Why is the Globe making Joan of Arc non-binary?

Feminists tend to be fascinated with the story of Joan of Arc. She was irreverent, impertinent, way more intelligent than her enemies, and was true to herself and her beliefs right to the end.

War hero and religious martyr, Joan has been described as ‘Jesus with a sword’. A 16-year-old peasant girl who decided to take on an entire army is a female to admire and hold up as a role model. But it would seem that we have to make allowances for an ‘intersectional’ and ‘inclusive’ approach and consider whether Joan was female after all.

A tweet from Shakespeare’s Globe theatre explained: ‘Our new play I, Joan shows Joan as a legendary leader who uses the pronouns ‘they/them’. We are not the first to present Joan in this way, and we will not be the last. We can't wait to share this production with everyone and discover this cultural icon.’

Why the title of the play was not changed to I, John I do not know. Surely, Joan is not androgynous enough?

As feminist writer Claire Heuchan pointed out on social media, arguing that Joan of Arc was not a woman is similar logic used by the church to burn her alive at the stake: the idea that wearing men’s clothes, military acumen, leadership and political authority are skills belonging to men.

Joan was all the more impressive and courageous because she was a woman. For many little girls growing up in a male-dominated, sexist society with male historical figures, both real and fictional, dominating the school curriculum and libraries, Joan existed as an exhilarating possibility about what one young girl could do against ranks of powerful men. Rewriting her as not female and presenting it as progress is deeply offensive and totally ridiculous.

Joan was charged with the crime of heresy, as have those of us that speak out against transgender orthodoxy, but we refuse the labels of TERF, bigot and fascist, just as Joan refused to surrender. She took on an entire army, but so do feminists when we resist the patriarchal boot.

I remember reading about Joan in a book about brave women in history, when I first became a feminist. There were few female figures that made it into literature and were it not for feminist historians there would be even fewer.

Playwright and directors have long swapped the sex of famous historical characters and mixed it up a bit. This can work brilliantly to make the point, often by feminist directors, that not all historical heroes were male. But unfortunately, the demand that we all capitulate to extreme trans ideology has made it impossible for Joan being re-represented as non-binary to be anything but the erasure of women’s achievements.

With swathes of young women being enabled to opt out of puberty, as we have seen with the emerging medical scandal at the Tavistock and elsewhere, it is even more important that females are accepted and celebrated.

Joan has long been a feminist icon, and the suffragette movement used her image on some of their posters. She lived in the 15th century when sex was the defining characteristic, when women had little or no rights, freedom, or choice. This is what made Joan extraordinary - she was female and challenged the constraints placed on women. The idea that a dead historical figure can be portrayed as though she existed as a different gender identity is quite unbelievable.

The whole point of Joan is that she was a woman in a man’s world. When the English held her as a prisoner and tried to prove she was a religious heretic they failed to find anything she had done that could justify her execution. The only heinous crime she was found guilty of was that she had dressed as a man. They said that was enough to deserve death and pronounced her guilty. When a woman is killed because she has dared to transgress rules and laws about how we should dress and act, as decided by men, that makes her a feminist martyr, not a they/them.