Vulgar History - The 18th-Century Trans Spy Who Fenced Her Way To Fame (Rerelease)

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to a special pride month super special episode of vulgar history in today's

00:00:17.660 episode i'm actually re-releasing an interview that i held last year with maya dean the author

00:00:23.160 of wrath goddessing the trans reimagining of the story of achilles it was one of my favorite

00:00:29.740 conversations. It was the first queer content that I think I had on this podcast, actually.

00:00:34.860 And Maya is such a font of knowledge about so many different people. Technically, this episode

00:00:39.980 is talking about the Chevalier d'Anne, who was a French trans woman who was also a spy and just 0.96

00:00:46.320 like total tits out badass in the 18th century. And Maya is right there explaining lots of nuance 0.65

00:00:52.020 to the story as well. But then she also manages to work in talking about the history of French

00:00:56.980 fairy tales, which is interesting because that connects with the recent episode we did about

00:01:00.520 Madame Del Noy. Maya also talks about Achilles, some other transfigures from 18th century France.

00:01:06.580 It's a real, I learned so much. And what I want to tell you is it struck me at the time. And I

00:01:11.440 still remember Maya was just casually throwing out facts. She is, she just knows all this stuff

00:01:15.780 back of her hand. It's amazing. But also one of the reasons why I am re-releasing this today

00:01:20.400 is because Wrath Goddess Sing, Maya's book, has just been released in trade paperback. So,

00:01:25.840 and the cover is gorgeous. The original cover, also gorgeous. Trade paperback, gorgeous. So if

00:01:30.420 you already bought a copy, you know, might as well complete the set by the trade paperback as well.

00:01:34.360 Or if you haven't bought this book yet, then the trade paperback is a great occasion to get a cute

00:01:39.840 copy of this fantastic book. Wrath Goddess Singh was also nominated for one of the Lambda Literary

00:01:45.340 Awards for Transgender Fiction, which Maya, it didn't win that category. But you know what,

00:01:51.700 the nomination is an honor, obviously, and I wanted to share that as well because all this

00:01:56.340 success came to Maya after we did this interview last year. So I hope you enjoy this re-release of

00:02:02.940 an interview with Maya Dean, author of Wrath Goddess Sing. So we're back on the Internationale

00:02:11.180 Saga. This week, we're going to be looking at the story of a woman from 18th century France,

00:02:17.000 which I think you can know is going to mean me pronouncing some things in my effortlessly perfect

00:02:22.740 French accent. I'm joined today for this episode by Maya Dean, who is the author of the book

00:02:29.740 Wrath Goddess Sing, which just, just came out. So we talk about that in the episode as well.

00:02:34.760 So Wrath Goddess Sing is a retelling of the Iliad. So drawing on ancient texts and modern

00:02:40.360 archaeology to reveal the trans woman's story hidden underneath the well-known myths of the 0.98

00:02:44.360 iliad wrath goddess sing weaves a compelling pitilessly beautiful vision of achilles's

00:02:49.240 vanished world perfect for fans of song of achilles and the inheritance trilogy so we're

00:02:54.420 going to definitely talk about that we're going to talk about achilles we're going to talk about

00:02:57.160 trans history i think it's so perfect because it's june it's pride month and honestly my dean

00:03:02.980 is here with the facts and the information she knows so much about the person who we're talking

00:03:07.380 about it's kind of a bit like she's telling the story to me so i hope you enjoy this episode about

00:03:12.260 the Chevalier Dayon. I'm so excited today. I'm here with Maya Dean, author of, so at the time

00:03:19.920 this podcast comes out, your book will have like been out for like a week, but we're recording it

00:03:23.440 before it comes out. So can you just like, first of all, tell everybody about your book, please?

00:03:27.900 Sure. Hi, I'm Maya Dean. My, my book, which will be out by the time you hear this is Raph

00:03:33.080 God of Sing, which is a retelling of the life of Achilles from Bilead as the trans woman that she

00:03:40.740 was which is a bold claim but you know so rap gotta sing really explores alternate and submerged

00:03:49.380 readings of familiar myths to give us uh Achilles as she might have been in the bronze age in a

00:03:56.000 world that was just on the brink of collapse a world that was in many ways much nicer to live in 0.85

00:04:02.780 than the world of the next thousand years in large parts of the region like Mycenaean women had equal 0.98

00:04:09.860 pay apparently so just from like looking at like the what's out there like your bio and your website

00:04:15.160 and stuff like you've been into like this mythology since a very young age right lifelong absolutely

00:04:21.140 yeah i feel like so for me and my i feel like you are for like the trojan war and like greek

00:04:27.940 mythology as i am for like the women of tudor history which is just like from like a weirdly

00:04:32.580 young age it's just like this is my thing and here we go yeah yeah so i'm excited for you like that

00:04:38.280 this book is coming out that is you get to explore all this stuff oh gosh yeah the tutor period is so

00:04:43.440 fascinating you get so many big personalities it's oh no exactly and it's not about me this is about

00:04:50.080 you but actually today we're talking so you're joining me both because you have this book coming

00:04:54.040 out and because i got the best email from your publicist saying like maya has this book coming

00:04:58.500 out and here are some other things that she can talk about as well and one of them was trans women

00:05:02.720 of 18th century france and i was like literally as i read that i was like i'm currently researching

00:05:07.780 a trans woman from 18th century france so like this is the perfect opportunity

00:05:11.720 so today you're joining me and we're going to be talking about a woman whose name is what we're

00:05:17.180 going to call her la chevaliere which was kind of a title that she was given at one point it's

00:05:23.660 a french word it means like knight effectively right it's like it's a a role that she earned

00:05:31.000 so she was a sign male at birth was a woman and so the name i'm just going to do my best with it

00:05:37.480 extremely long french name her name was charlotte janvier louise augusta andrea timotea d'or de

00:05:46.380 beaumont she kind of carried around a lot of names yeah she had it's all of the names which is why

00:05:53.580 i don't know in history like she's mostly like people refer to her when you look it up it's like

00:05:58.460 the chevalier like that is how she is tends to be known and i feel like in her life that's kind of

00:06:02.960 like what she went by maybe la chevalier yeah i love that it's just sort of like the presence of

00:06:08.080 that just being like it's not just like oh i'm anne it's like oh hi i'm la chevalier like okay

00:06:13.260 like step back like already this is a cool person oh yeah no she made a big deal out of it in fact 0.59

00:06:17.480 that was like one of the ways like she was an early feminist and one of the ways that she 0.96

00:06:22.440 related to the other early feminists who thought she was a cis woman who had been raised as a boy

00:06:26.860 but one of the ways she related to them was by like mary wollstonecraft actually mentions her 1.00

00:06:32.600 in passing in some of her writings talking about how like la chevalier proves that women can be

00:06:38.680 warriors and she knew that like she would be read that way she intended like this was she wanted to

00:06:45.080 be understood and accepted by her cis women peers definitely she positioned herself that way

00:06:50.540 intentionally yeah and so what like we're gonna just kind of like go through like birth to death

00:06:55.880 like what was her situation but it's like the gender stuff is such a big part of kind of the

00:07:01.500 mythos that she like built up around herself like how she kind of like used that for pr reasons but

00:07:06.460 i want to mention that like her life was also so interesting right aside from that just like the

00:07:13.140 espionage of it all like there's there's a lot to get into la chevaliere it was born october 5th

00:07:18.680 1728 in burgundy into a poor noble family in a wine bearing region and i mentioned that because

00:07:25.300 wine does become up later it's like a i think that she's smuggling oh my gosh burgundy a lot

00:07:31.080 of stuff was happening in Burgundy actually like Abbe de Choisy better known occasionally as the

00:07:37.060 Comtesse de Bar um actually lived as a woman in Burgundy for some years and wrote a very famous

00:07:44.120 best-selling memoir that probably was still pretty accessible in Leah's childhood yeah oh my god I

00:07:50.940 love that did not know the detail so yeah Burgundy and the sort of like the early years like just from

