Elizabeth I may have been non-binary, claims Shakespeare’s Globe

Like Lathyrus, I’ve strayed on to trans threads before to be obliquely told I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m just trying to stir up trouble, but I’ll have another go.

I’m not an academic in this subject and I can’t find the Globe article to read. However it seems to me that the subject concerns historic female leaders’ perceptions of themselves and how being seen in what were then seen as male roles may have influenced that perception. And possibly, how they had to portray themselves for the general public at the time, when gender roles were so engrained. So I do feel that complaining about the erosion of women from history and trying to say this is misogyny is dramatic overreaction. I don’t think anybody was saying that Elizabeth, or Joan of Arc, weren’t women, or were denying their biological sex, are they? The point is that at the time they lived, they had to behave in a certain way to carry out the roles they had.

Anyway, I know that even using the word “woman” arouses complaints and long explanations of my disingenuousness, and there will be angry answers to follow. But until we can look at some of this without over-reaction, we’re going to get nowhere.

I only know one non-binary person IRL, and that person doesn’t want to change sex or gender and doesn’t want to be accepted as the opposite gender to how they were born, they just want us to call them they/them. So I do. But I’m sure I’ve got that all wrong and I don’t understand how the patriarchy controls our lives and is trying to erase us. That's what I was told last time.

Caleo

Biologists believe sex is a spectrum.

All of them? Every single one? I don’t believe your statement for one moment.

This sort of thing maddens me.

It has, during my adult life, in other words since 1968, been increasingly popular in the theatrical and in the academic world to claim that some or other historical figure was homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or whatever the modern trend is.

No account is apparently taken of whether there are any historical sources that can be conclusively taken to prove the thesis.

Elizabeth I may have been non-binary, but stop just a minute.

If your father had divorced his first wife, married your mother in dubious circumstances when you were on the way, married her again in order to remove the likelihood that you would be called illegitimate, got tired of your mother and had her executed on charges that in her own day and age, many people, including the Mayor of London, felt were a tissue of lies, would you be able to trust any man, ever?

In Elizabeth's case, dear daddy having got rid of her mother, married and produced a son and then decided that both his daughters of former marriages were illegitimate. He later married a cousin of Elizabeth's of whom she was fond, and had her killed too.

To cap it all, Elizabeth watched her elder sister trying to rule at a time when married women had no rights except those their husbands gave them, and having to battle either with husband or privy council every step of the way.

Surely these circumstances are just as plausible a solution to why Elizabeth chose not to fulfil the principal expectation of her day to a woman: to marry and produce a child?

Our day and age tends to feel that no adult can live a happy well-balanced life without sex. Elizabeth's time felt that no woman could lead a well-balanced life without marriage.

Surely, Elizabeth with her family history, cannot NOT have had serious doubts about marriage as the road to happiness?

She is also very unlikely to actually ever have slept with any or all the men that flocked around her throne - the risk of being called a whore like her mother, and coming to the same end was simply too great.

Doing so left her without "an heir of her own body" but no-one has yet conclusively decided what Henry VIII actually died of. If, as some of the symptons sources mention suggest syphillis are correct, his descendants may all have been sterile.

We don't know and never will.

The historical facts we do know, rather suggest that any woman with her family background would hesitate greatly to give up, not only her own legal rights to decide her future, by marrying, but her right to rule.

She had, after all, only to remember her sister's experience of being a married sovereign, or look at the debacle north of the border to feel that marriage and sovereignity did not go together, when you had been born female.

What annoys me about all this is the way that militant LGBTQ+ people (minority groups within minority groups) are trying to change everything to their way of thinking. I'm sure that, like the rest of us, most LGBTQ+ people just want to be accepted for who they are and get on with their lives.

I'm quite prepared to accept that people's identities cover a wide spectrum but not to have the whole of society - and history - taken over by people who have no respect for "ordinary" folk but expect us to respect them. All they do is cause resentment instead of acceptance.

OK I wasn't going to comment again but just this one...

What is it that makes people so angry about a suggestion that QE1 might have had to behave like a man 400 years ago to gain acceptance by the people? And that that may have influenced how she thought about herself? (Themself?? )

grandtanteJE65 an excellent post.

volver

OK I wasn't going to comment again but just this one...

What is it that makes people so angry about a suggestion that QE1 might have had to behave like a man 400 years ago to gain acceptance by the people? And that that may have influenced how she thought about herself? (Themself?? )

Why should Elizabeth have thought of herself as anything other than a woman doing what she had to do, to survive?

Grandetante has explained it very well.

Lathyrus

I’m not sure if I’ve been called a bully or not.

Don’t expect to know what is aimed at you and what isn’t. ‘Some people/posters’ is the usual passive aggressive phrase. There’s been another one recently but it escapes me just now. If you assume it’s aimed at you you’ll be accused of making it all about you, and if you don’t you’ll be ignoring people’s points. There are times when these threads are a masterclass in gaslighting.

volver

OK I wasn't going to comment again but just this one...

What is it that makes people so angry about a suggestion that QE1 might have had to behave like a man 400 years ago to gain acceptance by the people? And that that may have influenced how she thought about herself? (Themself?? )

Not really angry whether she was gay, bi or whatever. She might have been.

