Bitchy History - November 23, 2025


Joan of Arc： The Original Girlboss (Who Got Burned for It)

The Real First Thanksgiving A Brief History of Setting Women on Fire

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

164.23

Word count

3,045

Sentence count

228

Harmful content

Misogyny

47

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

43

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Bitchy History, where we cut through the myths and nostalgia to get to the raw, 1.00
00:00:17.360 unvarnished truth about the past. With sharp analysis, a feminist lens, and just the right 0.99
00:00:22.640 amount of bitchiness, we're here to show you that history isn't just something to study, 0.97
00:00:26.300 it's something to question. Let's get started. 1.00
00:00:30.000 Welcome to Arc 2 of the Women's History series from Bitchy History. 0.98
00:00:36.240 In this arc, we are following women who scared people simply by stepping outside the lines drawn for them. 0.94
00:00:42.160 Joan of Arc hears voices, leads armies, and suddenly the English are extremely concerned about her outfit,
00:00:47.800 fit, and whether her visions are real or evil.
00:00:51.120 Midwives catch babies and manage pain, and somehow that turns into,
00:00:54.940 she must be sleeping with the devil. 0.79
00:00:57.140 And later, when the witch fires burn down, 0.80
00:00:59.020 we get the angel in the house and the cult of domesticity, 0.91
00:01:02.040 a prettier cage, but still a cage, 1.00
00:01:04.360 insisting that proper women stay in their sphere 1.00
00:01:07.080 while the public world belongs to men. 0.76
00:01:09.740 Underlying all of this is a much older global anxiety
00:01:12.820 about women who move too freely,
00:01:14.800 across land, sky, and social boundaries. 0.99
00:01:17.700 From bird women and swan maidens who refuse to stay caught
00:01:21.160 to flying witches and mystics whose bodies and spirits defy gravity, 0.99
00:01:24.640 cultures have repeatedly imagined powerful women as airborne, untameable, and therefore in need of 1.00
00:01:30.420 control. When we get to the early modern witch hunts, that fantasy turns lethal. Tens of thousands
00:01:35.960 of mostly poor women are tortured and executed for crimes that range from my cow died to she 1.00
00:01:41.800 seemed a little too confident with her herbs. Modern feminist writers point out that this 1.00
00:01:46.220 wasn't random superstition. It was a sustained campaign about who gets to have knowledge, 1.00
00:01:51.020 authority, and autonomy over their own body and work. We'll move from battlefields and
00:01:55.780 steak smoke to Girl Scout badges and parlor angels, tracing the through line from Joan 0.85
00:02:00.220 of Arc's armor to the salesmanship of the Fendment Mafia. Let's get started. 0.68
00:02:05.680 Imagine being a teenage girl who tells a king what to do, terrifies his enemies, 0.53
00:02:10.900 turns a losing war around, and then gets executed for wearing pants. 0.90
00:02:15.480 Welcome to Joan of Arc's life. Today we're diving into the paradox of the exceptional woman.
00:02:20.880 She's a hero when her success benefits the people in charge,
00:02:23.960 a witch, a hysteric, or a heretic the moment she breaks their rules.
00:02:27.780 Joan is Exhibit A.
00:02:29.060 She was canonized as a saint in 1920,
00:02:31.680 but in 1431 she was burned alive by clerics acting in lockstep with the English regime.
00:02:37.160 She remains one of the best documented medieval women,
00:02:39.820 thanks to two vast collections,
00:02:41.180 the 1431 Trial of Condemnation and the 1456 Nullification Trial that rehabilitated her name.
00:02:48.180 We have letters in her own voice, interrogations that were written down,
00:02:51.780 and witnesses from her village and the battlefield.
00:02:54.340 It's as close to a medieval microphone as we're going to get.
00:02:57.580 But having a microphone doesn't mean you control the soundboard.
00:03:00.460 Every retelling then and now gets distorted by politics and hindsight.
00:03:04.820 Joan is a massive star.
00:03:06.080 The evidence orbits her like planets,
00:03:08.360 and the gravitational pull of myth bends every beam of light that tries to reach us.
00:03:12.580 Meanwhile, in the courtroom at Ruin,
00:03:14.160 and every question was engineered to entrap, and every answer was filtered into clerical Latin
