Vulgar History - International, part 13： The Trans Spy

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. I'm your 1.00

00:00:17.680 host, Anne Foster. So we're back on the internationale saga. This week, we're going to be looking

00:00:23.700 at the story of a woman from 18th century France, which I think you can know is going

00:00:29.300 to mean me pronouncing some things in my effortlessly perfect French accent. I'm joined

00:00:34.840 today for this episode by Maya Dean, who is the author of the book Wrath Goddess Sing,

00:00:41.360 which just, just came out. So we talk about that in the episode as well. So Wrath Goddess Sing

00:00:46.180 is a retelling of the Iliad. So drawing on ancient texts and modern archaeology to reveal the trans 1.00

00:00:52.300 woman's story hidden underneath the well-known myths of the Iliad, Wrath Goddess Sing weaves a 0.97

00:00:56.760 compelling, pitilessly beautiful vision of Achilles' vanished world, perfect for fans

00:01:01.240 of Song of Achilles and the Inheritance Trilogy. So we're going to definitely talk about that.

00:01:05.900 We're going to talk about Achilles. We're going to talk about trans history. I think

00:01:08.700 it's so perfect because it's June. It's Pride Month. And honestly, Maidine is here with 1.00

00:01:14.320 the facts and the information. She knows so much about the person who we're talking about.

00:01:18.020 It's kind of a bit like she's telling the story to me. So I hope you enjoy this episode

00:01:22.300 about the chevalier day on. I'm so excited today. I'm here with Maya Dean, author of,

00:01:29.800 so at the time this podcast comes out, your book will have like been out for like a week,

00:01:33.060 but we're recording it before it comes out. So can you just like, first of all,

00:01:36.200 tell everybody about your book, please? Sure. Hi, I'm Maya Dean. My book, which will be out

00:01:41.760 by the time you hear this is Rath Got a Sing, which is a retelling of the life of Achilles

00:01:47.540 is from Bilead as the trans woman that she was,

00:01:51.780 which is a bold claim, but you know.

00:01:55.160 So Raph Goddassing really explores alternate

00:01:58.880 and submerged readings of familiar myths

00:02:01.220 to give us Achilles as she might've been in the Bronze Age

00:02:05.240 in a world that was just on the brink of collapse.

00:02:09.500 A world that was in many ways much nicer to live in

00:02:13.100 than the world of the next thousand years 1.00

00:02:16.500 in large parts of the region like mycenaean women had equal pay apparently so just from like looking 0.96

00:02:22.880 at like the what's out there like your bio and your website and stuff like you've been into

00:02:26.740 like this mythology since a very young age right lifelong absolutely i feel like so for me and my

00:02:34.280 i feel like you are for like the trojan war and like greek mythology as i am for like the women

00:02:40.200 of tudor history which is just like from like a weirdly young age it's just like this is my thing

00:02:44.960 and here we go yeah yeah so i'm excited for you like that this book is coming out that is

00:02:50.020 you get to explore all this stuff oh gosh yeah the tutor period is so fascinating you get so many

00:02:55.200 big personalities it's oh no exactly and it's not about me this is about you but actually today

00:03:01.600 we're talking so you're joining me both because you have this book coming out and because i got

00:03:05.800 the best email from your publicist saying like maya has this book coming out and here are some

00:03:09.440 other things that she can talk about as well and one of them was trans women of 18th century france

00:03:14.420 And I was like, literally, as I read that, I was like, I'm currently researching a trans

00:03:19.120 woman from 18th century France. 0.95

00:03:20.420 So like, this is the perfect opportunity.

00:03:22.900 So today you're joining me and we're going to be talking about a woman whose name is

00:03:27.060 what we're going to call her La Chevalier, which was kind of a title that she was given

00:03:32.940 at one point.

00:03:33.780 It's a French word.

00:03:35.000 It means like knight effectively, right?

00:03:37.600 It's like, it's a role that she earned.

00:03:41.340 So she was a sign male at birth, was a woman.

00:03:44.920 And so the name, I'm just going to do my best with an extremely long French name.

00:03:50.440 Her name was Charlotte Jean-Vivre Louise Auguste Andrea Timotea D'Or de Beaumont.

00:03:58.200 She kind of carried around a lot of names.

00:04:00.060 Yeah.

00:04:01.420 It's all of the names, which is why in history, like she's mostly like people refer to her

00:04:07.820 when you look it up.

00:04:08.400 It's like the Chevalier.

00:04:09.520 like that is how she is tends to be known and I feel like in her life that's kind of like what

00:04:13.740 she went by maybe la chevalier yeah I love that it's just sort of like the presence of that just

00:04:18.820 being like it's not just like oh I'm Anne it's like oh hi I'm la chevalier like okay like step

00:04:24.020 back like already this is a cool person oh yeah no she made a big deal out of it in fact that was

00:04:28.300 like one of the ways like she was an early feminist and one of the ways that she related 0.95

00:04:33.160 to the other early feminists who thought she was a cis woman who had been raised as a boy

00:04:37.180 but one of the ways she related to them was by like mary wollstonecraft actually mentions her 1.00

00:04:42.920 in passing in some of her writings talking about how like la chevalier proves that women can be

00:04:49.000 warriors and she knew that like she would be read that way she intended like this was she wanted to

00:04:55.400 be understood and accepted by her cis women peers definitely she positioned herself that way

00:05:00.860 intentionally yeah and so what like we're gonna just kind of like go through like birth to death

00:05:06.200 like what was her situation but it's like the gender stuff is such a big part of kind of the

00:05:11.820 mythos that she like built up around herself like how she kind of like used that for pr reasons but

00:05:16.780 i want to mention that like her life was also so interesting right aside from that just like the

00:05:23.460 espionage of it all like there's there's a lot to get into la chevaliere it was born october 5th

00:05:29.000 1728 in burgundy into a poor noble family in a wine bearing region and i mentioned that because

00:05:35.620 wine does become up later it's like a i think that she's smuggling oh my gosh burgundy a lot

00:05:41.400 of stuff was happening in burgundy actually like abet de choisi better known occasionally as the

00:05:47.380 comtesse de bar um actually lived as a woman in burgundy for some years and wrote a very famous

00:05:54.440 best-selling memoir that probably was still pretty accessible in leah's childhood yeah oh my god i

00:06:01.260 love that did not know that detail so yeah burgundy and the sort of like the early years

00:06:06.620 like just from what i've read it's like pretty much it's kind of like like most people alive

00:06:11.260 at that point in france like we don't know a lot about like the early years because no one really

00:06:14.600 wrote it down so i just kind of know about like she excelled in her schooling um she went into

00:06:19.120 military training by age 35 she'd gotten a law degree published books about the french tax system 0.54

00:06:25.480 been knighted and became a celebrated fencer oh yeah she was like a fantastic like even

00:06:31.780 much later in her life in england she spent a fair bit of time giving exhibition fencing matches

00:06:37.720 i'm sure george de boulon will come up at some point yeah so the so just like right away before

00:06:46.100 we get into the rest of it it's like this is a person who's like really smart really educated

00:06:50.220 really athletic and then skilled in these in these impressive ways fencing to me is like

00:06:57.820 a really epic skill oh yeah i also want to mention so like like much of what we know about her early

00:07:04.300 life comes from so she wrote an autobiography but i don't think it was published and i think it was

00:07:09.480 she like it was ghost written like she hired someone else to write it for her so we get but

00:07:13.440 she wrote these other books as well so in the introduction to this never completed autobiography

00:07:18.240 some modern day historians said that by 1758 she was a rising star among the young aristocratic

00:07:24.220 elite who hoped to serve the monarchy in some important capacity so she was just like smart

00:07:29.340 she's charismatic she was talented and it's just kind of like she was from like what did i say it's

00:07:34.700 like a noble but poor family but she was like elevating herself just by virtue of being like so