But all the evidence suggests not.

It’s the lack of academic rigour in the argument that irritates me. When research and rigour give way to bandwagons, it’s not just worthless but destructive.

Septimia said
I'm sure that, like the rest of us, most LGBTQ+ people just want to be accepted for who they are and get on with their lives.

It depends what's meant by that.
If it means accept someone as the opposite sex to reality then No, I don't, especially not if that is expected for absolutely anyone who chooses to say they are trans - rather than people who have a genuine problem.
I also don't accept that non-binary is a real thing in relation to sex. Of course it's fine in relation to how someone presents themself etc.

What is annoying is not that she compared herself to a man, or acted like one (if you go in for gendered expectations of behaviour) but that the only possible way that a woman could be as she was - a strong and competent ruler, a determinedly single person etc - would be if she’d really been male or at least not fully female.

It's purely an experiment in theatre. Did any of you object when Mark Rylance introduced Original Practices and played Cleopatra etc as part of an all male cast? He balanced it of course by having all female casts with women playing men's roles.

What is it that makes people so angry about a suggestion that QE1 might have had to behave like a man 400 years ago to gain acceptance by the people? And that that may have influenced how she thought about herself? (Themself?)

Speaking only for myself volver, I have no problem whatsoever in accepting that QE1 would have recognised that, in order to rule in the 16th century, she would have to demonstrate that she could rule "like a man"; feminine "weaknesses" such as love and ambition had seen the death of many prominent women around her. What I struggle to accept is that this must be because she was non binary or trans. There is absolutely no evidence of this whatsoever. She may have been lesbian, but there's no evidence of that either; it's just conjecture!

Come on people!
You're not being KIND.

Part of it is, as was discussed upthread. The theatrical side of it doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s the idea that this is a likelihood that is irksome- particularly when the ‘evidence’ is based on the Tilbury speech.

Policing the language of people you don't agree with like "cis" but allowing it from people you do agree with

Actually, I used the word 'cis' (is it technically a word or is it an acronym?) because I thought it would be less offensive in the context of this debate than 'real'. Which was what I was initially going to write...

I'm sorry this has contributed to your perception that you are being bullied.

Maisie, if you had said ‘real’ you would have been accused of being offensive. It’s more gaslighting, so don’t take it to heart.

VioletSky

Ah just another GC bully then

Have fun

.

In all the posts up to this one from VioletSky, I don't see anything that could be called bullying towards VS.

VS says she's hidden the thread and, indeed, hasn't posted again so it seems that my polite question to her, re gender dysphoria after the removal of gender norms, will not be answered.

Glorianny

It's purely an experiment in theatre. Did any of you object when Mark Rylance introduced Original Practices and played Cleopatra etc as part of an all male cast? He balanced it of course by having all female casts with women playing men's roles.

Well there’s a whole other topic.

Is it justifiable to portray a real person - alive or dead- inaccurately in the name of theatre, basing that on nothing more than an idea in your own head.

The living have some recourse to refute the fantasies of others. Are the dead just victims of time and ego?

Gosh, there’s all sorts of interesting avenues to explore on GN.

Doodledog

What is annoying is not that she compared herself to a man, or acted like one (if you go in for gendered expectations of behaviour) but that the only possible way that a woman could be as she was - a strong and competent ruler, a determinedly single person etc - would be if she’d really been male or at least not fully female.

And that this rubbish is being peddled to young women now - such as the writer and lead actor of the Joan of Arc play, both of whom identify as 'non-binary' female people.

Well everybody seems to have very developed ideas about this article, so can somebody link to it please? The article on the Globe website that I can't find?

After all, if we are going to have an informed discussions without making assumptions about what was said and what the intention of the article was, I'd really like to have read it, as I'm sure you all have.

Thanks.

I think she meant me.

She’d already posted a sort of “you don’t belong here post” addressed directly to me.

I thought I’d kept it at an academic discussion sort of level?

volver

OK I wasn't going to comment again but just this one...

What is it that makes people so angry about a suggestion that QE1 might have had to behave like a man 400 years ago to gain acceptance by the people? And that that may have influenced how she thought about herself? (Themself?? )

Nobody, as far as I can see, is angry about her 'behaving like a man'. They're angry that she is being perceived as acting outside the gender stereotype of a 'woman' which is commonly associated with that era and because of that, she couldn't possibly be just a 'woman'; she has to be something more nasculine... not 'pure woman'...

It's a very male orientated way of looking at 'women', isn't it?

MaizieD

^Policing the language of people you don't agree with like "cis" but allowing it from people you do agree with^

Actually, I used the word 'cis' (is it technically a word or is it an acronym?) because I thought it would be less offensive in the context of this debate than 'real'. Which was what I was initially going to write...

I'm sorry this has contributed to your perception that you are being bullied.

It was clear that you used 'cis' in an attempt to communicate clearly with those who follow gender ideology.
Doing that leads to increasing confusion, tho, as words and pronouns are used incorrectly.
The word 'woman' is sufficient when you mean woman and 'transwoman' when you mean man claiming to be woman.

Well I'd like to read the essay/article before deciding what the writer meant, wouldn't you MaizieD? Do you have the link?

Now I'm commenting again. Sorry! ?