How insane to traduce a kick-ass woman like Joan of Arc

WITH the possible exception of Queen Boadicea, Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I are two of the most kick-ass women in history.

Both distinguished themselves in a male-dominated world – Joan in battle and Elizabeth as a Monarch at a time when women had very few rights save those afforded them by their husbands or fathers.

Queen Bess famously professed to have ‘the body of a weak and feeble woman but the heart and stomach of a king’. No man ever met her standards for marriage, and she remained – or at least so she claimed – a virgin until her death.

Likewise Joan, who even underwent an examination to prove herself truly the ‘Maid of Orléans’. Perhaps things would have been different had she not been burnt at the stake at the age of 19. By men, of course.

For generations, their stories have captured the imaginations of young girls and women. Both represent something important, something inspiring: the notion that a woman can be every bit equal to a man in her scope and ambition, that womanhood is not a permanent state of weakness or victimhood, that women can determine their own destinies, even if it doesn’t always go quite according to plan.

Their gender is a vitally important part of this. It’s what makes them feminist icons. Take that away and you dilute their power.

What makes Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I remarkable is that they were women – that is to say, human biological females – doing these things at a time when women weren’t supposed to do anything more than cater to the needs of their menfolk, produce babies and perhaps the odd bit of tapestry.

That is why the decision by the Globe Theatre to re-cast first Joan as ‘non-binary’ (on stage), then Elizabeth (in an essay defending the previous decision), offends so many feminists, including J.K. Rowling.

Of course the Globe is an artistic venue, and art is freedom of expression, which is an important right that must be protected, particularly in the light of the heinous attack on Salman Rushdie.

But to say that anybody who objects to the narrative of these new interpretations is ‘denying the historical existence of the trans experience’, as the author of the essay, one Dr Kit Heyam, has claimed, is disingenuous.

It’s really not about that (I certainly don’t want to deny any trans person their experience, historical or otherwise).

It’s to do with the fact that the identity of these two women – as bold, brave females in a male-dominated world, and therefore uniquely inspiring – is being questioned for no other reason than to feed a particular narrative.

Which is that because they acted like men, because they demonstrated characteristics most commonly associated with men, they cannot have been women. How sexist is that? Not only sexist, but it is also hypocritical. Because Joan and Elizabeth are, in effect, being misgendered – something that many in the trans community suffer and find deeply distressing, quite understandably.

Throughout history, strong women have been forced to take on the mantle of men because misogyny has required it. That is why Joan dressed as a man: it was the only way she could possibly be taken seriously.

It’s the same reason Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot, or the Brontë sisters published as Ellis, Currer and Acton Bell.

They all faced anti-woman prejudice, and they got around it as best they could.

All the Globe Theatre is doing is repeating and perpetuating that prejudice. It is saying that neither Joan nor Elizabeth could have done what they did unless they were secretly male, or possessed male characteristics.

In doing so, they are denying the pair their identities as strong, brave women. Can’t they see how insulting to women this is? How it attempts to deny us the few crumbs of history we can call our own?

Joan of Arc knew what she was, as did Elizabeth I. They both led lives of conviction and courage, and they led them as women.

For that, they are remembered, respected and even revered.

Let’s just leave it at that.