00:07:56.960 what i've read it's like pretty much it's kind of like like most people alive at that point in

00:08:01.700 france like we don't know a lot about like the early years because no one really wrote it down

00:08:04.800 so i just kind of know about like she excelled in her schooling um she went into military training

00:08:09.800 by age 35 she'd gotten a law degree published books about the french tax system been knighted

00:08:16.200 and became a celebrated fencer oh yeah she was like a fantastic like even much later in her 0.63

00:08:23.080 life in england she spent a fair bit of time giving exhibition fencing matches i'm sure george

00:08:29.640 de boulon will come up at some point yeah so the so just like right away before we get into the

00:08:36.260 rest of it it's like this is a person who's like really smart really educated really athletic and

00:08:42.760 then skilled in these in these impressive ways fencing to me is like a really epic skill oh

00:08:50.060 yeah i also want to mention so like like much of what we know about her early life comes from so

00:08:54.980 she wrote an autobiography but i don't think it was published and i think it was she like it was

00:08:59.820 ghostwritten like she hired someone else to write it for her so we get but she wrote these other

00:09:03.720 books as well so in the introduction to this never completed autobiography some modern day

00:09:09.440 historians said that by 1758 she was a rising star among the young aristocratic elite who hoped to

00:09:15.060 serve the monarchy in some important capacity so she was just like smart she's charismatic she was

00:09:20.260 talented and it's just kind of like she was from like what did i say it's like a noble but poor

00:09:25.780 family but she was like elevating herself just by virtue of being like so good basically yeah her

00:09:32.100 family had like the sort of positioning where they they had noble enough blood and all that to be

00:09:37.960 positioned where they could excel and could rise themselves through like skilled bureaucracy and

00:09:43.120 stuff and she was a talented intriguer so yeah no she was like ambitious like she was like i'm just

00:09:50.420 gonna like make my mark in the world here we go so she was given the role of a diplomat to russia

00:09:57.360 and england like officially but privately what she was doing was she worked for the most clandestine

00:10:03.240 spy service in france le secret du roi or the king's secret so this was like you could probably

00:10:10.080 explain this better than I can but like the king was like suspicious and he wanted to have these

00:10:13.880 secret spies working directly for him like not going through the rest of the political everything

00:10:19.160 so she I love this this is like it's like a James Bond moment yeah a lot of people cast

00:10:25.760 doubts on like some of the claims she made about her spying in Russia mostly about the idea that

00:10:33.280 she spent most of it you know looking gorgeous in dresses but I mean that's not particularly

00:10:39.560 impossible no exactly so yeah that's the thing there's something like so she's charged with

00:10:44.760 fostering good relations with the russian court so empress elizabeth is who is there and so okay 0.97

00:10:51.120 one article i read said like the empress liked to have balls like metamorphosis balls where like 0.98

00:10:57.160 gender non-conformity was like celebrated and that's what was done which is not to say that's 1.00

00:11:01.900 how or why she started potentially dressing in this glamorous in glamorous dresses but it's like 0.98

00:11:08.400 if it's already a court where like gender is not strictly binary like maybe great opportunity

00:11:13.360 exactly exactly exactly and then i think i saw something about where it's like because she was 0.99

00:11:18.900 presenting as a woman she's able to get into places like men maybe couldn't go to like learn 0.73

00:11:23.040 some more of the secrets to like get closer to the empress and that sort of thing yeah exactly

00:11:27.360 like uh but certainly what she's in her memoirs she talks about essentially being able to get

00:11:32.780 and all sorts of places that men couldn't go because there are so many historians who are

00:11:37.580 trying to narrate her as cis. Obviously, there's like a line of critique where people say that,

00:11:45.680 well, maybe she was exaggerating those stories to make her herself seem more useful, but like,

00:11:51.920 probably not. Honestly, I've like, I've had this in a couple other episodes of my podcast where

00:11:57.400 like, if someone writes their memoir, and it says something that historians like that just doesn't

00:12:02.300 fit into this like binary concept they're like oh well she's probably exaggerating like not just her

00:12:06.560 but other people are like this probably isn't true and i'm like well this is her memoir and like i

00:12:10.240 trust her more than i trust like a 20th century like cis white man being like i don't believe it

00:12:16.080 it's like well i believe her if i'm gonna believe anyone frankly oh yeah absolutely it's it's really

00:12:23.540 it's really an interesting thing i mean like this is uh this is what like uh catherine the great is

00:12:28.480 court that kind of thing period elizabeth i mean it wasn't uh like a great like a junior figure at

00:12:36.940 that point not yet yes yeah like in the fabulous and wildly historically inaccurate the great it

00:12:45.400 would be like season one yes yes exactly i don't know anyway i find it like this is why i'm so

00:12:51.200 happy to have you here because like so much of this history it's just been interpreted for so

00:12:56.220 along by like cis white men who are like trying to make these stories fit into a paradigm that

00:13:00.980 they understand and part of it i think with the chevalier is like well she's so impressive she

00:13:06.000 did these like it's like surely a woman couldn't have done these things so it must have been a man

00:13:10.900 in disguise but like then like the contortions you have to make to make that fit a story that

00:13:16.260 clearly is the story of a trans woman so yeah exactly season one of the great is what's happening

00:13:21.000 apparently she dazzled in her post so like she was like in the fashion the outfits and again just

00:13:27.000 like the charisma and she's so smart and i'm sure like quick and witty so then france entered into

00:13:32.000 the seven years war with britain and le chevalier was ordered to return to become a captain oh and

00:13:38.040 this is where she was later admitted to the prestigious order of saint louis and honored

00:13:41.660 with the title chevalier which means so it's an honorific it's just kind of it's the equivalent

00:13:47.520 of being like dame or like lady whatever after the war ended she was appointed as liaison to the

00:13:52.800 english court but again working directly for the king with secret orders to scope at the coastline

00:13:58.180 for possible french invasion of england yeah that came out that came in handy later yeah so

00:14:05.300 it was a prominent position but it wouldn't last so according to this the one source i was looking

00:14:11.520 at here uh she enjoyed england a little bit too much um she was strongly reprimanded for importing

00:14:16.760 too much wine and i feel like you can't take the burgundy out of the girl like clearly uh so then

00:14:24.300 within six months she was fired for insolence and given two weeks to return to france so she knew 0.83

00:14:29.880 that if and when she returned to france she probably she'd be sent to the jail to the best

00:14:33.360 deal so she just decided to like not return she's just like what if i stay in england so the king

00:14:41.320 which is louis god i'm so bad at telling the louis apart 15th furiously ordered her to be

00:14:47.180 extradited to france but the british foreign minister refused declaring her she was free to

00:14:51.640 stay in britain as a private citizen so she's just like the scandal of it you know just she

00:14:57.580 set herself apart from just like everyone else right away because it's like the king is demanding

00:15:01.260 her back like the foreign minister is here like she's just like at that so already she's like a

00:15:04.920 celebrity in that extent oh it gets even wilder because uh the way she got reprimanded for insulin

00:15:11.260 was pretty weird. A new ambassador was assigned to England. And within a short period of time,

00:15:18.720 they clearly did not like each other. She quickly started accusing him of trying to drug her at

00:15:23.500 dinner, at which point she made these accusations public. So then he sued her for libel, which

00:15:30.260 I mean, it's Britain. If there's a constant that unites the 18th century to today,

00:15:36.840 it's that it's really easy to sue people for libel so she lost that case but the british

00:15:42.260 public sided with her and just started like pelting this guy when they saw him with like

00:15:47.000 you know just fruits and vegetables like there was this huge scandal and that's how she got

00:15:52.300 like recalled for insolence so i'm just wondering like why was he trying to drug her yeah

00:15:58.740 i love i love there's been like other stories in the podcast too where it's like

00:16:04.180 the people of britain just like they riot at a moment's notice so it's like this is our star

00:16:10.120 and we will defend her and it's yeah i appreciate that consistency so everything that she's doing 0.94