00:03:18.780 before it hit the page. So we have to keep that agenda in mind when we look at any of the receipts
00:03:23.280 left to us from history. So today, we will thread the needle. Joan the teenage commander,
00:03:28.460 Joan the defendant tried for pants, Joan the political problem, and Joan the ever-reusable
00:03:33.580 symbol. Spoiler, the patriarchy loves an exception, because it proves the rule.
00:03:38.980 By the time Joan walks on stage, France is exhausted.
00:03:42.680 The Hundred Years' War has become a multi-generational custody battle with sieges.
00:03:47.460 Factions split the French court, Armagnacs versus Burgundians,
00:03:50.980 while the English press their claim through the Treaty of Troye.
00:03:54.080 The country is desolate and divided, and the war feels accursed of God. 0.55
00:03:58.920 Later on, a gender plot twist. 0.80
00:04:00.900 Early 15th century jurists had hardened a no-queens custom
00:04:04.380 into what later readers call Salic Law,
00:04:06.640 a convenient ancient rule invoked to exclude women, or claims through women, from the French
00:04:12.200 throne. It's less a timeless law than a legal fig leaf designed to solve a political emergency and
00:04:17.940 erase inconvenient women's lines from the family tree. Enter Charles, the disinherited Dauphine 0.94
00:04:24.280 holed up in Chinon, and a peasant girl from Domreme, who insists heaven has a plan and that 0.99
00:04:30.080 she should be in charge of the logistics. This is also a good place for me to pause and let you guys 0.98
00:04:35.280 know that French is my arch nemesis as a language. I don't trust any language that has that many 1.00
00:04:41.100 silent letters. So please, please just accept that my pronunciation of these words are going
00:04:46.500 to be atrocious and just go with it. Many French historians have been emphatic that Joan should
00:04:53.180 step into the record not as dark, a later habit of attaching her father's name as in the noble style,
00:04:58.920 but Jean the Poussel, Joan the Maid, an identity that broadcasts chastity, divine mission,
00:05:04.080 and proximity to the Virgin, all in one tidy brand. And the brand works. In a kingdom whose
00:05:09.740 elites are out of ideas, a teenage girl with unblinking conviction looks like strategy. 0.98
00:05:14.820 Imagine Twitter-era virality, minus the internet. Suddenly, there's attention, movement, morale, 0.76
00:05:20.540 everything. The French don't just need troops, they need meaning, and Joan gives them both.
00:05:25.860 In early 1429, Joan reaches the Dauphine and persuades him to let her try the unthinkable,
00:05:31.700 Relieve Orléans. Soon after, she sends a letter to the English that is still epic six centuries
00:05:36.860 later. You men of England, go back to your own country. If not, I will make a war cry that will
00:05:42.520 be remembered forever. 5th of May, 1429. That's not modest piety from a maid. That's strategic
00:05:49.720 intimidation. Her role as commander is part tactics, part theater. She rides in white armor,
00:05:55.780 carries a banner painted with the names of Jesus and Mary, and insists on confession and discipline.
00:06:01.280 Soldiers who swore were fined. She ejected the camp followers, i.e. prostitutes. Somehow with
00:06:07.100 even those two rules, she improves morale, which is odd. She's not just a mascot. Contemporary
00:06:13.640 witnesses and accounting records place her in planning councils and at siege works. She pushes 0.97
00:06:18.940 for aggressive moves that hardened captains resist, and she wins. It works. Orleans is relieved. The 0.99
00:06:25.980 momentum flips. Within months, she's escorting Charles to Rims for the coronation that he
00:06:30.740 couldn't manage a decade ago. The theological payoff? A crowned king, blessed in the Cathedral
00:06:36.080 of Clovis, staged as God's endorsement. And yes, she did all of this while dressed in male
00:06:41.780 military clothing. Because that's what you wear to a war. The clothes are safety, practical on 0.65
00:06:48.180 horseback, protective in camp, and crucial in prison when you need to secure your body from
00:06:52.640 assault. We'll come back to that, because her enemies never stopped coming back to that.
00:06:56.840 In May of 1430, Joan is pulled from her horse during a sortie captured by Burgundian forces