00:07:39.220 good basically yeah her family had like the sort of positioning where they they had noble enough

00:07:46.840 blood and all that to be positioned where they could excel and could rise themselves through

00:07:51.520 like skilled bureaucracy and stuff and she was a talented intriguer so yeah no she was like

00:07:58.200 ambitious like she was like i'm just gonna like make my mark in the world here we go 0.57

00:08:02.440 so she was given the role of a diplomat to russia and england like officially but privately what

00:08:11.120 she was doing was she worked for the most clandestine spy service in france le secret

00:08:15.980 du roi or the king's secret so this is like you could probably explain this better than i can but

00:08:21.360 like the king was like suspicious and he wanted to have these secret spies working directly for

00:08:25.800 him like not going through the rest of the political everything so she i love this this is

00:08:31.540 like it's like a james bond moment yeah a lot of people cast doubts on like some of the claims she

00:08:38.380 made about her spying in russia mostly about the idea that she spent most of it you know

00:08:45.040 looking gorgeous in dresses but i mean that's not particularly impossible no exactly so yeah

00:08:52.440 that's the thing there's something like so she's charged with fostering good relations with the

00:08:56.320 russian court so empress elizabeth is who is there and so okay one article i read said like 1.00

00:09:03.040 the empress liked to have balls like metamorphosis balls where like gender non-conformity was like

00:09:09.000 celebrated and that's what was done which is not to say that's how or why she started potentially 1.00

00:09:14.020 dressing in this glamorous in glamorous dresses but it's like if it's already a court where like

00:09:20.180 gender is not strictly binary like maybe great opportunity exactly exactly exactly and then i 0.55

00:09:26.700 think i saw something about where it's like because she was presenting as a woman she's

00:09:30.360 able to get into places like men maybe couldn't go to like learn some more of the secrets to like 1.00

00:09:34.400 get closer to the empress and that sort of thing yeah exactly like uh but certainly what she's in

00:09:40.160 her memoirs she talks about essentially being able to get to all sorts of places that men couldn't go

00:09:45.000 because there are so many historians who are trying to narrate her as cis obviously there's

00:09:52.460 like a line of uh critique where people say that well maybe she was exaggerating those stories to

00:09:58.360 make her herself seem more useful but like probably not honestly i've like i've had this in a couple

00:10:05.580 other episodes of my podcast where like if someone writes their memoir and it says something that

00:10:11.420 historians like that just doesn't fit into this like binary concept they're like oh well she's

00:10:15.440 probably exaggerate like not just her but other people are like this probably isn't true and i'm

00:10:18.860 like well this is her memoir and like i trust her more than i trust like a 20th century like

00:10:23.340 cis white man being like i don't believe it it's like well i believe her if i'm gonna believe anyone

00:10:28.760 frankly oh yeah absolutely it's it's really it's really an interesting thing i mean like this is

00:10:36.160 uh this is what like uh catherine the great is in court that kind of thing period elizabeth

00:10:42.160 i mean it wasn't uh like a great like a junior figure at that point not yet yes yeah like in

00:10:51.480 the fabulous and wildly historically inaccurate the great it would be like season one yes yes

00:10:58.180 exactly i don't know anyway i find it like this is why i'm so happy to have you here because

00:11:02.500 like so much of this history it's just been interpreted for so long by like cis white men

00:11:08.140 who are like trying to make these stories fit into a paradigm that they understand and part of

00:11:13.140 it i think with the chevalier is like well she's so impressive she did these like it's like surely

00:11:17.980 a woman couldn't have done these things so it must have been a man in disguise but like then

00:11:22.920 like the contortions you have to make to make that fit a story that clearly is the story of

00:11:27.940 a trans woman so yeah exactly season one of the great is what's happening apparently she dazzled 0.57

00:11:32.660 in her post so like she was like in the fashion the outfits and again just like the charisma and

00:11:38.440 she's so smart and i'm sure like quick and witty so then france entered into the seven years war

00:11:43.320 with britain and le chevalier was ordered to return to become a captain oh and this is where

00:11:48.940 she was later admitted to the prestigious order of saint louis and honored with the title chevalier

00:11:53.040 which means so it's an honorific it's just kind of it's the equivalent of being like dame or like

00:11:59.400 lady whatever after the war ended she was appointed as liaison to the english court

00:12:03.820 but again working directly for the king with secret orders to scope at the coastline for

00:12:08.640 possible french invasion of england yeah that came out that came in handy later yeah so it was

00:12:16.740 a prominent position but it wouldn't last so according to this the one source i was looking

00:12:21.840 out here uh she enjoyed england a little bit too much um she was strongly reprimanded for importing

00:12:27.060 too much wine and i feel like you can't take the burgundy out of the girl like clearly uh so then

00:12:34.620 within six months she was fired for insolence and given two weeks to return to france so she knew 0.83

00:12:40.200 that if and when she returned to france she probably she'd be sent to the jail to the best

00:12:43.680 deal so she just decided to like not return she's just like what if i stay in england so the king

00:12:51.640 which is louis god i'm so bad at telling the louis apart 15th furiously ordered her to be

00:12:57.500 extradited to france but the british foreign minister refused declaring her she was free to

00:13:01.960 stay in britain as a private citizen so she's just like the scandal of it you know just she

00:13:07.900 set herself apart from just like everyone else right away because it's like the king is demanding

00:13:11.580 her back like the foreign minister is here like she's just like at that so already she's like a

00:13:15.240 celebrity in that extent oh it gets even wilder because uh the way she got reprimanded for insulin

00:13:21.580 was pretty weird. A new ambassador was assigned to England. And within a short period of time,

00:13:29.040 they clearly did not like each other. She quickly started accusing him of trying to drug her at

00:13:33.820 dinner, at which point she made these accusations public. So then he sued her for libel, which

00:13:40.580 I mean, it's Britain. If there's a constant that unites the 18th century to today,

00:13:47.160 it's that it's really easy to sue people for libel so she lost that case but the british

00:13:52.580 public sided with her and just started like pelting this guy when they saw him with like

00:13:57.320 you know just fruits and vegetables like there was this huge scandal and that's how she got

00:14:02.620 like recalled for insolence so i'm just wondering like why was he trying to drug her yeah

00:14:09.060 i love i love there's been like other stories in the podcast too where it's like

00:14:14.500 the people of britain just like they riot at a moment's notice so it's like this is our star

00:14:20.440 and we will defend her and it's yeah i appreciate that consistency so everything that she's doing 0.94

00:14:26.800 is just like the most like this is not like a low-key life that she is living the french foreign

00:14:33.560 ministry made several attempts to kidnap and arrest her in retaliation she made her most scandals 0.93

00:14:40.560 move yet which is she published a book of state secrets full of correspondence from le secret du

00:14:45.800 roi full of salacious details and the promise there was more to come unless the french king

00:14:50.720 stopped trying to bring her back yeah i think she held back like the invasion plans but this is like

00:14:56.720 it's epic i love i love that they're like you're coming back and she's like oh really like what if

00:15:00.840 i just like expose your entire like secret james bond operation and and it worked so the king

00:15:07.200 agreed to leave her alone with a generous 12 000 livres salary on the condition that she did not

00:15:12.280 reveal his worst secrets so she was in england she's just this like fabulous french woman in

00:15:17.300 england in political exile but i think i would assume based on the the scandal and the stuff 0.84

00:15:22.420 that had happened already like she was so she continued to be a celebrity like people just like

00:15:27.500 all about her in england so it's like of course she'd stay there like they left her there okay

00:15:31.320 and then this is where i'm just like please help me with this so around 1770 rumors started to

00:15:35.820 spread potentially started by her that she had actually been born a woman but had been raised 0.76

00:15:40.680 as a man in order to receive a family inheritance yeah that's kind of one of the ways you do it

00:15:48.840 like in some ways i think she was learning from some of the lessons that you could take away from