00:16:16.480 is just like the most like this is not like a low-key life that she is living the french foreign

00:16:23.240 ministry made several attempts to kidnap and arrest her in retaliation she made her most scandals 0.93

00:16:30.240 move yet which is she published a book of state secrets full of correspondence from le secret du

00:16:35.480 roi full of salacious details and the promise there was more to come unless the french king

00:16:40.400 stopped trying to bring her back yeah i think she held back like the invasion plans but this is like

00:16:46.400 it's epic i love i love that they're like you're coming back and she's like oh really like what if

00:16:50.520 i just like expose your entire like secret james bond operation and and it worked so the king

00:16:56.880 agreed to leave her alone with a generous 12 000 livres salary on the condition that she did not

00:17:01.960 reveal his worst secrets so she was in england she's just this like fabulous french woman in

00:17:06.980 england in political exile but i think i would assume based on the the scandal and the stuff 0.84

00:17:12.100 that had happened already like she was so she continued to be a celebrity like people just like

00:17:17.180 all about her in england so it's like of course she'd stay there like they left her there okay

00:17:21.000 and then this is where i'm just like please help me with this so around 1770 rumors started to

00:17:25.500 spread potentially started by her that she had actually been born a woman but had been raised 0.76

00:17:30.360 as a man in order to receive a family inheritance yeah that's kind of one of the ways you do it

00:17:38.520 like in some ways i think she was learning from some of the lessons that you could take away from

00:17:44.840 like the lives of early 17th early 18th century french trans women which we'll talk about more

00:17:50.780 later. Because I think she decided, look, no, we have to actually convince everyone that I'm

00:17:55.920 assigned female at birth or else I will never get what I want. She probably did start the rumors

00:18:01.000 herself because I mean, she was literally a spy who intrigued constantly and used public opinion 1.00

00:18:07.220 to get what she wanted. And yeah, I would not be surprised in the least. There was like a bet

00:18:13.660 on the London stock exchange, just like giant betting pool, which is like perfect because

00:18:19.680 that lets her do like this, this virtuous. No, no, I will not. It's like humiliating that you're

00:18:26.960 even betting about this. I will not deign to reveal one or another, which of course inflames

00:18:34.060 the speculation even further. The betting pool lasts for like a year. Yeah. No, I've got in my

00:18:39.500 notes here, it says there was three to two odds that she was a woman. I mean, it's probably not

00:18:44.660 surprising if we look at representations of her from her own lifetime and especially from when

00:18:50.640 she was relatively young she's generally portrayed before she was outed as being quite beautiful

00:18:56.920 and she probably didn't look particularly masculine given that most of those reports

00:19:02.960 about that really started to happen after she died no and i think just from what i understand

00:19:08.540 And she was also, I think, like a short person, like for a short person with like a higher pitched voice anyway.

00:19:15.980 So it wasn't like outside the realm.

00:19:17.980 Like, so when she's like, oh, yeah, no, actually, I am one.

00:19:20.060 And everyone's like, oh, yeah, that tracks like like that.

00:19:23.500 That tracks. 0.86

00:19:24.200 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?

00:19:33.800 are like people are just so like it's such a i don't know just hearing about these like

00:19:38.960 paparazzi level moments from like golden times i'm just like like humanity has been the same

00:19:44.400 forever like there's always these like celebrities and people just like crowds follow them and

00:19:48.760 whatever yeah what's determined weird enough to be worth invading privacy has varied culturally

00:19:55.060 but the fact that you can randomly invade people's privacy if you're curious and spread that to

00:20:00.460 everyone else that's been constant i would argue since the bronze age yeah well no it's giving me

00:20:06.080 like early 2000s like perez hilton upskirt shots of like lindsey lohan or whatever right like people

00:20:11.640 are just like wanting to rip off her clothes because she was like they just they want to like

00:20:15.700 consume her so yes so the bet was abandoned oh so that an envoy from le secret droit arrived in

00:20:22.940 england to determine the truth like about was she a woman so she told all she revealed she was a

00:20:28.860 woman raised male by a father desperate for a son and heir which again as you said it's like yeah

00:20:34.760 you want to be able to start living as a woman so you're just like guess what i've always been a

00:20:38.920 woman but in a way that people would understand oh yeah tons of like mid-20th century american

00:20:44.620 trans women did the same thing like it was a very common approach yeah so let's see so the question

00:20:51.160 was brought all the way to the court of the king's bench on july 2nd 1777 the english government

00:20:56.560 formally pronounced she who had called herself the chevalier d'on until that day was an individual

00:21:01.740 who did not possess what the appellation man promised and that she was a virago disguised

00:21:08.600 in a uniform i had to look up that word do you know that word virago kind of signifies

00:21:14.160 female masculinity it's a latin word that kind of suggests anything ranging from butchiness to

00:21:22.140 like on its boundaries it can sort of shade into that other like really ancient trope of the

00:21:28.760 tribod tell me about that the tribod is basically this like classical era but also through the early 1.00

00:21:37.020 modern era conception of like sort of an obligate lesbian who's partially virilized genitally 0.88

00:21:43.360 which of course would mean you have to you have to like have to go after women it's just the way

00:21:49.280 things work because it's very like you know sexuality was super gendered so it's this

00:21:55.620 combination of well this woman will act like a man yeah so they're saying like they're saying 0.78

00:22:01.180 like okay this person is not a man that she is a virago which is basically like a mannish woman

00:22:07.560 kind of what they're saying yeah but this is like okay so it's official like the english government

00:22:12.600 formally pronounced that she's a woman so this is from i think the article from um it's a site

00:22:18.960 them dot us so this was the perfect way to affect a public gender transition without losing her

00:22:23.760 status or popularity by claiming to have been a woman pretending to be a man all along and then 1.00

00:22:30.700 taking one step further she wedded her public transition to her pious religious nature

00:22:34.560 arguing that because she was at heart a good honest christian woman she could no longer live

00:22:38.760 a lie and everyone's like okay fair enough well i guess you can't allow you to be a man anymore

00:22:43.900 yeah exactly and actually there were there were a bunch of little things which some people

00:22:48.640 some people have interpreted as ambivalence because it's convenient but which i think is

00:22:54.480 better understood as protesting just the right amount so like for instance there was this whole

00:23:02.060 kerfuffle over whether she could wear her military medals she was very insistent that she could 0.99

00:23:06.200 but then there was this bit where she was like and am i to be forced to wear women's clothing 1.00

00:23:11.220 all the time surely that's not progressive maybe you could fund it

00:23:17.580 and then the king pays for a wardrobe by Marie Antoinette's genius dressmaker oh my god we're

00:23:27.120 definitely going to get to that because well I'll just say right now so like she went back okay

00:23:31.040 so she's officially declared a woman age 49 just for the record yeah so she negotiated her return

00:23:36.100 to France and part of that like you just said was like but I'll need gorgeous dresses like

00:23:41.320 who will give me those and the king's like okay well yeah she agreed to publicly present as a

00:23:46.240 woman for the rest of her life so she went back to France um she was formally presented at the

00:23:50.620 court of Versailles so there was a four-hour makeover montage so included powdered hair and

00:23:56.560 an elaborate gown outfitted by Marie Antoinette's own dressmaker Rose Bertin so it's not just like

00:24:02.560 a coming out moment it's like a coming out moment like dressed in like like marie antoinette like

00:24:08.860 in an outfit that takes four hours to like put on yeah it's very much an i'm on top of the world

00:24:14.780 haha i win moment like in the movie that i'm imagining in my mind this is just this amount

00:24:19.520 of just like the it's like what is it i don't know any movie with like the prom or the person

00:24:24.960 like coming down the stairs and everyone's like what the nerd is beautiful like her coming out

00:24:29.680 just like having been dressed personally by Marie Antoinette's dresser just like I've arrived like

00:24:34.780 this is me it's beautiful um okay so the way that this article it says um being an 18th century

00:24:41.060 noblewoman after having been a soldier spy and diplomat was kind of like not is a little boring

00:24:46.960 it's kind of like well I don't want to just like hang on a court doing whatever like I'm a spy I'm

00:24:51.220 a soldier like she wants to keep doing stuff so for instance when France sided with the colonists

00:24:55.540 in the American Revolution,

00:24:56.640 she asked to be put back in uniform 1.00

00:24:58.000 to assemble an all-female battalion 0.95

00:25:00.620 to fight the British. 0.56

00:25:02.900 I love it. 0.98

00:25:04.400 I mean, and I think that

00:25:05.300 that's best understood.

