So, this appears to be the week when the Globe theatre has decided to make it explicitly clear that gender ideology really is a cult. They have now deleted their clip of their new re-imagining of Joan of Arc, but for those of us who had the misfortune to see the hideous messianic message delivered in the sort of earnest yoof-talk, innit, that only painfully pretentious middle-class darlings think *real* people speak, in front of crowds forced to stand and watch a clearly female actor who everyone is supposed to pretend they can’t tell the sex of prance about on stage in a chest binder and a haircut last seen on primary school boys in 1978 talk feverishly about the magical nature of trans people, it was clear that this was not so much a play as a cult indoctrination process.
“Transpeople are sacred. We are the divine”. If that’s not cult-speak then I do not know what is. Some of us have been saying gender ideology is the new religion for over a decade. Finally, it clearly feels secure enough to make it blatant.
Joan is written by Charlotte, sorry, Charlie Josephine. *They* have so quickly changed from being a naice middle-class gel doing Theatre Stuff because mater and pater can afford to indulge their every whim to cool, edgy urban they/he with an unflattering haircut (wanting to look a bit minging is now apparently all it takes to not be female) that Google searches still show her as female and Charlotte. I can only conclude that she saw Legz Akimbo theatre company (slogan “put yourself inside a child) on The League of Gentleman and saw it as a career goal, not a rightfully vicious piss-take of clueless, middle-class right-ons thinking they can change the world with groan-worthy, belaboured wordplay, hyperbolic but ultimately trite and nonsensical platitudes and Being Down Wiv Da Kids.
In the fervent, overexcited voice of a cult leader addressing a fresh intake of acolytes, actor Isobel Thom - also non-binary, also using a terrible haircut to indicate that she is super progressive and has liberated herself from the shackles of patriarchy and is no longer a woman yadda yadda yadda because of course nothing says escaping the shackles of patriarchy like thinking womanhood is something to escape to become a real person - talks about how being trans is sacred and divine, full of multiplicity and creativity and all the usual seductive shit designed to make young people desperate to feel special and different and cool feel special and different and cool. I know I would’ve fallen for it absolutely hell for leather.
And it’s not at all sinister and creepy and fucked up and absolute horseshit, oh no.
It’s entirely cool and lefty now to hijack a play about an amazing teenage girl of the past who achieved incredible things to inform girls and young women now that in order to be anything, achieve anything, have any meaning in life, then you have to be male. Look at all the reviews for a play which openly states, I’m not a woman, I’m a warrior.
While the women and girls of Iran fight for their basic rights knowing it could mean certain death, here in Britain the supposed progressive Left is applauding a play telling young women that apparently no-one female can be warrior-like. No-one female can fight, or achieve anything. No, the message goes, the brainwashing goes, if you want to be anything at all in life, then you must be trans. You must give up being female. Look at the vile TERFs always banging on about female bodies, about pregnancy and periods and menopause and rape and wage inequality and domestic abuse and all of that. You can escape that, all of that, and be sacred and divine and magical and wonderful and achieve incredible things too, and all you have to do is hate those women and deny you’re female like them. Look how happy I am, in my chest binder and bad pageboy hairdo, look how freed from the shackles of disgusting female-ness I am. You can be too.
The last time I heard someone talking that much shit about being divine and sacred and special and whatever was when my mate A was off his tits on magic mushrooms in a field in Wiltshire in 1995. And at least he wasn’t trying to convince anyone to mutilate themselves and denial biological reality and feed a narrative that utterly upholds and strengthens patriarchy in its insistence that to be female just means an AGP wankgasm Barbie dream wardrobe and nothing else.
The Globe has now deleted their tweets, after getting ratio-ed so hard that it could practically send them back in time to get a bollocking off the very real Jeanne d’Arc. It also deleted this stupendous (and I don’t mean that in a good way) poem, which was written by an actual adult and not a moody 14-year-old who’s just been sent to their room without pudding for being rude to their mum at the dinner table.
Still, as I said to Glosswitch, at least this makes me feel so much better about all the terrible, terrible poetry I wrote as a teen Goth. I was practically Sylvia Plath compared to this.
“My beauty astounds them”. No comment.
Again, it’s more of the same. Trans is beauty, trans is special, trans is no-one understands me… and then finding someone who will understand you and encourage you to be as transgressive and broken and boundary-less as possible. All of it, all of this shit, is just the sly, seductive, come hither of groomers. That’s all it is.
And it’s so dangerous. Curry has a YouTube video entitled I Cut My Nipples Off Today. Jesus Christ. That’s not normal, sane or healthy. That’s not what someone who is revelling in their own power, truth and beauty does. That’s not someone who is making others jealous does. That’s not what anyone does! That’s the behaviour of a deeply troubled or deeply depraved or deeply both individual, and either way, they should not be being encouraged to influence young people and encouraged by establishments like The Globe. They should be receiving serious psychiatric help, not being encouraged by major theatre organisations. What has gone so deeply wrong with society that this stuff is being lauded at and promoted to children and supported by just about every organisation in the land and these people are being held up as role models, heroes, inspirational figures, even magical, special beings, demi-gods if you will?
Being in denial of reality and hating your body so much you want to crush it and deny it and medicalise and mutilate it is not special and inspirational, or divine and sacred, or creative and expressive, or making change and challenging norms, especially if you are female. It is a sign of serious mental illness. There is no stigma to that, but to heal, you must be helped to confront what is making you feel that way because hatred of one’s body and denial of reality and biology are not positive things to feel. It is a denial of being alive, full stop. It is the opposite of all the beautiful, wonderful things it so fervently demands it is. It is a death drive disguised as positivity, like the emaciated teenage girl who insists that her wonderful new diet regime means that she has never felt better, has never been healthier, has never looked better, even as the Doctors share scared looks over her head as they try to find a working vein to hook her up to a drip in A&E.
Of course, the sad thing is that I know that if I was a young person now, I’d be one of the people slagging off Hideous Old Crones like me as fascist transphobes who are scared of change and people being their true selves and whatever. The irony of youth is to imagine yourself as very deep and special with a Very Important understanding of the world, when in actual fact, you are shallow and ten-a-penny and know jack shit and the real understanding and real depth and real character comes from the hard work of getting over that, with all the disappointments and difficulties that life will throw at you. Messages like “you are sacred and divine” do the opposite of helping people cope with life and thrive and develop a real sense of self.
I have never actually thought Joan of Arc is a positive story, possibly because I am an atheist. Joan’s life was not a happy one. She heard voices - which is a sign of childhood schizophrenia, not being special - and I think that all these young people watching the play are unaware that she went through horrific torture, rape and medical abuse, not to mention one of the worst ways to die, after she was captured. Thinking you are divine and sacred is not a good thing. And it is not true or possible. You are just a person, same as everyone else. You have a sex, which cannot change. You get one life. This is all there is. Instead of trying to hide from reality by teaching children magical thinking, we need to teach them how to cope.
So sorry, you are not divine or sacred. No-one is. You’re normal. There is nothing wrong with your body the way it is. Coping comes from accepting reality. Welcome to the adult world, kids.
IMO Joan was a victim of manipulation by Gilles de Rais, who turned bandit and serial killer afterwards.
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