00:15:55.160 like the lives of early 17th early 18th century french trans women which we'll talk about more

00:16:01.100 later. Because I think she decided, look, no, we have to actually convince everyone that I'm

00:16:06.240 assigned female at birth or else I will never get what I want. She probably did start the rumors

00:16:11.320 herself because I mean, she was literally a spy who intrigued constantly and used public opinion 1.00

00:16:17.540 to get what she wanted. And yeah, I would not be surprised in the least. There was like a bet

00:16:23.980 on the London stock exchange, just like giant betting pool, which is like perfect because

00:16:30.000 that lets her do like this, this virtuous. No, no, I will not. It's like humiliating that you're

00:16:37.280 even betting about this. I will not deign to reveal one or another, which of course inflames

00:16:44.380 the speculation even further. The betting pool lasts for like a year. Yeah. No, I've got in my

00:16:49.820 notes here, it says there was three to two odds that she was a woman. I mean, it's probably not

00:16:54.980 surprising if we look at representations of her from her own lifetime and especially from when

00:17:00.980 she was relatively young she's generally portrayed before she was outed as being quite beautiful

00:17:07.240 and she probably didn't look particularly masculine given that most of those reports

00:17:13.280 about that really started to happen after she died no and i think just from what i understand

00:17:18.860 And she was also, I think, like a short person, like for a short person with like a higher pitched voice anyway.

00:17:26.300 So it wasn't like outside the realm.

00:17:28.300 Like, so when she's like, oh, yeah, no, actually, I am one.

00:17:30.380 And everyone's like, oh, yeah, that tracks like like that.

00:17:33.820 That tracks. 0.86

00:17:34.520 So apparently at this time, apparently forced to hire protection just to safely step inside her house because people wanted to like rip off her clothes to be like, what is your gender?

00:17:44.120 are like people are just so like it's such a i don't know like just hearing about these like

00:17:49.280 paparazzi level moments from like golden times i'm just like like humanity has been the same

00:17:54.720 forever like there's always these like celebrities and people just like crowds follow them and

00:17:59.080 whatever yeah what's determined weird enough to be worth invading privacy has varied culturally

00:18:05.380 but the fact that you can randomly invade people's privacy if you're curious and spread that to

00:18:10.780 everyone else that's been constant i would argue since the bronze age yeah well no it's giving me

00:18:16.400 like early 2000s like perez hilton upskirt shots of like lindsey lohan or whatever right like people

00:18:21.960 are just like wanting to rip off her clothes because she was like they just they want to like

00:18:26.020 consume her so yes so the bet was abandoned oh so that an envoy from le secret droit arrived in

00:18:33.260 england to determine the truth like about was she a woman so she told all she revealed she was a

00:18:39.180 woman raised male by a father desperate for a son and heir which again as you said it's like yeah

00:18:45.080 you want to be able to start living as a woman so you're just like guess what i've always been a

00:18:49.240 woman but in a way that people would understand oh yeah tons of like mid-20th century american

00:18:54.940 trans women did the same thing like it was a very common approach yeah so let's see so the question

00:19:01.480 was brought all the way to the court of the king's bench on july 2nd 1777 the english government

00:19:06.880 formally pronounced she who had called herself the chevalier d'on until that day was an individual

00:19:12.060 who did not possess what the appellation man promised and that she was a virago disguised

00:19:18.920 in a uniform i had to look up that word do you know that word virago kind of signifies

00:19:24.480 female masculinity it's a latin word that kind of suggests anything ranging from butchiness to

00:19:32.460 like on its boundaries it can sort of shade into that other like really ancient trope of the

00:19:39.080 tribod tell me about that the tribod is basically this like classical era but also through the early 1.00

00:19:47.340 modern era conception of like sort of an obligate lesbian who's partially virilized genitally 0.88

00:19:53.680 which of course would mean you have to you have to like have to go after women it's just the way

00:19:59.600 things work because it's very like you know sexuality was super gendered so it's this

00:20:05.940 combination of well this woman will act like a man yeah so they're saying like they're saying 0.78

00:20:11.500 like okay this person is not a man that she is a virago which is basically like a mannish woman

00:20:17.880 kind of what they're saying yeah but this is like okay so it's official like the english government

00:20:22.920 formally pronounced that she's a woman so this is from i think the article from um it's a site 0.67

00:20:29.280 them.us so this was the perfect way to affect a public gender transition without losing her 0.98

00:20:34.080 status or popularity by claiming to have been a woman pretending to be a man all along and then 1.00

00:20:41.020 taking one step further she wedded her public transition to her pious religious nature

00:20:44.880 arguing that because she was at heart a good honest christian woman she could no longer live a lie

00:20:49.560 and everyone's like okay fair enough well i guess you can't allow you to be a man anymore yeah

00:20:54.500 exactly and actually there were there were a bunch of little things which some people

00:20:58.980 some people have interpreted as ambivalence because it's convenient but which i think is

00:21:04.800 better understood as protesting just the right amount so like for instance there was this whole

00:21:12.380 kerfuffle over whether she could wear her military medals she was very insistent that she could 1.00

00:21:16.520 but then there was this bit where she was like and am i to be forced to wear women's clothing all the 1.00

00:21:22.160 time surely that's not progressive maybe you could fund it and then the king pays for a wardrobe by

00:21:33.160 marie antoinette's genius dressmaker oh my god we're definitely going to get to that because

00:21:39.120 well i'll just say right now so like she went back okay so she's officially declared a woman

00:21:43.040 age 49 just for the record yeah so she negotiated her return to france and part of that like you

00:21:47.580 just said was like but i'll need gorgeous dresses like who will give me those and the king's like

00:21:53.300 okay i will yeah she agreed to publicly present as a woman for the rest of her life so she went

00:21:58.620 back to france um she was formerly presented at the court of versailles so there was a four hour

00:22:03.260 makeover montage so included powdered hair and an elaborate gown outfitted by marie and finette's

00:22:09.100 own dressmaker rose bertin so it's not just like a coming out moment it's like a coming out moment

00:22:15.980 like dressed in like like Marie Antoinette like in an outfit that takes four hours to like put on

00:22:22.400 yeah it's very much an I'm on top of the world haha I win moment like in the movie that I'm

00:22:28.140 imagining in my mind this is just this amount of just like the it's like what is it I don't know

00:22:32.840 any movie with like the prom or the person like coming down the stairs and everyone's like what 0.97

00:22:37.100 the nerd is beautiful like her coming out just like having been dressed personally by Marie

00:22:42.660 internet's dresser just like i've arrived like this is me it's beautiful um okay so the way that

00:22:48.620 this article it says um being an 18th century noblewoman after having been a soldier spy and

00:22:54.420 diplomat was kind of like not is a little boring it's kind of like well i don't want to just like

00:22:59.220 hang on a court doing whatever like i'm a spy i'm a soldier like she wants to keep doing stuff so

00:23:03.300 for instance when france sided with the colonists in the american revolution she asked to be put

00:23:07.680 back in uniform to assemble an all-female battalion to fight the British I love it I mean

00:23:14.980 and I think that that's best understood like it would be easy to decontextualize it and treat it

00:23:20.780 as just some sort of weird pipe dream she had but I think it's best understood in the context of that

00:23:26.140 you know figures like Wollstonecraft were talking about her as this like proof that women can fight

00:23:32.160 like yeah I think there's a political element to that especially given like some of her later 1.00

00:23:37.100 like public work as an abolitionist i'm not surprised that her feminism and her abolition

00:23:42.540 would you know appear in the form of well let's see if we can form regiments yeah no i love it i 0.99

00:23:50.020 love that she's like she's got all this military experience she's like let me use it and then like

00:23:54.480 her life is inherently like you said like it's proof that like women can do this the government

00:23:59.820 apparently to that suggestion said well why don't you join a convent

00:24:03.340 yeah like just in terms of like not her being so progressive for the era and just being faced 1.00