00:07:03.360 and sold, yes, sold, to the English. She spends months in chains while a bishop on the make,
00:07:09.640 Pierre Cauchon, builds a French-language show trial for an English audience. Do not picture
00:07:14.860 a neutral courtroom like an episode of Law and Order. Picture inquisitorial procedure,
00:07:19.960 hostile examiners, and a defendant without counsel. Let's lay out the timeline.
00:07:25.260 Preliminary inquiries in January of 1431, public sessions begin 21st of February,
00:07:31.360 private interrogations, and a verdict by late May.
00:07:34.580 Joan's answers are razor sharp.
00:07:36.640 Asked whether she knows she's in God's grace, a trick,
00:07:39.840 Orthodox theology says no one can be certain,
00:07:42.340 and she famously replies that if she is not, she prays God will put her there.
00:07:46.620 If she is, he keep her there, a theologically elegant dodge that refused the trap.
00:07:52.120 But the court decides to invoke a simpler weapon. 1.00
00:07:54.360 gender panic. Among the articles against her, one repeatedly reappears, male dress. The judges 0.60
00:08:00.760 treat it not as logistics, but as rebellion against God's order. They had already forced
00:08:05.600 her into recantation, the so-called abjuration, after which she was told to dress properly.
00:08:11.120 Then, in a prison staffed by male guards, her woman's dress was reportedly removed or she was
00:08:16.320 harassed, and she put her men's clothing back on to protect herself. The court promptly declared
00:08:21.680 her a relapsed heretic. She is then abandoned to the secular arm. Juridical code for handed over 0.83
00:08:28.380 to be burned. Let's underline this hypocrisy. The same authorities who refused her an ecclesiastical 0.99
00:08:34.400 prison with women, who knew the risks she faced in a men's prison, then used her self-defense as
00:08:40.580 proof of damning obstinacy. The outfit became evidence because they decided that clothing
00:08:46.420 defined obedience. When a woman uses men's tools, male power calls it sorcery, not competence. 0.99
00:08:53.320 And then they lit the fire. May 30th, 1431. 19 years old. Last request, a cross held before her 0.87
00:09:00.960 eyes. Last word, Jesus. So now that we've gotten to the gory burning, let's talk about the politics
00:09:07.700 behind it. Heretic was the legal pretext. The political theater belongs to the Anglo-Burgundian 0.85
00:09:13.660 regime. The motives are painfully clear. Delegitimize the coronation at Reims by discrediting
00:09:19.420 its agent. If Joan's voices are demons and her clothing an abomination, then Charles' kingship
00:09:24.940 is tainted by the devil's midwife. Burn the messenger, scorch the message. Careers were 0.98
00:09:30.140 also at stake. The future bishop of Lizeau, Cajon, needed a victory that pleased his English overlords,
00:09:36.740 and swift execution demonstrates loyalty and doctrinal zeal. And the trial's circulation,
00:09:41.700 sermons, summaries, notarial abstracts, read like a media kit. Regine Pernaud notes how widely
00:09:48.760 versions of Joan's stories, pro and con, have proliferated. The point wasn't truth, it was
00:09:54.380 memory management, who gets to tell the story first. So yes, the English were furious at losing
00:09:59.760 to a teenage girl, but more importantly, they were furious at losing the brand war. Joan's banner
00:10:05.020 out-marketed their siege engines. Their only remedy was reputational arson. 25 years later,
00:10:11.300 the French crown is stable, the English have been ejected from most of France, and Charles VII is
00:10:16.100 ready for a do-over. The 1456 nullification proceedings interrogate dozens of witnesses,
00:10:22.060 Joan's family, soldiers, clerics that worked with her, and they shred the trial on procedural and
00:10:27.760 moral grounds. Regine Pernod emphasizes how Joan's self-chosen identity, La Poussel, becomes central
00:10:34.340 to her rehabilitation. Not a witch, but a maid. Not a demonic fraud, but a woman of innocence
00:10:39.600 misjudged by corrupted men. The earlier verdict is annulled. Cue the centuries of myth-making.
00:10:45.940 In Shakespeare's Henry VI Part I, he makes her a whore and a witch. Voltaire mocks, romantic poets 0.98
00:10:51.680 and novelists resurrect, Mark Twain idolizes, and in 1920, Rome canonizes. From witch to saint in
