit – yet they’ve created (or at least encouraged) a sorting system where “girl” is the category for feminine children, “boy” is the category for masculine children, and anyone who even comes close to the edges of either gets plucked out and relabeled non-binary. It breaks my heart to think these students are growing up in such a rigid, self-policing culture, where the gendered expectations I thought we’d put behind us now structure their basic sense of self. When I was their age, my school had a fair share of bullies who would taunt girls with short hair by saying they must really be boys – but at least the school administrators back then didn’t agree!
So yes, TERFs are absolutely right to say that gender theory and gender stereotypes are inseparable, and that the pressure is coming down hardest on gender non-conforming kids.
The entire purpose of the trans movement is to erase women. This play is just a recent and powerfully illustrative example of the erasure.
Anyone that care about women be8ing treated as equals should fight tooth and nail against this movement. I hop they play fails.
It looks like Women were getting all uppity and thinking they were people.
Now the Regime is treating you like they treated men for the last couple decades.
It is time for you women to learn that you are peasants too.
The trans bs has made it so average person like me often wonders if a woman is actually a man.
I read something about, and saw a photo of, a woman new to me. Mary McCord. After seeing her picture, I went to wiki to see if she was born with a pecker.
Goggle her pic, and see if I am kidding.
They arent men or women they are some kind of chimera.
Heinlein predicted that we would enter "The Crazy Years" as IF! we are stuck in "The Stupid Years"
Makes me want to dig out my old paperback copy of I Will Fear No Evil - I think that's the one where he put in interludes featuring headlines from newspapers as illustration of the Crazy Years - and see how many of those headlines are now just yawners.
(Not a great book. I understand his wife published it, barely edited, for ready cash while he was recovering from a stroke.)
I have always been under the impression she wore men’s clothing to avoid being raped. The hosen that men wore required a lot of tying and knotting and covered the genitals, so it would take a great deal of effort for someone to get them off of her, compared to a woman’s dress.
The Hopelesd gadfly: "Meanwhile back in the real workd..."
Lefty gadfly is desperate to change the subject away from his psychotic gender-nazi allies.
Gadfly, you can pretend you can wish this away for the good of your New Soviet Democratical party, but you cannot.
Kilts? Tunics a la Roman Legionnaires?
Name me the army that has ever, in all of history, gone to war in ankle-length skirts with or without petticoats.
If you haven't seen The Incredibles, the following will be lost on you, but let me quote Edna:
NO CAPES!
The greatest trick the men could ever pull was to convince everybody that anybody could be a woman if only they could say they are.
...they realized that to be in power you didn't need guns, money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn't
Males playing the part of females. One step forward, two steps backward.
Males politically congruent to females... interchangeable, exchangeable, disposable. You've come along way, BambinX. One step forward, two steps backward.
Wait, "Marianne" has a face?
[googles]
Huh. The things you learn here.
(And I've done graduate work in European history.)
The only good portrayal of Joan of Arc was by Jane Wieldin in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure".
I wonder if these people who are writing about her being trans also think that she is a saint and God was speaking to her. Or, do they think she was delusional and hearing voices. If she was delusional, would someone with auditory hallucinations be a good representative of a trans person?
(I think she dressed in clothing designed for men for the sake of utility and self-defense - to deter rape).
If they think she was actually taking instructions from God, isn't DNA a set of instructions?
The only good portrayal of Joan of Arc was by Jane Wieldin in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure".
In my head, Joan looks and sounds like Ingrid Bergman.
“Everyone’s got an idea of how plays should be done and how historical figures should be treated. All 'I, Joan' was doing, [said], was asking, 'Who is Joan for now?'"
Joan fought against the system. Being trans is being a part of the system, now.
A lot of what-ifs by some artsy person. But Joan of Arc was real and did real things. And those real things are why she is there as a saint and why the French Republic names naval ships after her.
Guillaume Manchon testified, "And she was then dressed in male clothing, and was complaining that she could not give it up, fearing lest in the night her guards would inflict some act of [sexual] outrage upon her"....
sounds like she was wearing men's clothing to prevent from being raped. Not quite the same thing as being a transvestite.
All I can think of when I see "I, Joan" is "I, Tonya" - and then I laugh, as was the "I, Tonya"'s screenwriter's intent.
They're letting women perform at the Globe?
One supremely brave thing Joan did that is often overlooked - by her own understanding of her mission, she was divinely protected during her mission to see the Dauphin crowned properly in Reims. That done, she wanted to return home but the Dauphin talked her into going back into the fight, which she did, believing that she was no longer under protection and subject to - well, exactly what happened.
It took a while but the thread finally hit 69.
In opera, there are 'trouser roles'--women performing as male characters.
Transgender Warriors... like Nero, Mesaaline ,Caligula, Cladudius,Heliogabalus..will they claim them too?
Yeah, yeah. Lincoln was gay. Jesus married Mary Magdalene. Captain Ahab had a whale fetish.
Somebody in the past is always easy to be used as a pawn for today's garbage politics. They're dead and can't speak. (Yeah, I know Ahab was fictional.)
Oh such "evidence" lurking in the imagination! I preferred blue jeans and shorts, climbing trees, sports, a good argument or tustle, and I was even good at math ! I even did a little sword jousting and horseback riding. Guess what ! I like men and have children to prove it !
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