00:25:06.820 Like, it would be easy

00:25:08.300 to decontextualize it

00:25:09.920 and treat it as just some sort

00:25:11.280 of weird pipe dream she had.

00:25:12.820 But I think it's best understood

00:25:13.820 in the context of that,

00:25:16.020 you know, figures like Wollstonecraft

00:25:18.160 were talking about her

00:25:19.200 as this, like, proof 1.00

00:25:20.900 that women can fight. 1.00

00:25:22.060 Like, yeah, I think 1.00

00:25:23.820 there's a political element to that, 0.99

00:25:25.200 especially given like some of her later like public work as an abolitionist i'm not surprised 0.98

00:25:30.480 that her feminism and her abolition would you know appear in the form of well let's see if we 0.99

00:25:36.640 can form regiments yeah no i love it i love that she's like she's got all this military experience

00:25:41.640 she's like let me use it and then like her life is inherently like you said like it's proof that

00:25:46.800 like women can do this the government apparently to that suggestion said well why don't you join 0.97

00:25:52.360 a convent yeah like just in terms of like not her being so progressive for the era and just 1.00

00:26:02.620 being faced with people who are just like does not compute like no no a group of women sounds

00:26:09.240 like a convent to me yeah i know if she'd been 30 years younger she would probably have been 1.00

00:26:13.780 guillotined with a bunch of revolutionary era french feminists yeah luckily she had the goods

00:26:20.600 on the king and so she kind of was safe in that way so she returned to london because frankly her 0.80

00:26:26.260 life just seemed like a lot better there she said she's going back there to settle up some business

00:26:29.800 but it potentially was more just to escape the strict life that she was being forced into in

00:26:34.500 france so in london she continued to write because remember she'd written all those books before

00:26:38.440 and she collected a large library of early feminist works which i love like what you're

00:26:43.540 saying like her mary wallstonecraft like she's like just as a figure of this time she's like 0.98

00:26:47.820 so into just like let's get on this like let feminism like let's make it happen like she's

00:26:54.080 into it while she was in england though the french revolution happened so actually like 1.00

00:26:58.020 luckily she was out of town so the french monarchy was abolished meaning she no longer

00:27:03.480 had the protection or the pension that she had been getting from the monarchy or for people who

00:27:09.300 don't think she was actually a woman and that she was doing this as some sort of 0.52

00:27:13.400 for 4d testing any reason to live as a woman if she wasn't one yeah exactly so it's like

00:27:22.220 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

00:27:28.020 she didn't have to anymore she was like clearly this is what she was doing by choice like for 0.99

00:27:35.760 herself and then this part bums me out obviously the last days are for life so she lived in poverty

00:27:40.240 she sold off her book collection but you were saying like she's giving fencing displays so

00:27:44.800 this was like a way that she's making some money it was just like showing off her cool fencing

00:27:47.940 skills and people like what a woman who's a fencer like she had this trademark like long 1.00

00:27:51.440 black dress that she would always wear yeah there were a bunch of exhibition matches with her and

00:27:56.480 joseph de boulogne the uh valier de saint george who is sometimes called the black mozart although

00:28:04.500 actually Mozart slept on his couch and they would first they were famous for being abolitionists

00:28:12.220 pressuring the British government to do something about the slave trade but second

00:28:15.900 they would do their exhibition matches together so like there are these political cartoons of just

00:28:22.420 you know her and just a double on just dueling but also punching the region the prince regent

00:28:32.080 so they were like yeah thank you for bringing that up as well because i love i love the story

00:28:37.580 of joseph as well i encountered it because the symphony here did a concert and i'm like oh this

00:28:42.720 musician i was like oh my god like i love the music i'm like who's this person i'm like oh

00:28:46.000 and it's this guy like quote unquote the black but basically they just mean like it's a black

00:28:49.580 man who lived at the same time as mozart who had like a white wig on so everyone's like oh the

00:28:53.100 black mozart like yeah but he was actually like he was amazing and he was actually a big influence

00:28:57.800 on Mozart yeah but I love the image of this like like this black man trans woman just like doing

00:29:03.200 these fencing displays and everyone's just like yeah we stand like we love you like oh my god

00:29:07.420 like so they're celebrities and really progressive like abolitionists like yeah I love this moment I

00:29:16.900 love I love and this is like the early 1800s so this is like if you want to put it into like

00:29:22.860 this is like Bridgerton era you know it's like that's happening with like the marriage

00:29:27.720 market and like whatever the regency and then at the same time like they're doing these fencing

00:29:31.720 displays like it's all happening all at the same time so she's making these fancy displays because

00:29:36.660 she needed money because she didn't have her pension for all of her military work and spy work

00:29:39.980 and then she lived the last few years of her life with a roommate who is another woman i haven't

00:29:45.640 seen anything actually like let's talk about that so i haven't seen anything about the chevalier

00:29:49.980 having any romantic connections with anyone did you have you come up on anything about like her

00:29:56.580 having a love life honestly no um which makes her relatively unusual compared to some of the

00:30:04.100 other famous french trans women who were somewhat famous for their love lives no um no one knows i

00:30:11.340 mean it just doesn't seem to come up now partially it could be that she was very disciplined about

00:30:16.100 her own pr so for all we know she had secret affairs that just never saw the light of day

00:30:22.900 but certainly certainly this was not something that was much talked about yeah and i find that

00:30:30.180 interesting in terms of how much her the fact that people are just like trying to rip off her clothes

00:30:35.520 like people are so interested in like every detail of her life but there's never any sort of like 0.89

00:30:39.680 scandal or rumors about her having affairs with anyone of any gender well granted people trying

00:30:45.560 to rip your clothes off it's a great reason to be paranoid about that kind of thing you know yeah

00:30:50.980 Yeah. And I agree. And that's a real hint. Like maybe you want to keep your love life private

00:30:54.720 if you don't want. Or potentially maybe you're a former spy and you don't trust anyone to see you

00:31:02.080 in such an intimate way, especially given what happened when she was no longer alive to protect

00:31:07.740 her privacy. Yes. So she was living with this woman for the last several years of her life.

00:31:13.120 And then she died in 1810. Her roommate discovered her body. And then I'll let you

00:31:17.720 describe what happened to her body then some physicians decided to examine her and they were 0.95

00:31:23.660 like oh look a penis it's perfect in every way at which point the scandal was worth a lot there's 0.93

00:31:31.240 actually like a drawing of her genitals in the british museum because people were very curious 1.00

00:31:38.640 her autopsy report also notes that you know just like okay also boobs very curvy but look a penis 1.00

00:31:46.680 and that then led to her defenders people who wanted to protect her reputation from the horrific 1.00

00:31:54.840 charge of being a trans woman which was a lot more scandalous in 1800 than in 1700 for reasons

00:32:00.900 to concoct various explanations as to why she was never really a trans woman and just had to

00:32:06.400 disguise herself as a woman for decades and decades and decades and decades for other reasons

00:32:12.620 yeah no it was like she lived openly as a woman for 33 years where it's like haha i'm a spy and

00:32:19.480 i'm gonna just like a woman like that's a long time like i know no one's that committed to the

00:32:26.000 bit unless it's actually something they care about no exactly so that's where it's like

00:32:30.080 like i was saying before like the contortions that i've been of historians trying to be like

00:32:34.820 okay this was this is a story of a man who because it was so clever and devious decided to dress as a

00:32:43.260 woman for 33 years i think some of them were doing it in kind of a horrifying attempt to