00:24:13.360 with people who are just like does not compute like nope nope a group of women sounds like a 1.00

00:24:19.800 convent to me yeah i know if she'd been 30 years younger she would probably have been guillotined 1.00

00:24:24.580 with a bunch of revolutionary era french feminists yeah luckily she had the goods on the king and so

00:24:31.820 she kind of was safe in that way so she returned to london because frankly her life just seemed

00:24:37.220 like a lot better there she said she's going back there to settle up some business but it

00:24:40.660 potentially was more just to escape the strict life that she was being forced into in france

00:24:45.240 so in london she continued to write because remember she'd written all those books before

00:24:48.760 and she collected a large library of early feminist works which i love like what you're

00:24:53.860 saying like her mary wallstonecraft like she's like just as a figure of this time she's like 0.98

00:24:58.140 so into just like let's get on this like let feminism like let's make it happen like she's

00:25:04.400 into it while she was in england though the french revolution happened so actually like 1.00

00:25:08.340 luckily she was out of town so the french monarchy was abolished meaning she no longer

00:25:13.800 had the protection or the pension that she had been getting from the monarchy or for people who

00:25:19.620 don't think she was actually a woman and that she was doing this as some sort of 0.52

00:25:23.780 for 4d testing any reason to live as a woman if she wasn't one yeah exactly so it's like

00:25:32.540 if the king had said okay you have to live as a woman and so she did like once the king died like 0.72

00:25:38.340 she didn't have to anymore she was like clearly this is what she was doing by choice like for 0.99

00:25:46.080 herself and then this part bums me out obviously the last days are for life so she lived in poverty

00:25:50.560 she sold off her book collection but you were saying like she's giving fencing displays so

00:25:55.120 this was like a way that she's making some money it was just like showing off her cool fencing

00:25:58.260 skills and people like what a woman who's a fencer like she had this trademark like long 1.00

00:26:01.760 black dress that she would always wear yeah there were a bunch of exhibition matches with her and

00:26:06.800 joseph de boulogne the uh valier de saint george who is sometimes called the black mozart although

00:26:14.820 actually Mozart slept on his couch and they would first they were famous for being abolitionists

00:26:22.540 pressuring the British government to do something about the slave trade but second

00:26:26.220 they would do their exhibition matches together so like there are these political cartoons of just

00:26:32.760 you know her and just a double on just dueling but also punching the region the prince regent

00:26:42.400 so they were like yeah thank you for bringing that up as well because i love i love the story

00:26:47.880 of joseph as well i encountered it because the symphony here did a concert and i'm like oh this

00:26:53.040 musician i was like oh my god like i love the music i'm like who's this person i'm like oh

00:26:56.320 and it's this guy like quote unquote the black but basically they just mean like it's a black

00:26:59.900 man who lived at the same time as mozart who had like a white wig on so everyone's like oh the

00:27:03.420 black mozart like yeah but he was actually like he was amazing and he was actually a big influence

00:27:08.120 on Mozart yeah but I love the image of this like like this black man trans woman just like doing

00:27:13.520 these fencing displays and everyone's just like yeah we stand like we love you like oh my god

00:27:17.740 like so they're celebrities and really progressive like abolitionists like yeah I love this moment I

00:27:27.220 love I love and this is like the early 1800s so this is like if you want to put it into like

00:27:33.180 this is like Bridgerton era you know it's like that's happening with like the marriage

00:27:38.040 market and like whatever the regency and then at the same time like they're doing these fencing

00:27:42.040 displays like it's all happening all at the same time so she's making these fancy displays because

00:27:46.980 she needed money because she didn't have her pension for all of her military work and spy work

00:27:50.300 and then she lived the last few years of her life with a roommate who is another woman i haven't

00:27:55.960 seen anything actually like let's talk about that so i haven't seen anything about the chevalier

00:28:00.300 having any romantic connections with anyone did you have you come up on anything about like her

00:28:06.920 having a love life honestly no um which makes her relatively unusual compared to some of the

00:28:14.420 other famous french trans women who were somewhat famous for their love lives no um no one knows i

00:28:21.660 mean it just doesn't seem to come up now partially it could be that she was very disciplined about

00:28:26.420 her own pr so for all we know she had secret affairs that just never saw the light of day

00:28:33.220 but certainly certainly this was not something that was much talked about yeah and i find that

00:28:40.500 interesting in terms of how much her the fact that people are just like trying to rip off her clothes

00:28:45.840 like people are so interested in like every detail of her life but there's never any sort of like 0.89

00:28:50.000 scandal or rumors about her having affairs with anyone of any gender well granted people trying

00:28:55.880 to rip your clothes off it's a great reason to be paranoid about that kind of thing you know yeah

00:29:01.300 Yeah. And I agree. And that's a real hint. Like maybe you want to keep your love life private

00:29:05.040 if you don't want. Or potentially maybe you're a former spy and you don't trust anyone to see you

00:29:12.400 in such an intimate way, especially given what happened when she was no longer alive to protect

00:29:18.060 her privacy. Yes. So she was living with this woman for the last several years of her life.

00:29:23.440 And then she died in 1810. Her roommate discovered her body. And then I'll let you

00:29:28.040 describe what happened to her body then some physicians decided to examine her and they were 0.95

00:29:33.980 like oh look a penis it's perfect in every way at which point the scandal was worth a lot there's 0.93

00:29:41.560 actually like a drawing of her genitals in the british museum because people were very curious 1.00

00:29:48.960 her autopsy report also notes that you know just like okay also boobs very curvy but look a penis 1.00

00:29:57.000 and that then led to her defenders people who wanted to protect her reputation from the horrific 1.00

00:30:05.160 charge of being a trans woman which was a lot more scandalous in 1800 than in 1700 for reasons

00:30:11.220 to concoct various explanations as to why she was never really a trans woman and just had to

00:30:16.720 disguise herself as a woman for decades and decades and decades and decades for other reasons

00:30:22.940 yeah no it was like she lived openly as a woman for 33 years where it's like haha i'm a spy and

00:30:29.800 i'm gonna just like a woman like that's a long time like i know no one's that committed to the

00:30:36.320 bit unless it's actually something they care about no exactly so that's where it's like

00:30:40.400 like i was saying before like the contortions that i've been of historians trying to be like

00:30:45.140 okay this was this is a story of a man who because it was so clever and devious decided to dress as a

00:30:53.580 woman for 33 years i think some of them were doing it in kind of a horrifying attempt to

00:31:00.160 rescue her reputation which obviously is upsetting to me but at the same time yeah like

00:31:07.280 the contortions are extravagant well it's just like if it's like if there's two options and one

00:31:13.720 of them is like you know a to b here's the thing and the other one is just like what if you go from

00:31:17.380 a to z to this to this to this to this to this it's like one of these is way more likely than

00:31:22.340 the other one like the amount of work you have to go through to see her as anything other than a

00:31:26.720 trans woman is it just really speaks to how much people were committed well like you said like i

00:31:33.120 was thinking it was like people just couldn't wrap their head around it but what you're explaining

00:31:36.740 and i see now is they wanted to like preserve or like i don't know make her save her legacy

00:31:44.860 yeah like there were there were fencers too there were fencers there was at least one famous like

00:31:52.680 fencer who among other things was writing about how she and his father also a famous fencer

00:31:57.880 um were good friends and he refers to her as herself throughout but there's like a brief

00:32:04.900 aside you know just like oh yeah like sure it came out later she was a man the whole time um

00:32:09.620 moving on and like i think what we see is plenty of people were not ashamed to have known her

00:32:18.360 were not ashamed of what she was but maybe didn't have the political vocabulary to say well but

00:32:24.640 actually but actually let's defend her womanhood on its own terms so keep going it's such a 1.00

00:32:31.080 complicated yet not complicated it's just such a shitty thing frankly like that she like she had 1.00

