Mick Hartley

The Telegraph:

Joan of Arc was non-binary, secondary school pupils are being taught.

Lesson plans produced for English language students aged between 11 and 14 include the claim about the medieval figure, who is the patron saint of France and fought against the English during the Hundred Years’ War.

In the Who We Are anthology published by Collins, which is made up of “representative and inclusive contemporary texts”, a lesson plan includes a biography that reads: “Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.”…

Robert Tombs, professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge, branded the claim “insulting”.

“Joan of Arc fought as a woman and died as a woman,” he told The Telegraph. “To call her something else is insulting to her and indirectly to all women who are brave enough to risk their lives for their beliefs – as if women are incapable of heroism.”

Carolyn Brown, a retired psychologist now working with the Women’s Rights Network, said: “This is yet another ridiculous example of attempting to rewrite history and erase strong, rebellious female characters from our past.

“It’s insulting to suggest that non-conforming women are not women. Non-binary is a nonsense term – indeed the Supreme Court in the UK recently ruled against including it as an option on passports.

“It’s also another example of the junk science of queer theory being visited on children. It’s unhelpful psychologically to children’s development and is likely to cause confusion and anxiety.”

It is not the first time Joan of Arc has been dubbed non-binary. In 2022, the Globe Theatre put on the play “I, Joan” which gave her the pronouns “they/them” instead of “she/her”.

Ah yes.

In 2022, the Globe’s official X account posted a poem calling gender-critical women ‘bitches’. And at one point during I, Joan, Joan of Arc herself tells the audience that: ‘Women are worried about the wrong things; Twitter and toilets.’

Even more on the nose, the programme for the show contained an article that claimed that the real-life Joan ‘died for the right to crossdress’. It also declared ‘death before detransition’.