00:32:49.840 rescue her reputation which obviously is upsetting to me but at the same time yeah like

00:32:56.960 the contortions are extravagant well it's just like if it's like if there's two options and one

00:33:03.400 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

00:33:07.060 a to z to this to this to this to this to this it's like one of these is way more likely than

00:33:12.020 the other one like the amount of work you have to go through to see her as anything other than a

00:33:16.400 trans woman is it just really speaks to how much people were committed well like you said like i

00:33:22.800 was thinking it was like people just couldn't wrap their head around it but what you're explaining

00:33:26.420 and i see now is they wanted to like preserve or like i don't know make her save her legacy

00:33:34.540 yeah like there were there were fencers too there were fencers there was at least one famous like

00:33:42.360 fencer who among other things was writing about how she and his father also a famous fencer

00:33:47.560 um were good friends and he refers to her as herself throughout but there's like a brief

00:33:54.580 aside you know just like oh yeah like sure it came out later she was a man the whole time um

00:33:59.300 moving on and like i think what we see is plenty of people were not ashamed to have known her

00:34:08.040 were not ashamed of what she was but maybe didn't have the political vocabulary to say well but

00:34:14.320 actually but actually let's defend her womanhood on its own terms so keep going it's such a 1.00

00:34:20.760 complicated yet not complicated it's just such a shitty thing frankly like that she like she had 1.00

00:34:28.360 this cool life and she's so amazing and they're just like well let's finally reveal the genitals 1.00

00:34:33.580 like let's just like put them in the british museum yeah it's it's so gross they're still

00:34:39.080 there i mean the drawing not her body yeah where it's like she was famous well there was like the

00:34:46.800 that about like is she a woman but she's famous for like all these other cool reasons not just

00:34:52.040 because of the question of gender and just to like to limit the legacy is just that i think

00:34:57.300 oh 100 but like i think we have to look at that in a context where it became much much much much

00:35:05.020 much harder to be a trans woman and in a lot of ways harder to be a trans woman in england

00:35:10.880 because um this is the period of time where like between like perfect time basically parallels the

00:35:18.180 massive like police crackdowns on so-called molly culture in england which is essentially 0.94

00:35:24.040 working class trans women and trans femmes i would call it a culture that consisted of working

00:35:29.380 class trans women and trans femmes and gay and bisexual men with a lot of space carved out for 1.00

00:35:35.680 the trans feminine but during yeah during her lifetime that stamping out and criminalizing

00:35:42.760 that entire cultural element was a huge thing that was ongoing in england whereas like a few 0.78

00:35:48.860 years before she was born the there was this massive bestseller which was the contested bars

00:35:55.620 memoirs the they're often referred to as the transvestite memoirs by cis historians but

00:36:02.560 yeah this like the climate she was born into would would have been in some ways more tolerant

00:36:08.500 of gender variance than the climate she died in which does explain kind of why she's drawn to

00:36:13.480 living there at the time like when she first went there uh-huh it would have been more tolerant than

00:36:18.500 when what it was like by the time she passed away yeah and by the time she passed away i think she

00:36:23.260 was she'd very heavily relied on essentially passing as cis um for the rest of her life

00:36:29.140 and having that validated

00:36:31.640 with like official decrees

00:36:33.640 and deeds and acts of parliament.

00:36:36.060 Yeah.

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00:39:56.600 Which is just, honestly, like, I can't, it's so major to just be like, not only like, like, what's the proof that I'm a woman?

00:40:03.080 it's like well like this act of parliament like the french king has said and so you're like okay

00:40:08.840 like cool that's like what more proof do you need so she was buried in the church of saint pancras

00:40:16.520 old church um her remaining possessions were sold at christie's auction house in 1813 and her grave

00:40:22.300 is listed on the burdette coats memorial there as one of the important graves lost the i don't know

00:40:28.320 much about this but the beaumont society is a long-standing organization for transgender people

00:40:32.820 named after her I don't know if you know anything about that organization um I don't but basically

00:40:39.180 not long after she died like from the 19th century to the present obviously trans people

00:40:48.460 however we describe ourselves I mean the terminology has changed a lot but we've been

00:40:53.840 around forever have looked to her as you know an example of someone who successfully got the

00:41:00.280 king of France to declare her a woman like and just as evidence that you can be like an incredibly

00:41:09.220 talented trans woman I love her story for that and I love her story just for being just this like 0.58

00:41:16.520 scandalous like wild like who's just like I was a spy and then it's just like I decided to stay

00:41:23.540 in England so I'm just gonna like basically blackmail the king like the audacity with which

00:41:28.560 she lived is is great it's like it's such a good story this is where it's like it's all

00:41:35.200 intrinsically connected with like her identity like as a trans woman

00:41:38.680 but and so which is why it bothers me to see her legacy being reduced to being like but what were 0.96

00:41:44.760 the genitals where it's like there's 10 000 other more interesting things to talk about alas that 0.98

00:41:50.080 seems to be the trans feminine condition and in trans misogynist societies i think this is where

00:41:56.360 i first heard about her so in 2012 uh the national portrait gallery in london purchased a portrait

00:42:03.180 of her which had been for like no one knew who it was a portrait of they're just like a portrait of

00:42:07.500 a middle-aged woman and then there was oh no this is a chevalier and then it was but i think that's

00:42:11.960 where there's a lot of press about the portrait being purchased the identification of the portrait

00:42:16.160 so that's where i had first heard about it and so now the portrait i think itself it's i don't know

00:42:22.660 I love that like 2012 was a good period of time in terms of like the internet existing or whatever

00:42:27.520 where this portrait came out and there's a lot of articles will have discussion about it and that

00:42:30.760 brought I think a new level of attention to her story which is good well I think that one of the

00:42:36.700 things that like one of the things that contemporary representations of her show and then we touched

00:42:41.800 on this a little bit before is just the extent to which people kind of redrew her when they knew she

00:42:48.460 was a trans woman like so especially portraits that are from before her death portray her

00:42:55.020 extremely differently she's just a younger middle-aged woman an older middle-aged woman

00:42:59.740 sometimes in the scandalous years where they're speculating she's a very hot young woman blah

00:43:04.800 blah blah and it's yeah it's just really revealing that a relatively unremarkable portrait of her

00:43:13.780 would go unlabeled for 200 years because it didn't look stereotypically managed enough

00:43:20.980 i love that she was at a level well for anyone i do in this podcast i love when there's actual

00:43:26.440 portraits of people because there's so many women in history where there's not but i love that she

00:43:31.260 was at a level of fame and importance that she was portraits of her were done during her life

00:43:36.020 i don't know so she has appeared as a character in some fictional works this is the like legacy

00:43:41.160 portion of it so there's a film in 1928 the spy of madame pompadour 1959 okay this is a film

00:43:50.440 loosely based on her life that portrays her as a woman masquerading as a man which is like

00:43:55.620 which is pretty much just taking her propaganda and running with it which is fine yeah so that's

00:44:01.560 the secret du chevalier down from 1959 2006 have you seen or are you familiar with the anime series

00:44:08.260 the chevalier day on i've heard of it i haven't been able to actually track it down i'd love to

00:44:14.200 what i know of it is that it's some sort of like supernatural type thing where she like

00:44:19.940 it's like she the spirit of her dead sister lives in her body and she like switches back and forth

00:44:25.480 between a masculine person and a feminine person so almost like a sailor moon transformation

00:44:30.180 so i love sailor moon but yeah transmission in kind of the worst possible way i have not seen

00:44:39.720 it but that is what i've heard about it and that's also honestly when you look up the chevalier down

00:44:43.740 like a lot of your search results are going to be about this anime series i'm interested in this

00:44:47.460 and i've not listened to it but the doctor who audio series has an episode featuring her which

00:44:53.120 and she appears as an unplayable character that gives out side quests in the video game

00:44:58.560 assassin's creed unity that's not a surprise but i i'm not familiar with the portrayal unity is one