00:10:58.580 500 years, that's not historical correction alone, it's cultural need. Which brings us to the other
00:11:04.120 thing Joan became, a mirror for whoever needed one. If there's a contest for most appropriated
00:11:10.400 woman in European history, Joan wins the gold medal. In France, she oscillates between left 0.98
00:11:15.940 resistance and right nationalism. Francois Meltzer tracks how Maurice Bars in World War I
00:11:21.760 casts her as the model French woman, how right-wing polemicists make her a mascot of Catholic monarchy,
00:11:27.700 and how Jean-Marie Le Pen in the late 20th century literally uses her in a campaign imagery while
00:11:32.780 claiming to receive his orders from her. An irony, as Meltzer points out, considering the twin
00:11:38.420 hegemonies that murdered her were church and monarchy. Cross the Atlantic and Joan pops up
00:11:43.900 on U.S. propaganda posters in World War I, sword arm raised, face airbrushed into Hollywood chic.
00:11:50.580 She walks through cinema history with Meltzer cataloging at least 40 major film versions by
00:11:55.780 the end of the 20th century, diametrically opposed both in ideology and intent. She's a resistance
00:12:01.960 Dancefighter, Proletarian Saint, Marianne, and Mother Courage all in one. Every generation
00:12:07.680 remixes the same girl like a Taylor Swift rerecord. New production, same voice. But notice
00:12:13.460 the pattern. When Joan flatters our values, we praise her. When she violates our codes,
00:12:18.440 we punish her. The meanings change. The stakes—women's authority, bodies, and clothes—somehow
00:12:23.980 don't. Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan in 1923 is one of the single most influential modern
00:12:30.080 restagings of the story. Shaw flips Shakespeare's vilification into a portrait of rational,
00:12:35.600 principled stubbornness, a heroine whose clarity indicts the institutions around her.
00:12:40.560 Shaw also uses Joan to advance a theory of gender. In a world that assigns woman as a social role, 0.84
00:12:46.500 emancipation demands, in his words, that a woman repudiates her womanliness, that is,
00:12:51.820 refuses the prescribed duties that define her sex. Dr. Karma Waltonen folds this into a larger
00:12:58.380 shift charted by Thomas LeCour from medieval one-sex to modern two-sex systems, which then
00:13:04.380 gets weaponized to enforce a strict two-gender regime, which we've talked about in previous
00:13:08.920 episodes. Joan breaks that regime by simply doing what needs doing, and dressing accordingly. 0.63
00:13:15.440 Shaw's Joan becomes one of his unwomanly women, figures who refuse the trap of gendered scripts. 0.71
00:13:21.680 So what do we make of Joan? Feminist icon or patriarchal cautionary tale? Maybe both.
00:13:27.100 The benefits of exception are real. Joan's existence refutes claims that women can't lead 0.97
00:13:32.460 armies, strategize, or carry a nation's morale on their backs. But as Castor notes, contemporaries
00:13:38.360 framed her success as divine exception, not a precedent for other women. God can raise up a maid 1.00
00:13:44.500 when men fail. That's providence, not policy. Pernod shows that the maid's chastity and singular 0.56
00:13:50.540 calling insulated the public from needing to change anything systemic. She's a holy anomaly, 0.99
00:13:55.680 not a political argument. Elizabeth Fox Genovese gives us a helpful lens for how women like Joan 1.00
00:14:02.520 wielded power through without institutional office. Mystical authorization. In an era of 1.00
00:14:08.340 tightening clerical control, visionary women carved out authority by claiming God's direct 0.89
00:14:13.220 mandate. It's a workaround, not a revolution. It works precisely because it doesn't threaten 1.00
00:14:18.200 the structure, until it does. Joan is trusted while she's useful, when her banner leads beyond
00:14:23.560 the script, when she insists on more campaigns, challenges strategy, or simply survives long
00:14:28.780 enough to make men nervous, mystical authorization gets relabeled as heresy. The lesson for feminist 1.00
00:14:34.880 history is grim and clarifying. The patriarchy loves an exception. It adores heroines who leave 1.00
00:14:40.520 no heirs. But now, let's return to the clothing, because I know you want to. It's satisfying to
00:14:46.720 laugh at medieval courts criminalizing trousers, until you realize how contemporary this feels.