00:32:38.680 this cool life and she's so amazing and they're just like well let's finally reveal the genitals 1.00

00:32:43.900 like let's just like put them in the british museum yeah it's it's so gross they're still

00:32:49.400 there i mean the drawing not her body yeah where it's like she was famous well there was like the

00:32:57.120 that about like is she a woman but she's famous for like all these other cool reasons not just

00:33:02.360 because of the question of gender and just to like to limit the legacy is just that i think

00:33:07.620 oh 100 but like i think we have to look at that in a context where it became much much much much

00:33:15.340 much harder to be a trans woman and in a lot of ways harder to be a trans woman in england

00:33:21.200 because um this is the period of time where like between like perfect time basically parallels the

00:33:28.500 massive like police crackdowns on so-called molly culture in england which is essentially 0.94

00:33:34.360 working class trans women and trans femmes i would call it a culture that consisted of working

00:33:39.700 class trans women and trans femmes and gay and bisexual men with a lot of space carved out for 1.00

00:33:46.000 the trans feminine but during yeah during her lifetime that stamping out and criminalizing

00:33:53.080 that entire cultural element was a huge thing that was ongoing in england whereas like a few 0.78

00:33:59.180 years before she was born the there was this massive bestseller which was the contested bars

00:34:05.940 memoirs the they're often referred to as the transvestite memoirs by cis historians but

00:34:12.880 yeah this like the climate she was born into would would have been in some ways more tolerant

00:34:18.820 of gender variance than the climate she died in which does explain kind of why she's drawn to

00:34:23.800 living there at the time like when she first went there uh-huh it would have been more tolerant than

00:34:28.820 when what it was like by the time she passed away yeah and by the time she passed away i think she

00:34:33.580 was she'd very heavily relied on essentially passing as cis um for the rest of her life

00:34:39.460 and having that validated

00:34:41.960 with like official decrees

00:34:43.960 and deeds and acts of parliament.

00:34:46.380 Yeah.

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00:37:59.940 which is just honestly like I can't it's so major to just be like not only like like what's the

00:38:05.740 proof that I'm a woman it's like well like this act of parliament like the French king has said

00:38:11.240 so you're like okay like cool that's like what more proof do you need so she was buried in the

00:38:18.840 churchyard of St. Pancras Old Church um her remaining possessions were sold at Christie's

00:38:23.560 auction house in 1813 and her grave is listed on the Burdette Coates memorial there as one of the

00:38:28.820 important graves lost the i don't know much about this but the beaumont society is a long-standing

00:38:34.620 organization for transgender people named after her i don't know if you know anything about that

00:38:38.780 organization um i don't but basically not long after she died like from the 19th century to the

00:38:49.220 present obviously trans people however we describe ourselves i mean the terminology has changed a lot

00:38:55.820 but we've been around forever have looked to her as you know an example of someone who

00:39:02.540 successfully got the king of France to declare her a woman like and just as evidence that

00:39:08.980 you can be like an incredibly talented trans woman I love your story for that and I love

00:39:17.880 her story just for being just this like scandalous like wild like who's just like I was a spy and

00:39:25.600 then it's just like i decided to stay in england so i'm just gonna like basically blackmail the

00:39:29.240 king like the audacity with which she lived is is great it's like it's such a good story

00:39:36.820 this is where it's like it's all intrinsically connected with like her identity like as a trans

00:39:41.820 woman but and so which is why it bothers me to see her legacy being reduced to being like but

00:39:47.840 what were the genitals where it's like there's 10 000 other more interesting things to talk about 0.92

00:39:52.520 And alas, that seems to be the trans feminine condition in trans misogynist societies. 1.00

00:39:58.720 I think this is where I first heard about her.

00:40:01.100 So in 2012, the National Portrait Gallery in London purchased a portrait of her, which

00:40:07.720 had been for a while, like no one knew who it was a portrait of.

00:40:09.960 They're just like a portrait of a middle-aged woman.

00:40:12.180 And then there was, oh no, this is a chevalier.

00:40:14.300 And then it was, but I think that's where there's a lot of press about the portrait

00:40:17.600 being purchased, the identification of the portrait.

00:40:19.540 So that's where I had first heard about it.

00:40:22.520 and so now the portrait i think itself it's i don't know i love it like 2012 is a good period

00:40:27.800 of time in terms of like the internet existing or whatever where this portrait came out and there's

00:40:32.120 a lot of articles a lot of discussion about it and that brought i think a new level of attention

00:40:35.500 to her story which is good well i think that one of the things that like one of the things that

00:40:42.100 contemporary representations of her show and then we touched on this a little bit before

00:40:46.300 is just the extent to which people kind of redrew her when they knew she was a trans woman like

00:40:53.160 so especially portraits that are from before her death portray her extremely differently she's just

00:41:00.040 a younger middle-aged woman an older middle-aged woman sometimes in the scandalous years where

00:41:05.480 they're speculating she's a very hot young woman blah blah blah and it's yeah it's just really

00:41:12.820 revealing that a relatively unremarkable portrait of her would go unlabeled for 200 years because

00:41:20.520 it didn't look stereotypically managed enough i love that she was at a level well for anyone

00:41:28.280 i do in this podcast i love when there's actual portraits of people because there's so many women

00:41:32.640 in history where there's not but i love that she was at a level of fame and importance that she was

00:41:37.340 portraits of her were done during her life i don't know so she has appeared as a character

00:41:42.080 in some fictional works this is the like legacy portion of it so there's a film in 1928 the spy

00:41:50.320 of madame pompadour 1959 okay this is a film loosely based on her life that portrays her as

00:41:56.120 a woman masquerading as a man which is like which is pretty much just taking her propaganda and

00:42:02.460 running with it which is fine yeah so that's the secret du chevalier down from 1959

00:42:07.100 2006 have you seen or are you familiar with the anime series the chevalier day on i've heard of

00:42:14.460 it i haven't been able to actually track it down i'd love to what i know of it is that it's some

00:42:20.700 sort of like supernatural type thing where she like it's like she the spirit of her dead sister

00:42:26.300 lives in her body and she like switches back and forth between a masculine person and a feminine

00:42:31.220 in person so almost like a sailor moon transformation so i love sailor moon but yeah

00:42:37.460 transformation in kind of the worst possible way i have not seen it but that is what i've heard

00:42:44.380 about it and that's also honestly when you look up the chevalier down like a lot of your search

00:42:48.120 results are going to be about this anime series i'm interested in this and i've not listened to

00:42:51.780 it but the doctor who audio series has an episode featuring her which i think and she appears as an

00:42:59.040 unplayable character that gives out side quests in the video game assassin's creed unity

00:43:03.520 that's not a surprise but i i'm not familiar with the portrayal unity is one of the few

00:43:09.860 assassin's creeds i haven't played i don't know there's been a couple people done the podcast

00:43:13.860 where it's just when you're looking at like them in pop culture and it's like and they're

00:43:16.940 an assassin's creed i'm like should i play assassin's creed all these people well assassin's

00:43:21.440 is filled with historical easter eggs like so yeah uh that's kind of their like as long as you

00:43:29.420 can get past the cheesy ridiculous sci-fi frame narrative there's a lot to like yeah no and that's

00:43:38.600 where i'm just like i forget who just a couple other historical figures i'm like they're in

00:43:42.120 assassin's creed i'm like they're in assassin's creed the more i hear about the more i'm like

00:43:46.360 i'm intrigued okay i want to talk to you we need to do so on my podcast we do a score

00:43:51.640 for everybody just on various categories and i'm going to get your thoughts about where the

00:43:57.960 chevalier is going to fall so there's four categories the first category is scandaliciousness

00:44:03.860 which is just as you can probably presume just kind of like how gossipy and like fantastic

00:44:10.900 was this person's life and story what's the scale the scale is uh zero to ten so ten being the

