Shhh let us insult you some more

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

They don’t see how insulting it is? Really?

Elizabeth I will be transgender in ITV drama

She will? Why? Because women are too weak and inferior to have the top job?

Elizabeth I will be portrayed as transgender in a forthcoming ITV drama.

The Tudor queen, who never married and established England as a rising imperial power, will be shown as a biological man in the six-part series next year.

The independence of the “Virgin Queen”, who ruled from 1558 to 1603 and defeated the Spanish Armada, has given rise to improbable conspiracies that she was a man masquerading as a woman.

Claims of her being a trans woman will be a central focus of the new series, titled Majesty, in which the monarch will be played by a transgender woman, according to reports.

So, insult piled on injury. Hey don’t stop there. Do a series on Jane Austen, because obviously no woman is intelligent enough to write Emma.

In 2022, academics working for Shakespeare’s Globe in central London said she could have been non-binary, when people believe they are neither male nor female.

Elizabeth I was presented as such in an essay published by the theatre which referred to the female monarch with the gender-neutral they/them pronouns.

Feminist thinkers have raised concerns that casting doubts on the womanhood of prominent women because they defied gender norms and did supposedly “manly” things will effectively write them out of history.

That plus the fact that it amounts to shouting that women are too weak and brainless to accomplish anything.

James Strong, the director behind the production company, previously said the series would “re-imagine” history to make it “modern and relevant to today’s viewer”.

“The brilliant scripts are a director’s dream as we get to re-imagine and recreate an iconic piece of English history and tell a period story that looks stunning but also feels modern and relevant to today’s viewer,” he said.

Yeah bro, claiming women didn’t do those important difficult things because they’re too stupid is the best way to feel modern and relevant to today’s viewer.

Comments

12 responses to “Shhh let us insult you some more”

  1. Barbyea Avatar
    Barbyea

    If Elizabeth had been male, Anne Boleyn would not have been executed, and there would have been no reign of Bloody Mary. No one would care if the king were a cop.

  2. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    If she had been born male, it’s possible her mother may never have been beheaded. It’s an insult to women in so many ways…

  3. Acolyte of Sagan Avatar
    Acolyte of Sagan

    It seems that her “I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king” speech to the troops at Tilbury has come back to bite her on the bum.

  4. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    In case iknklast’s comment looks redundant – the one by Barbyea (welcome aboard!) hadn’t appeared yet.

    Good point the both of yez.

  5. Freemage Avatar
    Freemage

    Even ignoring the notion that Liz would’ve had an easier life if born male (as well as changing the course of history), how is this supposed to have worked?

    Liz was in the public eye from day one. Is the claim that, as the baby was born, the future queen of England looked down at his penis, then bawled so loudly that Henry and Anne were immediately moved to become instant gender ideologues who arranged for the infant to be raised as a girl?

  6. Piglet Avatar
    Piglet

    I just hate how stupid the whole thing is. FINE, you want to make a historical movie where somebody is retroactively transed, sure, whatever. History is public domain. You can pick anyone across thousands of years and hundreds of countries – so why go with the woman whose entire life story revolves around the unavoidable fact that she wasn’t lucky enough to be born a boy? And who wouldn’t even have existed if her half-sister had been lucky enough to be born a boy? Nonbinary-identified Elizabeth I at least makes some kind of sense, as a woman who is traumatised by things that she and other women around her have suffered due to being female, and wants none of it. But Elizabeth I as an MTF? That’s Trump-tier stupid.

  7. What a Maroon Avatar
    What a Maroon

    They’ve found a long-lost draft of the Tilbury speech:

    My loving people,

    I use they/them pronouns….

    I know I have the body of a weak and feeble transwoman, AMAB but having undergone gender-affirming care at the age of 14, but I still have the heart and stomach of a king, even if they chopped off the naughty bits, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any TERFs of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm (etc.).

  8. Mostly Cloudy Avatar
    Mostly Cloudy

    Funny how it’s never Pericles of Athens or Alfred the Great or Abraham Lincoln who these people decide to depict as “trans” – it’s always a female leader, like Joan of Arc or Elizabeth I.

  9. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    Ooh, Mostly Cloudy, good point. I hadn’t thought of that.

    They might depict those men as gay, but as trans (and therefore, by their reckoning, women?) Nope.

  10. Alison Avatar
    Alison

    Given the date, are you sure it’s not a pisstake?

  11. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Pretty sure, on account of how it fits the pattern we’ve been seeing these many years now.

  12. maddog1129 Avatar
    maddog1129

    Barbyea and iknklast beat me to it by over 12 hours, but, geez, what a ridiculous premise. If Anne Boleyn had borne a son, (1) the Tudor succession would have been secured, and (2) there would have been no need for Henry to chop her head off to seek a new wife capable of giving birth to a boy. The child would never have been christened “Elizabeth.” Whatever he would have been named, he would have succeeded first, over his older sister Mary, and over any younger sons, so the theoretical reigns of Edward VI and Bloody Mary would not have happened. A large part of Elizabeth’s reluctance to marry was the loss of her stature as the sole ruling monarch. Not for her to hitch herself to one of several factions competing for power; no husband to make her subordinate. If Elizabeth were really a male, marriage and offspring would have solidified his power and secured primacy of the Tudor dynasty in ways that marriage and childbearing would not have been advantageous to a female monarch like Elizabeth.

    The entire premise is ludicrous, but then, that’s what transgender ideology does: it destroys reason.

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