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

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.

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.

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?? )

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.

grandtanteJE65 an excellent post.

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?? )

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.

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.

Caleo

Biologists believe sex is a spectrum.

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

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.

icanhandthemback

I certainly don't pick a side on these discussions and find them useful in consolidating some of my thinking or thinking afresh. I also have several members of my family through the generations who are gay or trans so certainly am not close minded to new thinking. However, for somebody who thinks,

It's dishonest and bullying and why I avoid these discussions

it strikes me that you are heavily involved in most of them. That is not to say that you shouldn't be but either you are deluding yourself or you are being disingenuous. To be honest, you could do yourself more favours by standing by your convictions and giving straight answers to the questions put by people. I often look to see what you say, with interest, but find it quite frustrating when you don't.
This is not meant to be an unkind post, just a reflection on the posts I have seen.

@Violetsky

Sorry, forgot to put a name to this.

I certainly don't pick a side on these discussions and find them useful in consolidating some of my thinking or thinking afresh. I also have several members of my family through the generations who are gay or trans so certainly am not close minded to new thinking. However, for somebody who thinks,

It's dishonest and bullying and why I avoid these discussions

it strikes me that you are heavily involved in most of them. That is not to say that you shouldn't be but either you are deluding yourself or you are being disingenuous. To be honest, you could do yourself more favours by standing by your convictions and giving straight answers to the questions put by people. I often look to see what you say, with interest, but find it quite frustrating when you don't.
This is not meant to be an unkind post, just a reflection on the posts I have seen.

Caleo

Biologists believe sex is a spectrum.

Care to name any respected biologists who believe this? Lord Robert Winston, that most eminent biologist, has stated categorically that there are two distinct sexes and they are immutable.
What kind of gametes do all these people on a sex spectrum produce? Like all species that use sexual reproduction humans have one sex that produces large immotile gametes, and another sex that produces small motile gametes. You can call the two sexes anything you like but they remain two distinct sexes.

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

Where were the two deleted pages? Have I missed something?

It would be interesting to know wouldn't it Lathyrus? The only pages of posts that I've seen deleted recently were indeed bullying and the OP was banned. Again.

Just a trivial attempt at grabbing publicity for the Globe. The RSC never needed such ridiculous tripe.

Where were the two deleted pages? Have I missed something?

I thought it was pretty much an academic discussion apart from one or two more personal posts.

The Tilbury speech was the Queen claiming the right to be an honorary man.

Biologists believe sex is a spectrum.

That's the context I was talking about.

Twisting words
Assumptions
Personal comments (at one point 2 pages worth deleted)
Assigning thinking
Assigning feelings
Policing the language of people you don't agree with like "cis" but allowing it from people you do agree with

It's dishonest and bullying and why I avoid these discussions

I'll hide this thread now, it never changes

That wasn't to you Lathyrus it was to VS and was meant to immediately follow her post.

And once again Q.E.D.

Would you care to name and shame?

Or is your accusation of bullying deliberately vague so that you can’t be called out for it.

Ah just another GC bully then

Have fun

ExDancer

How do we know that Q Elizabeth 1st used those actual words at Tilbury? Is there a written copy somewhere?
All we really know is that she made a rousing speech to the troops.
Any suggestion of her having claimed to have masculine tendencies could have been incorporated later (probably by a man)

??? probably indeed.
Just as likely would be that Henry V at Agincourt was really Henrietta in a trans rôle or even Nelson with the “England expects . . .” speech, galvanising the crew with womanly wiles.