00:44:16.900 highest so definitely ten on scandalousness i mean she blackmailed the king of france

00:44:22.540 reveal your invasion plans like that's like basically she said i will start a war

00:44:30.080 i will literally start a war if you don't bag off i agree i agree entirely and then when you

00:44:36.340 add on to that the fact like that she was a spy that she worked for this like super secret spy

00:44:40.060 network like it's a high score there the next category so again it's a zero to ten the next 0.84

00:44:45.320 one is scheminess so just like and that can be sort of like how smart she was but like

00:44:50.280 how many plans she did were they good schemes and i feel like this is going to be a high score as 0.97

00:44:55.560 well but i will default to you i would say at least an eight like yeah you know maybe she wasn't able

00:45:02.220 to successfully get an amazon army which clearly was her end game and which would have been amazing 0.99

00:45:09.380 so can't give her the 10 there but like yeah she was a skilled schemer i think between like 0.92

00:45:18.240 the fact that she was very successful as a spy and then the fact like the way that she stayed 1.00

00:45:23.280 in england and then the blackmail plot and then also the way that she'd like used her celebrity

00:45:28.060 and pr to just like affect this transition like i agree i think an eight is good and like you know

00:45:35.600 Oh, she was remarkably successful destroying the career of the diplomat who apparently 0.75

00:45:41.200 drugged her.

00:45:42.500 Yes. 0.99

00:45:43.320 Yes.

00:45:43.780 I don't have a scale for like vengeance, but I feel like she would get that too.

00:45:48.900 Cause she's just like, Oh, you're crossing with me.

00:45:50.500 Like, guess what?

00:45:51.080 Like I've been a spy my whole life.

00:45:52.580 I'm super smart. 0.99

00:45:53.300 And like, I will destroy you. 0.97

00:45:54.620 And she did not a person you want to cross.

00:45:56.900 Um, the next category is significance.

00:45:59.460 So this can be both like her significance, like at the time she was alive, but then like

00:46:04.900 the legacy what she means to other people but also like what she did that could have set the

00:46:10.060 stage for future generations of people well that's really complicated like we're still talking about 1.00

00:46:14.940 her and so many trans women i know are motivated to claim her because the gall like the nerve

00:46:25.440 well that's why i think i think her significance is really strong to the trans community so i think

00:46:31.100 if you just see it through that scale like how significant is she yeah and I would say her

00:46:36.060 significance she would have been a much more significant figure in the history of early

00:46:41.020 feminism if cis women hadn't dropped her after the genital reveal like definitely you don't see 0.99

00:46:51.040 the next generation after Wollstonecraft treating her as the same level of figure and it has

00:46:56.760 everything to do with just having decided that she was never a woman honestly though when you

00:47:00.800 think too about the significance of like her actions in the war her actions as a spy like

00:47:06.740 we can never quantify what exactly that did but i think she was involved in france's success

00:47:13.240 some of these as well yeah but it's good it's hard to say so i don't know where would you put

00:47:18.860 her for significance to the trans humanity probably an eight nine more broadly six seven

00:47:28.540 okay i'm gonna average that out to like 7.5 cool but yeah no that's i like how you broke that down

00:47:35.660 because yeah it's like significance to the trans community really high but then she i think she

00:47:40.600 should be more significant to oh yeah but she's not so it's like we need to be yeah i mean i think

00:47:46.240 roll wollstonecraft had it right like so then the last category so it's the sexism category which is

00:47:53.580 Just like how much did the patriarchy hold her back? 1.00

00:47:56.540 Everybody gets at least a five because of course, 1.00

00:48:01.020 but like how much did sexism hold her back? 1.00

00:48:05.340 10. 0.97

00:48:06.260 Yeah.

00:48:07.040 In life and in death,

00:48:08.720 like it's pretty clear that the scope of her ambitions

00:48:12.080 was enormous. 0.99

00:48:14.100 Clearly she wanted to end slavery. 1.00

00:48:17.760 Clearly she wanted to end patriarchy.

00:48:20.500 like and of course the two are linked clearly she wanted to do a great deal and she managed

00:48:28.080 to do a lot for herself but she did die poor and then she you know for the next 200 years

00:48:37.500 people argued about whether she was like a trans woman or just a man with a really good reason to

00:48:45.560 pretend to be a trans woman which is yeah and i hate how that obfuscates all of the cool stuff

00:48:53.800 that she had been doing to like limit her to just be like oh look at this interesting gender story 0.98

00:48:58.980 where it's like no like she wanted to send an all-women brigade to the american revolution 1.00

00:49:03.640 like she wanted like she was so into like the feminist stuff at the time like but yeah no so 0.94

00:49:10.280 how that all adds up just so you know is a 35.5 the highest score anyone's ever gotten in the

00:49:15.420 podcast is a 38 so she's like close it's a 38 38 is fredigand i don't know if you know about

00:49:21.820 fredigand she's like who can top her so far nobody but yeah so fredigand is a 38 queen margot

00:49:30.400 is 37.5 extra points for like gleeful murder right fredigand gets points for a lot of murder

00:49:39.620 based things yeah and ginga of angola has a 36 um harem sultan has 36 and then the chevalier

00:49:46.620 35.5 so she's in fifth fifth place overall it's a good ranker i am happy i'm happy for her i think

00:49:55.100 she deserves to be right up there now since i have you who are the other two trans women of the 18th

00:50:01.860 century who you want to talk about all right well let's start with the lower ranking one first

00:50:07.740 known to history as the abbé de choisi and from burgundy but also known better i think well i'm

00:50:17.380 not going to misgender her i'm just going to call her debar because she decided she was the comtesse

00:50:23.060 debar for several years and then wrote a massively successful memoir about it essentially she was

00:50:29.080 the story she put out was that her mother simply decided she was a girl and raised her accordingly

00:50:35.600 but like that was probably political maneuvering as well because that was just how she preferred

00:50:43.720 to be and also because she spent much of her childhood as playmate to louis the 14th's trans 0.52

00:50:51.260 sister more on that in a second okay their mothers were were tight and we're just like well let's

00:50:58.660 just get them both great dresses like life may be hard but it doesn't have to be hard now

00:51:02.920 so at the age of 18 she was sort of heavily socially shamed and was like okay fine i guess

00:51:10.220 i'll try to dress as a boy for a bit didn't like it stopped almost immediately and spent vast

00:51:16.980 amounts of money on ridiculously gaudy outfits because she was a fashionista at one point

00:51:23.700 the dauphin's like hard-ass tutor comes up to her at a party and is just like you should be

00:51:30.320 ashamed of yourself you disgust me completely what's wrong with you and she's like well i just 0.97

00:51:34.900 can't i can't just have people walking up to me at parties doing that i've got to get out of paris 0.88

00:51:39.360 so like she retreats to the countryside she has her lawyer prepare for her an identity as a

00:51:46.400 respectable widow and the contested bar uh she dives her hair she's like yeah okay fine we'll 1.00

00:51:53.340 just go with really dark hair for now and then suitably disguised she basically just starts 1.00

00:51:59.580 sleeping with everyone in sight according to her memoirs like well she only really records the women 1.00

00:52:04.120 she slept with because that wasn't illegal like there was no potential death penalty for sleeping

00:52:09.380 with women so it's like memoirs of a trans lesbian she gives her skincare regimen and passing in her 0.95

00:52:16.320 memoirs her memoirs are actually hilarious they're kind of ridiculous um she starts them off by 0.63

00:52:22.000 basically observing she's like every so often i try i try to stop being a woman

00:52:27.920 I put on boy clothes and the darndest thing keeps happening I just gamble all the time 0.85

00:52:36.200 she's like I spend so much money gambling that eventually I just realized I can't keep doing

00:52:42.160 this anymore so I repierce my ears put on a gray dress and I feel great she's like let me tell you

00:52:49.580 but my skincare regimen my skin is amazingly soft of course I'm gorgeous and her memoir just 0.98