00:45:06.120 of the few assassin's creeds i haven't played i don't know there's been a couple people done

00:45:09.920 the podcast where it's just when you're looking at like them in pop culture and it's like and

00:45:13.420 they're an assassin's creed i'm like should i play assassin's creed all these people well assassin's

00:45:18.040 is filled with historical easter eggs like yeah so yeah uh that's kind of their like as long as

00:45:25.920 you can get past the cheesy ridiculous sci-fi frame narrative there's a lot to like yeah no and

00:45:35.000 that's where I'm just like I forget who just a couple other historical figures I'm like they're

00:45:38.620 an assassin's creed I'm like they're an assassin's creed the more I hear about them I'm like I'm

00:45:43.540 intrigued okay I want to talk to you we need to do so on my podcast we do a score for everybody

00:45:49.100 just on various categories and I'm going to get your thoughts about where the chevalier is going

00:45:55.540 to fall so there's four categories the first category is scandaliciousness which is just

00:46:02.160 as you can probably presume just kind of like how gossipy and like fantastic was this person's life

00:46:09.080 and story what's the scale the scale is a zero to ten so ten being the highest so definitely

00:46:15.560 ten on scandaliciousness I mean she blackmailed the king of France I will reveal your invasion

00:46:21.360 plans like that's like basically she said i will start a war i will literally start a war if you

00:46:29.220 don't bag off i agree i agree entirely and then when you add on to that the fact like that she

00:46:34.180 was a spy that she worked for this like super secret spy network like it's a high score there

00:46:39.200 the next category so again it's a zero to ten so next one is scheminess so just like and that can 0.97

00:46:44.660 be sort of like how smart she was but like how many plans she did were they good schemes and i

00:46:50.780 feel like this is going to be a high score as well but i will default to you i would say at 1.00

00:46:54.880 least an eight like yeah you know maybe she wasn't able to successfully get an amazon army which 0.90

00:47:02.880 clearly was her end game and which would have been amazing so can't give her the 10 there but like 1.00

00:47:09.900 yeah she was a skilled schemer i think between like the fact that she was very successful as a 0.98

00:47:17.020 spy and then the fact like the way that she stayed in england and then the blackmail plot and then 0.90

00:47:21.740 also the way that she'd like used her celebrity and pr to just like affect this transition like

00:47:28.480 i agree i think an eight is good and like you know she was remarkably successful

00:47:33.940 destroying the career of the diplomat who apparently drugged her yes yes i don't have a

00:47:40.960 scale for like vengeance but i feel like she would get that too because she's just like are

00:47:46.240 you crossing with me like guess what like I've been a spy my whole life I'm super smart and like

00:47:50.360 I will destroy you and she did not a person you want to cross um the next category is significance

00:47:55.760 so this can be both like her significance like at the time she was alive but then like the legacy

00:48:02.320 what she means to other people but also like what she did that could have set the stage for future

00:48:07.380 generations of people well that's really complicated like we're still talking about her 1.00

00:48:11.720 And so many trans women I know are motivated to claim her because the gall, like the nerve.

00:48:22.740 Well, that's why I think, I think her significance is really strong to the trans community.

00:48:27.380 So I think if you just see it through that scale, like how significant is she?

00:48:31.780 Yeah.

00:48:32.000 And I would say her significance, she would have been a much more significant figure in 1.00

00:48:36.780 history of early feminism if cis women hadn't dropped her after the genital reveal like 1.00

00:48:45.880 definitely you don't see the next generation after wollstonecraft treating her as the same 0.93

00:48:51.160 level of figure and it has everything to do with just having decided that she was never a woman

00:48:56.040 honestly though when you think too about the significance of like her actions

00:48:59.840 in the war her actions as a spy like we can never quantify what exactly that did but i think she was

00:49:07.240 involved in france's success some of these as well yeah but it's good it's hard to say so i

00:49:14.260 don't know where would you put her for significance to the trans community probably an eight nine

00:49:20.100 more broadly six seven okay i'm gonna average that out to like 7.5

00:49:29.220 cool but yeah no that's I like how you broke that down because yeah it's like significance

00:49:33.200 to the trans community really high but then she I think she should be more significant

00:49:38.200 to oh yeah but she's not so it's like we need to be yeah I mean I think Roald Wollstonecraft

00:49:43.700 had it right like so then the last category so it's the sexism category which is just like how

00:49:50.640 much did the patriarchy hold her back everybody gets at least a five because of course but like

00:49:57.920 how much do you how much did sexism hold her back 10 yeah in life and in death like

00:50:05.580 it's pretty clear that the scope of her ambitions was enormous clearly she wanted to

00:50:12.440 end slavery clearly she wanted to end patriarchy like and of course the two are linked clearly

00:50:22.040 she wanted to do a great deal and she managed to do a lot for herself but she did die poor

00:50:28.760 and then she you know for the next 200 years people argued about whether she was

00:50:35.800 like a trans woman or just a man with a really good reason to pretend to be a trans woman which

00:50:43.740 is yeah and i hate how that obfuscates all of the cool stuff that she had been doing

00:50:51.460 to like limit her to just be like oh look at this interesting gender story where it's like no like 1.00

00:50:56.520 she wanted to send an all-women brigade to the american revolution like she wanted like she was

00:51:01.300 so into like the feminist stuff at the time like but yeah no so how that all adds up just so you

00:51:08.200 know is a 35.5 the highest score anyone's ever gotten on the podcast is a 38 so she's like close

00:51:14.620 who's a 38 38 is fredigant i don't know if you know about fredigant i know fredigant

00:51:19.920 she's like who can top her so far nobody but yeah so fredigant is a 38 queen margot his 37.5

00:51:28.400 extra points for like gleeful murder right fredigant gets points for a lot of murder

00:51:36.220 based things yeah and jinga of angola has a 36 um harem sultan has 36 and then the chevalier

00:51:43.200 35.5. So she's in fifth place overall. It's a good ranking. I am happy. I'm happy for her. I

00:51:51.520 think she deserves to be right up there. Now, since I have you, who are the other two trans 1.00

00:51:57.360 women of the 18th century who you want to talk about? All right. Well, let's start with a

00:52:02.640 lower ranking one first. Known to history as the Abbe de Choisy and from Burgundy,

00:52:10.020 but also known better I think well I'm not going to misgender her I'm just going to call her Debar

00:52:16.040 because she decided she was the Comtesse Debar for several years and then wrote a massively

00:52:23.060 successful memoir about it essentially she was the story she put out was that her mother simply

00:52:29.160 decided she was a girl and raised her accordingly but like that was probably political maneuvering

00:52:37.120 as well because that was just how she preferred to be and also because she spent much of her 0.99

00:52:43.240 childhood as playmate to louis the 14th's trans sister more on that in a second okay 1.00

00:52:51.020 their mothers were were tight and were just like well let's just get them both great dresses like

00:52:56.940 life may be hard but it doesn't have to be hard now so at the age of 18 she was sort of heavily

00:53:04.100 socially shamed and was like okay fine i guess i'll try to dress as a boy for a bit didn't like

00:53:09.740 it stopped almost immediately and spent vast amounts of money on ridiculously gaudy outfits

00:53:17.020 because she was a fashionista at one point the dauphin's like hard-ass tutor comes up to her 0.76

00:53:25.360 at a party and is just like you should be ashamed of yourself you disgust me completely what's wrong

00:53:30.080 with you and she's like well i just can't i can't just have people walking up to me at parties doing 0.57

00:53:34.540 that i've got to get out of paris so like she retreats to the countryside she has her lawyer 0.68

00:53:41.000 prepare for her an identity as a respectable widow and the contested bar uh she dives her hair she's 0.99

00:53:48.460 like yeah okay fine we'll just go with really dark hair for now and then suitably disguised 1.00

00:53:53.640 she basically just starts sleeping with everyone in sight according to her memoirs like well she 1.00

00:53:59.560 She only really records the women she slept with because that wasn't illegal. 1.00

00:54:03.440 Like there was no potential death penalty for sleeping with women.