00:14:51.960 Joan's male dress was about practicality and bodily safety, full stop.
00:14:57.220 On campaign, it's armor. 1.00
00:14:58.780 In prison, it's a protection for her chastity. 0.74
00:15:01.440 The court framed it as a violation of divine order, 0.99
00:15:04.260 then used a forced relapse to trigger her execution. 1.00
00:15:07.580 That logic survives whenever women are punished for violating dress codes, 0.89
00:15:11.480 whenever trans and gender non-conforming people are criminalized for how they appear, 0.87
00:15:16.500 whenever decency laws police the bodies of those with less power.
00:15:20.000 The medieval case study is blunt. Clothing is governance. Governance is about who gets to live.
00:15:26.220 If we want a modern echo, look at the benevolent sexism that dresses domination as protection, 0.97
00:15:31.180 the chivalric impulse that insists women are honored when they are controlled for their own 0.95
00:15:35.540 good. We'll unpack more of this in the future when we do our chivalry episode, but flag it here. 0.65
00:15:41.180 When institutions talk about preserving order and modesty, you're about to see somebody get caught
00:15:46.100 on fire. Joan is a celebrity because she answers multiple cravings. Conviction in an era that
00:15:52.420 prizes irony. Purity in a culture that prizes scandal. Certainty in a discourse that distrusts
00:15:58.320 it. Meltzer calls it a nostalgia for certainty amid blurred boundaries. Gender, church, authority.
00:16:05.200 The paradox is that those blurred boundaries were Joan's literal skill set. She cross-dressed for
00:16:10.380 combat readiness. She crossed institutional boundaries with visions. She crossed the line
00:16:15.520 constantly between the proper sphere for women and a messy sphere where history actually happens. 0.92
00:16:21.060 She also shows how easy it is to be devoured by your own story. Everyone wants a piece of Joan. 0.83
00:16:27.300 Monarchists and revolutionaries, Catholics and secularists, French patriots and American
00:16:32.080 propagandists, playwrights who want an icon, and politicians who want a brand. That's why she
00:16:37.320 lasts. She's an inexhaustible symbol printed on every piece of flammable paper. So what are we
00:16:43.620 supposed to learn from Joan, and what do we actually learn? The official moral is, God can
00:16:49.220 raise up anyone, be brave, obey your calling. The actual moral is that structures that depend on
00:16:55.660 women's obedience will cannibalize a woman the second her competence becomes a threat. 0.79
00:17:00.420 If you're looking for systemic change in Joan's wake, you won't find it. There's no 15th century 1.00
00:17:05.800 reform bill opening the officer's corps to women. There's a saint's day, some statues, a thrilling
00:17:11.060 chapter in national history and an unshakable cautionary tale about how quickly institutions
00:17:15.860 will call a woman's defense defiance. To be fair, the legacy isn't nothing. Women who come after
00:17:22.820 Joan could point to her and say, there, there is proof that no metaphysical law forbids a woman 0.99
00:17:28.680 from being the bravest person in the room. But pointing isn't policy. So a teenage girl walks 0.93
00:17:34.900 into a war. Talks to a king. Wins. Gets burned for it. She's a saint because we needed one. She's a
00:17:41.960 witch because power needed one. She's a girl because she never had the time to be anything else. 1.00
00:17:47.600 Thanks for listening to Bitchy History. The lesson isn't that exceptional women don't exist. 1.00
00:17:52.300 It's that we keep building systems where they have to be exceptional to survive. 0.96
00:17:56.200 And even then, we light the pyre. And speaking of fire, we're not done yet. Because they didn't
00:18:01.340 just fear women's power, they feared women's knowledge, and they burned both. That's next 0.93
00:18:06.180 time when we talk about witch hunts, midwives, and how modern medicine got built on women's ashes. 1.00
00:18:14.240 That's it for this episode of Bitchy History. If you enjoyed the show, don't keep it to yourself. 0.95
00:18:19.080 Subscribe, review, and share it with someone who loves history as much as we do.
00:18:23.280 Until next time, stay curious and keep questioning the world around you. 0.99
00:18:31.340 What a bitch, right? 1.00