00:52:55.980 continues in this vein like it's hilarious and i love it like incredibly arrogant she was probably

00:53:02.480 annoying to be around but she was hilarious there's a rumor that i find somewhat credible

00:53:09.420 that one of her lovers was prince eugene of zavor which would be scandalous on multiple levels

00:53:15.880 especially since this is like roughly war of the spanish succession era no it's a little before

00:53:21.200 that I guess it's yeah it's before that so maybe it's not that scandalous maybe it's just scandalous

00:53:26.780 because you know Prince Eugene of Savoy she's also known for being part of a diplomatic mission to

00:53:33.900 the kingdom of Siam really and writing extensively about it she wasn't just a pretty face

00:53:40.740 David Hume actually has both her had both her like scandalous memoirs and her account of the

00:53:49.020 situation in Siam in his library. Eventually, she sort of went back to the countryside and just

00:53:55.480 carried on writing letters to various scandalous people. Her memoirs were a big bestseller

00:54:01.640 posthumously, but also there were a bunch of open secrets during her life. She's an interesting

00:54:07.740 figure to me. She also apparently wrote a fairy tale with Charles Perrault, and I forget which

00:54:14.880 feminist writer of the late 17th century. But it was like Charles Perrault, the writer of fairy

00:54:21.720 tales, this feminist, and her sat down to write a fairy tale. The fairy tale is essentially the

00:54:27.440 story of this young marquise who has this interesting backstory where her mother was

00:54:33.120 like, I'm going to have a girl. Then after her child was born, she was informed she had a born.

00:54:39.100 She was like, nope, nope, girl. Fairy tale proceeds, you know, the young girl was raised

00:54:43.460 and extravagance she had all these wonderful things she had all the accomplishments you would

00:54:47.580 expect pretty dresses too and so on and so forth then it's like and then one day she meets this

00:54:52.760 handsome young marquee her exact social station wonderful match made in heaven they fall for each

00:54:59.720 other they arrange a marriage on the wedding night they're disrobing innocently not suspecting

00:55:07.140 anything could be amiss and then basically what happens is they both have a surprise genital

00:55:12.040 reveal sort of look at each other shrug and are like well this is fine and proceed with their

00:55:18.140 lives happily ever after which is like i guess you could say early t4j i'm trying to find a good

00:55:28.920 copy of that but it's difficult to track down there's a i forgot which university press has

00:55:36.200 a pretty good omnibus with it um and her memoirs but like from 2004 so I dread the author's note

00:55:43.340 but yeah so that's that's the Comtesse de Barre or the Abbe de Choisy yeah and the person whose

00:55:51.100 playmate she was Philippe the trans sister of Louis the 14th has a completely bananas life as well

00:55:59.580 okay i'm like i'm so excited here so clearly in her childhood at least at least according to

00:56:10.700 she had a playmate who was also a trans girl and they hung out together and they wore dresses and

00:56:17.780 everything was great but she was also like a pretty major prince which brought a lot of

00:56:25.820 heartbreak so she had this this famous on again off again relationship with this duke it was very

00:56:32.160 stormy at one point she marries i forget who someone someone important and then of course

00:56:41.220 he feuds like the duke feuds with her wife with her wife it's this whole mess her wife gets the

00:56:47.680 duke sent to the bastille or no was it to the chateau d'if yeah her wife gets her wife gets

00:56:54.300 her boyfriend sent to the Chateau Diff. Then she has to go to her brother and be like, please let 0.94

00:56:59.200 my boyfriend out of the Chateau Diff. Please let my boyfriend out of the Chateau Diff. She was

00:57:03.960 apparently a very successful general, like terrifying field commander, and famously had

00:57:12.420 a statue of Achilles created in the gardens of Versailles. It's Achilles on Skiros. So it's like

00:57:18.540 Achilles in a beautiful dress looking like the woman warrior she was apparently very significant

00:57:24.920 to Philippe because that was her contribution to the gardens of Versailles which I find pretty

00:57:32.820 interesting it's like oh okay she definitely related to this particular version of Achilles

00:57:38.700 who's interpreted as a trans feminine person when she died her friends were like oh she was the

00:57:45.760 silliest woman who ever lived like basically that was her obituary her life was probably pretty sad 0.94

00:57:54.280 but like also very privileged with stormy boyfriends and wives who sent those stormy

00:58:00.600 boyfriends to the chateau deep since you brought up the statue of achilles i feel like it's a

00:58:06.080 natural progression to wrap things back around to your version of achilles in your book which

00:58:12.520 everybody should buy and read i agree buy ralph gotta sing read ralph gotta sing he'll get to

00:58:18.420 meet achilles so i know like the vague outlines of the story of achilles but i don't i'm not

00:58:25.120 familiar with the part you just said about what the statue is made of like the achilles like this

00:58:30.040 okay like what's that what's that story so one of the one of the parts of the achilles mythos

00:58:36.960 is and this is in a bunch of different classical sources um and also represented on art from the

00:58:43.260 classical period probably it reflects a pretty old tradition it's not referenced in the Iliad

00:58:48.860 but it appears on art pretty early where Achilles lived for years before the Trojan War as a woman

00:58:56.400 named Pyrrha on the island of Scyros and had a relationship with the princess of Scyros de Damia

00:59:02.740 so Achilles was a trans lesbian and that episode was super popular in art literally from

00:59:12.500 the classical period to the 19th century when it kind of stopped because all of a sudden people

00:59:21.400 needed a little more consistency in their gendered representations of Achilles but yeah frequently

00:59:26.980 like a surprisingly often amount of the time Achilles was portrayed as a woman we see this

00:59:33.080 in the renaissance we see this in the middle ages we see this in the classical period

00:59:36.940 Achilles was often portrayed by women on stage Shakespeare kind of riffs on that when he makes

00:59:43.720 his Achilles very feminine it's just a really long-standing tradition there's a Roman epic

00:59:50.260 unfinished epic called the Achilleod, which by Statius, which I detest, which is one of the more

00:59:57.620 elaborated forms of that story. Statius just decides to take the narrative and go as trans 0.51

01:00:03.080 misogynist as he can in order to, I guess, make Achilles like the kind of man the Romans could

01:00:10.200 relate to. In that version, Achilles is forced to live as a woman by his mother in order to prevent

01:00:16.780 Achilles from going to war. So the first scene is just like, mom, I can't believe you would 0.94

01:00:22.480 force me to live as a woman. I'm so mad at you. Wait, the princess Obscurus is hot. I'm going

01:00:27.660 to rape her. And that's what happens. Which, I mean, that's the kind of thing that the Romans 1.00

01:00:33.980 vibed with. It's definitely not the kind of thing I vibe with. So I thought to myself, well,

01:00:38.900 this cannot stand. Then I thought to myself, also, isn't it a simpler and more economical

01:00:45.640 story if Achilles is just a trans woman exactly it's the chevalier all over again yeah so that 0.93

01:00:52.400 was the point of departure for writing Wrath Goddess Sing yeah we start on Skiros she ran away

01:00:58.240 from Thea some years before like less than two years before but you know a couple years in order 0.51

01:01:04.840 to live as herself she's constantly worried that sales in the distance might mean that her

01:01:11.740 Myrmidon relatives have come to collect her. Sales appear. They turn out to be

01:01:17.660 Diomedes and Odysseus who are looking for Prince Achilles and have no idea that the polite young

01:01:24.280 woman they just encountered is Prince Achilles. And it kind of goes from there, but it gets very

01:01:29.960 weird. Yeah. I'm so excited about it. I'm very much looking forward to reading it. And I think

01:01:38.880 it's there's could you have known when you were writing this book that it's coming at this moment

01:01:43.380 where people are like obsessed with like Circe and like the Trojan women like books about this

01:01:48.900 time period these myths are like having a moment and like here you come honestly we had so many