00:54:06.840 So it's like memoirs of a trans lesbian.

00:54:09.340 She gives her skincare regimen in passing and her memoirs.

00:54:14.080 Her memoirs are actually hilarious. 0.95

00:54:15.680 They're kind of ridiculous. 0.80

00:54:17.200 She starts them off by basically observing. 0.99

00:54:19.320 She's like, every so often I try, I try to stop being a woman. 0.76

00:54:24.500 I put on boy clothes and the darndest thing keeps happening I just gamble all the time 0.81

00:54:32.800 she's like I spend so much money gambling that eventually I just realized I can't keep doing

00:54:38.760 this anymore so I repierce my ears put on a gray dress and I feel great she's like let me tell you

00:54:46.180 but my skincare regimen my skin is amazingly soft of course I'm gorgeous and her memoir just 0.98

00:54:52.580 continues in this vein like it's hilarious and i love it like incredibly arrogant she was probably

00:54:59.080 annoying to be around but she was hilarious there's a rumor that i find somewhat credible

00:55:06.040 that one of her lovers was prince eugene of zavor which would be scandalous on multiple levels

00:55:12.480 especially since this is like roughly war of the spanish succession era no it's a little before

00:55:17.800 that i guess it's yeah it's before that so maybe it's not that scandalous maybe it's just scandalous

00:55:23.400 because you know prince eugene of savoy she's also known for being part of a diplomatic mission to

00:55:30.500 the kingdom of siam really and writing extensively about it she wasn't just a pretty face

00:55:37.340 david hume actually has both her had both her like scandalous memoirs and her account of the

00:55:45.620 situation in Siam in his library. Eventually, she sort of went back to the countryside and just

00:55:52.080 carried on writing letters to various scandalous people. Her memoirs were a big bestseller

00:55:58.240 posthumously, but also there were a bunch of open secrets during her life. She's an interesting

00:56:04.360 figure to me. She also apparently wrote a fairy tale with Charles Perrault, and I forget which

00:56:11.500 feminist writer of the late 17th century. But it was like Charles Perle, the writer of fairy tales,

00:56:18.900 this feminist, and her sat down to write a fairy tale. The fairy tale is essentially the story of

00:56:24.540 this young marquise who has this interesting backstory where her mother was like, I'm going

00:56:30.260 to have a girl. Then after her child was born, she was informed she had a born. She was like,

00:56:36.020 nope, nope, girl. Fairy tale proceeds, you know, the young girl was raised in extravagance. She

00:56:41.140 had all these wonderful things she had all the accomplishments you would expect pretty dresses

00:56:45.620 too and so on and so forth then it's like and then one day she meets this handsome young marquis

00:56:50.600 her exact social station wonderful match made in heaven they fall for each other they arrange a

00:56:57.760 marriage on the wedding night they're disrobing innocently not suspecting anything could be amiss 0.93

00:57:04.860 and then basically what happens is they both have a surprise genital reveal

00:57:09.080 sort of look at each other shrug and are like well this is fine and proceed with their lives

00:57:15.240 happily ever after which is like i guess you could say early t4t i'm trying to find a good

00:57:25.520 copy of that but it's difficult to track down there's a i forgot which university press has

00:57:32.800 a pretty good omnibus with it um and her memoirs but like from 2004 so I dread the author's note

00:57:39.940 but yeah so that's that's the Comtesse de Barre or the Abbe de Choisy yeah and the person whose

00:57:47.700 playmate she was Philippe the trans sister of Louis XIV has a completely bananas life as well

00:57:56.180 okay i'm like i'm so excited here so clearly in her childhood at least at least according to

00:58:07.300 she had a playmate who was also a trans girl and they hung out together and they wore dresses and

00:58:14.380 everything was great but she was also like a pretty major prince which brought a lot of heartbreak so

00:58:23.260 she had this this famous on again off again relationship with this duke it was very stormy

00:58:29.480 at one point she marries i forget who someone someone important and then of course he feuds

00:58:38.840 like the duke feuds with her wife with her wife it's this whole mess her wife gets the duke sent

00:58:44.720 to the bastille or no was it to the chateau d'if yeah her wife gets her wife gets her boyfriend

00:58:51.360 and sent to the Chateau d'If. 1.00

00:58:53.280 Then she has to go to her brother and be like,

00:58:55.360 please let my boyfriend out of the Chateau d'If.

00:58:57.460 Please let my boyfriend out of the Chateau d'If.

00:59:00.080 She was apparently a very successful general,

00:59:03.460 like terrifying field commander,

00:59:06.840 and famously had a statue of Achilles

00:59:10.060 created in the gardens of Versailles.

00:59:12.380 It's Achilles on Skiros.

00:59:14.660 So it's like Achilles in a beautiful dress

00:59:16.480 looking like the woman warrior she was.

00:59:19.520 apparently very significant to philippe because that was her contribution to the gardens of

00:59:27.580 versailles which i find pretty interesting it's like oh okay she definitely related to this

00:59:33.440 particular version of achilles who's interpreted as a trans feminine person when she died her

00:59:40.800 friends were like oh she was the silliest woman who ever lived like basically that was her obituary

00:59:46.860 her life was probably pretty sad but like also very privileged with stormy boyfriends and 0.86

00:59:55.140 wives who sent those stormy boyfriends to the chateau deep since you brought up the statue

01:00:00.680 of achilles i feel like it's a natural progression to wrap things back around to your version of

01:00:06.600 achilles in your book which everybody should buy and read i agree buy wrath gotta sing read wrath

01:00:13.560 goddess thing he'll get to meet Achilles so I know like the vague outlines of the story of Achilles

01:00:20.760 but I don't I'm not familiar with the part you just said about what the statue is made of like

01:00:24.840 the Achilles like this Achilles like what's that what's that story so one of the one of the parts

01:00:32.340 of the Achilles mythos is and this is in a bunch of different classical sources um and also

01:00:38.280 represented on art from the classical period probably it reflects a pretty old tradition

01:00:43.120 it's not referenced in the Iliad but it appears on art pretty early where Achilles lived for

01:00:49.820 years before the Trojan War as a woman named Pyrrha on the island of Skiros and had a relationship

01:00:56.960 with the princess of Skiros de Damia so Achilles was a trans lesbian and that episode was super

01:01:06.620 popular in art literally from the classical period to the 19th century when it kind of stopped

01:01:14.960 because all of a sudden people needed a little more consistency in their gendered representations

01:01:20.820 of Achilles but yeah frequently like a surprisingly often amount of the time Achilles

01:01:27.900 was portrayed as a woman we see this in the renaissance we see this in the middle ages we

01:01:32.080 see this in the classical period achilles was often portrayed by women on stage shakespeare

01:01:38.920 kind of riffs on that when he makes his achilles very feminine it's just a really long-standing

01:01:43.400 tradition there's a roman epic unfinished epic called the achillead which by statius which i

01:01:50.720 detest which is one of the more elaborated forms of that story statius just decides to take the

01:01:58.180 the narrative and go as trans misogynist as he can in order to I guess make Achilles like the

01:02:05.520 kind of man the Romans could relate to in that version Achilles is forced to live as a woman by 0.82

01:02:10.820 his mother in order to prevent Achilles from going to war so the first scene is just like mom I can't

01:02:18.500 believe you would force me to live as a woman I'm so mad at you wait the princess Obscurus is hot 0.98

01:02:23.900 I'm going to rape her and that's what happens which I mean that's the kind of thing that the 0.99

01:02:30.320 Romans vibed with it's definitely not the kind of thing I vibe with so I thought to myself well 0.99

01:02:35.480 this cannot stand then I thought to myself also isn't it a simpler and more economical story if 0.94

01:02:42.800 Achilles is just a trans woman exactly it's the chevalier all over again yeah so that was the 0.79

01:02:49.300 point to departure for writing Wrath Goddess Sing. Yeah. We start on Skiros. She ran away from 1.00

01:02:55.280 Thea some years before, like less than two years before, but you know, a couple of years in order

01:03:01.440 to live as herself. She's constantly worried that sales in the distance might mean that her

01:03:08.340 Myrmidon relatives have come to collect her. Sales appear, they turn out to be

01:03:13.220 diomedus and odysseus who are looking for prince achilles and have no idea that the polite young

01:03:20.860 woman they just encountered is prince achilles and it kind of goes from there but it gets very weird

01:03:26.900 yeah i'm so excited about it i have i'm very much looking forward to reading it and i think it's

01:03:36.200 there's could you have known when you were writing this book that it's coming at this moment where

01:03:40.160 people are like obsessed with like Circe and like the Trojan women, like books about this time

01:03:45.740 period. These myths are like having a moment and like, here you come. Honestly, we had so many

01:03:53.780 publishers pass because they were like the song of Achilles just came out 10 years ago. Surely

01:03:58.200 this wave is over. And then enter like book talk and suddenly everybody's all about it.