01:01:57.160 publishers pass because they were like the song of Achilles just came out 10 years ago surely this

01:02:01.860 wave is over and then enter like book talk and suddenly everybody is all about it yeah and I

01:02:07.900 think too that's a great time to just sort of think about what we're doing as we retell because

01:02:13.140 there are so many different ways to retell and these stories were never neutral like the iliad

01:02:19.020 for instance it's i mean alexander the great slept with the copy of the iliad under his pillow

01:02:25.860 and literally would occasionally just say my ancestor achilles was killed in this area so i

01:02:31.400 can invade like it became the foundation of like the hellenistic imperial colonial literature

01:02:38.500 the british used it the same way the iliad is like like retellings and framings of these stories

01:02:45.520 are never neutral and i think it's really interesting to think about what we're doing

01:02:48.800 when we decide to make achilles the kind of person who would only ever would only ever deign to wear

01:02:57.660 women's clothing in order to rape princesses or when we reject that yeah it feels very timely

01:03:04.640 yeah it's i think it's coming at the perfect moment for this book i think not just because

01:03:12.600 of like retellings happen to be like popular but just because of where we are as a society

01:03:18.240 not to get into all of that but i think it's so important and i think this is part of what was in

01:03:23.340 the um the message i got from your publicist was just saying like this is what is it it's like

01:03:28.780 like a book about a trans character written by a trans author being published by one by this huge

01:03:33.800 publisher like this is like groundbreaking in those ways yeah it's something that couldn't

01:03:38.580 have happened even a few years ago and hopefully in a few years it'll continue to be conceivable

01:03:44.320 no but i think like as everything we've just been talking about like it's just such a good

01:03:49.100 reminder or maybe some people who didn't know that like trans people have been here

01:03:53.100 all along oh yeah the earliest no the earliest writer whose name we know and heduana writes

01:04:01.540 extensively like basically praising the goddess anana that transition is possible and there are

01:04:09.760 substantial hints in the text that at least and heduana was either was the author or was regarded

01:04:16.620 as the author of these super famous religious hymns

01:04:20.940 that were used for the next 2,500 years. 0.78

01:04:24.260 And there are definitely trans elements

01:04:27.540 in how Hidwana is described in these hymns as well,

01:04:30.520 which wouldn't actually be surprising,

01:04:33.160 but it would be one of those cases

01:04:34.360 of a historical figure who has just been presumed cis

01:04:38.500 because there's not affirmative evidence of transness.

01:04:41.920 But affirmative evidence of transness

01:04:43.480 doesn't even help as we see with yeah god you're you know so much about everything i'm just like

01:04:51.860 learning so much from you have you so you've always had an interest in greek mythology you

01:04:59.480 said that's been kind of like your thing from a young age did you study history or is it more of

01:05:04.820 like i mean like did you like officially study history or is this just like in your you just do

01:05:10.340 yourself oh no I'm a talented amateur yeah no my formal degrees are in fiction okay but no um

01:05:19.160 trans history I mean I would also say like to be interested in the written word growing up as a

01:05:26.360 trans woman as a millennial meant constantly encountering buried trans stories likely at

01:05:33.520 but also like an Hedwana or like Yusupov who killed Rasputin Yusupova has a memoir lost

01:05:41.620 splendor which essentially amounts to coming out repeatedly as a trans woman but also being

01:05:47.320 confident no one will ever actually get it so like at one point the assassin of Rasputin

01:05:56.360 just spends chapters talking about how gorgeous she was in her dresses as she lived for years as

01:06:02.280 a woman in her brother's house before there was a giant scandal that caused her family to find out

01:06:08.000 and like you run into these stories you look around everyone is just saying oh you know he

01:06:15.760 was just unusual over and over again but they build and it becomes this this itch in the back

01:06:22.940 of your brain you can't scratch it becomes this sensation like walking over your own grave

01:06:27.200 constantly you just have these these buried stories so i would say more than anything my

01:06:34.580 love of stories and mythology and history is also tied to that it's tied to oh there are there's

01:06:39.260 hidden stories that can seal the light of day but only if we actually encounter them on their

01:06:46.180 own terms instead of saying nope nothing to see here yes it's like detective work

01:06:50.480 it's like on unforgetting yeah it's like brushing away all these like convoluted

01:06:58.740 explanations that don't actually make any sense to be like oh but the obvious thing is like oh 0.99

01:07:03.460 this is a trans woman like if we just if we just remove like 75 percent of this bio of this like

01:07:08.540 biography and just like focus on like what actually the facts are you're like oh well

01:07:12.280 here's a sort of a trans woman okay like yeah so it's just like there's weeding through all that

01:07:17.280 stuff yeah in a way it's like a demystification and it's like a clarification of just if you get

01:07:23.640 rid of all the like confusing other people well all history i guess is written by somebody who's

01:07:28.700 an agenda but once you realize that agenda if you're like well how many of these facts are

01:07:32.620 being filtered through somebody's point of view and then like at the end of the day when you get

01:07:36.800 rid of that point of view like what is left right yeah yeah i find it so fascinating well thank you

01:07:45.260 so much for this conversation this is like i can't wait to to publish this i can't wait for

01:07:50.980 everybody to hear everything you have to say i can't wait for people to learn like a about the

01:07:55.480 chevalier and b about you and your book thank you oh my gosh i'm really excited yeah it's again like

01:08:02.620 i'm talking to you at this like interstitial space between like this is going to play once the book

01:08:07.720 has been out but like to you like today the book is not out so you're just like

01:08:11.900 right now we're time travelers. Yeah, exactly. So congratulations on the way that your book was

01:08:17.300 so well received on its publication day and how that was the best day for you. And I'm sure it

01:08:23.080 will be. I'm really excited that it's finally happening. I know there's so much waiting around

01:08:27.820 when you write a book and just waiting for it to actually happen. Oh my gosh. I wrote this book

01:08:33.840 in 2019. Wow. So it's finally coming. So congratulations. And thank you so much for

01:08:41.120 this amazing conversation thank you for having me it was a pleasure so again maya's book is called

01:08:46.820 wrath goddess sing it is out now everywhere where you can get books if you use the link in these

01:08:52.980 show notes to buy it through bookshop.org then a little bit of money goes towards supporting vulgar

01:08:57.300 history podcast you can also of course get it for free at your local public library and i really i'm

01:09:03.480 looking forward to reading it i hope you all get to read it maya is so smart and so interesting and

01:09:09.700 I can't wait to see what her book is like. So the regular reminders we see at the end of every

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01:09:40.680 access to all the episodes of Vulgar History, as well as you get the super special, well,

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01:09:49.720 by Alison Epstein and Linna Wood Johnson to talk about costume dramas.

01:09:53.340 This month, we're going to be talking about, well, you know, I can't say what we're going

01:09:56.680 to be talking about because it's a spoiler for what the next episode of Vulgar History 0.68

01:09:59.500 is, but rest assured, there will be women in pants in the movie we watch.

01:10:03.420 also when you pledge at least five dollars us or more on patreon then you get this so this 0.93

01:10:09.640 asshole episodes where i talk about shitty men from history there is one about if you're still

01:10:14.400 like having traumatic flashbacks to anne of denmark's marriage to james i have done an 0.96

01:10:19.180 episode there about james the first slash sixth i've also done who have i done recently napoleon

01:10:24.780 allison epstein was a special guest star on that because she has some real strong feelings about

01:10:28.220 napoleon this month i'm going to be doing i think alexander the great so like stay tuned oh

01:10:33.360 that was mentioned a little bit in this episode how he was into the iliad yeah so instagram

01:10:38.000 vulgar history pod is where a lot of the action is happening including perhaps this week giveaways

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01:10:56.800 your masks on, pants on, and your tits out. Talk to you next time. 1.00

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Vulgar History - June 15, 2022

International, part 13： The Trans Spy

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