01:04:03.960 Yeah. And I think too, that's a great time to just sort of think about what we're doing as

01:04:08.700 we retell because there are so many different ways to retell and these stories were never neutral

01:04:14.500 like the iliad for instance it's i mean alexander the great slept with the copy of the iliad under

01:04:22.040 his pillow and literally would occasionally just say my ancestor achilles was killed in this area

01:04:27.560 so i can invade like it became the foundation of like the hellenistic imperial colonial literature

01:04:35.100 the British used it the same way the Iliad is like like retellings and framings of these stories

01:04:42.120 are never neutral and I think it's really interesting to think about what we're doing

01:04:45.420 when we decide to make Achilles the kind of person who would only ever would only ever deign

01:04:53.540 to wear women's clothing in order to rape princesses or when we reject that yeah it feels

01:05:00.660 very timely yeah it's i think it's coming at the perfect moment for this book i think not just

01:05:08.940 because of like retellings happen to be like popular but just because of where we are as a

01:05:14.260 society not to get into all of that but i think it's so important and i think this is part of

01:05:19.380 what was in the um the message i got from your publicist was just saying like this is what is

01:05:24.760 it it's like like a book about a trans character written by a trans author being published by one

01:05:29.740 by this huge publisher like this is like groundbreaking in those ways yeah it's something

01:05:34.740 that couldn't have happened even a few years ago and hopefully in a few years it'll continue to be

01:05:40.420 conceivable no but i think like as everything we've just been talking about like it's just such

01:05:45.280 a good reminder or maybe some people who didn't know that like trans people have been here

01:05:49.720 all along oh yeah the earliest know the earliest writer whose name we know

01:05:55.980 and Heduanna writes extensively like basically praising the goddess Inanna that transition is

01:06:03.040 possible and there are substantial hints in the text that at least and Heduanna was

01:06:10.060 either was the author or was regarded as the author of these super famous religious hymns

01:06:17.560 that were used for the next 2500 years and there are definitely trans elements in how Heduanna is

01:06:25.400 described in these hymns as well which wouldn't actually be surprising but it would be one of

01:06:30.420 those cases of a historical figure who has just been presumed cis because there's not affirmative

01:06:36.480 evidence of transness but affirmative evidence of transness doesn't even help as we see with

01:06:41.780 yeah god you're you know so much about everything i'm just like learning

01:06:48.860 thank you so much from you have you so you've always had an interest in greek mythology you

01:06:56.080 said that's been kind of like your thing from a young age did you study history or is it more of

01:07:01.440 like i mean like did you like officially study history or is this just like in your you just do

01:07:06.940 it yourself oh no i'm a talented amateur yeah no my formal degrees are in fiction okay but no um

01:07:15.780 So trans history, I mean, I would also say, like, to be interested in the written word, growing up as a trans woman, as a millennial, meant constantly encountering buried trans stories, likely a diploma, but also like an Hedwana or like Yusupov, who killed Rasputin Yusupova, has a memoir, Lost Splendor, which essentially amounts to coming out repeatedly as a trans woman,

01:07:43.080 but also being confident no one will ever actually get it so like at one point the assassin of

01:07:52.320 Rasputin just spends chapters talking about how gorgeous she was in her dresses as she lived for

01:07:58.440 years as a woman in her brother's house before there was a giant scandal that caused her family

01:08:03.880 to find out and like you run into these stories you look around everyone is just saying oh you

01:08:12.040 know he was just unusual over and over again but they build and it becomes this this itch in the

01:08:19.340 back of your brain you can't scratch it becomes this sensation like walking over your own grave

01:08:23.800 constantly you just have these these buried stories so I would say more than anything my

01:08:31.180 love of stories and mythology and history is also tied to that it's tied to oh there there's hidden

01:08:36.120 story is that can seal the light of day but only if we actually encounter them on their own terms

01:08:43.340 instead of saying nope nothing to see here yeah so it's like detective work it's like un

01:08:49.560 unforgetting yeah it's like brushing away all these like convoluted explanations that don't

01:08:57.000 actually make any sense to be like oh but the obvious thing is like oh this is a trans woman

01:09:00.780 like if we just if we just remove like 75 of this bio of this like biography and just like focus on 0.68

01:09:07.180 like what actually the facts are you're like oh well here's a sort of a trans woman okay

01:09:09.980 like yeah so it's just like there's weeding through all that stuff yeah in a way it's 0.98

01:09:15.420 like a demystification and it's like a clarification of just if you get rid of all the like

01:09:21.240 confusing other people well all history i guess is written by somebody who's an agenda but once

01:09:26.440 you realize that agenda if you're like well how many of these facts are being filtered through

01:09:29.960 somebody's point of view and then like at the end of the day when you get rid of that point of view

01:09:34.020 like what is left right yeah yeah I find it so fascinating well thank you so much for this

01:09:43.160 conversation this is like I can't wait to publish this I can't wait for everybody to hear everything

01:09:48.580 you have to say I can't wait for people to learn like a about the chevalier and b about you and

01:09:54.420 your book. Thank you. Oh my gosh. I'm really excited. Thank you so much for this amazing

01:09:59.820 conversation. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. So again, that was a re-release of an

01:10:05.640 interview from last year when Wrath Goddessing was first coming out. It is now available in

01:10:10.180 trade paperback as well. I'll drop a link to buy that in the show notes, but also if you go to

01:10:16.100 Maya Dean's website, you can learn more about her and her book and how to get copies of the book

01:10:21.500 as well. And I also wanted to mention the Chevalier Dayan of it all. So that is the

01:10:27.200 design I put in the merch store a couple months ago when we were doing the tits out for trans

01:10:31.600 rights fundraiser. And I just wanted to let you all know that that still continues. Like anytime,

01:10:36.420 like I keep track of when I sell any of the Chevalier Dayan, we have always been here,

01:10:40.860 designed by Jan Upater from my merch shop. Those funds are still going to be donated to

01:10:45.440 Point of Pride, an organization that is a trans-affirming organization that's doing

01:10:49.320 great work in the United States. And just to simplify things in order, like in terms of this

01:10:54.160 fundraiser, I've set up a link that you can use this month. So if you go to vulgarhistory.com

01:10:59.620 slash pride, it'll take you to a bonfire site. This is a different, it's a site that really

01:11:06.200 works well for raising funds through merch, which is exactly what I'm doing. So then if you go to

01:11:11.040 vulgarhistory.com slash pride, you can buy the Chevalier Day on t-shirt and all the funds there

01:11:17.920 are going to be donated to Point of Pride. So anyway, but I mean, your first and most

01:11:22.900 important call to action is to read Maya's book, Wrath Goddess Sing, now available in trade

01:11:28.120 paperback. And then otherwise, happy Pride Month, everybody. And I hope you enjoyed this bonus

01:11:35.140 episode and keep your pants on and your tits out. Folger History is hosted, written and researched 0.98

01:11:41.160 by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi.

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Vulgar History - June 13, 2023

The 18th-Century Trans Spy Who Fenced Her Way To Fame (Rerelease)

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