Schoolchildren being taught that Joan of Arc was non-binary

Schoolchildren are being told in English lessons that French heroine Joan of Arc was non-binary

Secondary school children in the UK are being taught that Joan of Arc may have been 'non-binary'. 

The 'Who We Are' anthology, published by Collins, features a lesson plan which contains a biography of the French heroine which states 'Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.'

The wording has caused fury among some in the academic community, with one professor calling it 'insulting' and a women's rights campaigner calling it 'another ridiculous example of attempting to rewrite history.'

Born as a peasant girl around 1412, Joan of Arc became a knight and ultimately a patron saint of France after helping to repulse an English attempt to conquer her nation.   

Believing she was enacting God's will, she led the French army to victory at Siege of Orléans in 1429, a tipping point in the Hundred Years' War between France and England. 

Joan famously had short hair and took to wearing male clothing, a key fact against held her during her trial for heresy in 1431, which ultimately led to her being burnt at the stake. 

However, she never claimed to be anything other than female and did not use the term 'non-binary' which only gained traction in the 1990s. 

'Joan of Arc fought as a woman and died as a woman,' Robert Tombs, professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge, told The Telegraph. 

The Globe Theatre, on the South Bank in London, is one of the word's most famous attractions

A publicity picture for the 2022 play at The Globe, which prompted some controversy after portraying Joan as non-binary and referring to her with 'they/them' pronouns

Joan of Arc is one of the most famous and inspirational women in French history and one of the country's patron saints

'To call her something else is insulting to her and indirectly to all women who are brave enough to risk their lives for their beliefs – as if women are incapable of heroism.' 

'This is yet another ridiculous example of attempting to rewrite history and erase strong, rebellious female characters from our past,' Carolyn Brown, of the Women's Rights Network, added.

She called it 'another example of the junk science of queer theory being visited on children' and claimed non-binary was a 'nonsense term'. 

However, the Collins anthology is not the first cultural artefact to seek to claim Joan for the non-binary community. 

In the summer of 2022, The Globe theatre hosted a play called 'I, Joan' which prompted controversy after portraying Joan as non-binary.

Pre-publicity used the pronouns 'they' and 'them' when referring to the French historical figure.

The theatre defended itself and insisted Shakespeare would have approved.

But one academic told MailOnline at the time that it 'completely violated the meaning of history' and reframed the real-life heroine in terms completely alien to her time.

Pre publicity for the play 'I, Joan' used they/them pronouns to suggest Joan was non-binary

 Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told MailOnline: ‘Playwrights are allowed to have a bit of poetic license but I think what is interesting about the play is that it very much falls in with the idea of rewriting history.

‘The reinterpretation violates the historical reality. It’s plundering history to legitimise views in the here and now.

‘Someone like Joan of Arc would not have any idea what non-binary was. It is a recharacterisation of something that did not even exist at the time.

‘It completely violates the meaning of history – it’s the projecting of a fantasy backwards.

‘I imagine in time someone will suggest Jane Austen was transgender or George Elliot was non-binary.

‘For French patriots Joan of Arc is someone very special. Her role was all the more heroic because she was a woman.’

Harry Potter author JK Rowling also ridiculed the Globe Theatre's portrayal of Joan of Arc as non-binary after women's rights campaigners said the switch was 'insulting and damaging'. 

Harry Potter writer JK Rowling is a long-time campaigner for women's rights who has faced a strong backlash for her takes on trans-related issues

Ms Rowling liked a tweet ridiculing the new no-binary Joan of Arc production at The Globe

It came after a Twitter user criticised The Globe's production.

Her remark of 'Coming next: Napoleon was a woman because he was defeated at Waterloo' was liked by Ms Rowling on what was then Twitter.

It came moments after Heather Binning from Women's Rights Network told MailOnline the play was damaging to women.

She said: 'This demonstrates just how our arts and creative industries have taken on the woke mantle without realising that 'being kind' to one group of people actually hurts and damages another important and fundamental group.

'Joan of Arc was female. Her early years were spent cooking and cleaning and looking after the animals. When she was 10 she had a vision that she was to fight for France. In order to do this she took on the outward appearance of being male.

'This had nothing to do with 'feelings' and everything to do with the biological reality and disadvantage that being female brought. Many women throughout the ages have had to adopt 'maleness' in order to be taken seriously and advance their ambition.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14575971/schoolchildren-English-lessons-Joan-Arc-non-binary.html

JK Rowling ridicules Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for portraying Joan of Arc as non-binary with 'they' and 'them' pronouns as women's rights campaigners say that 'to rewrite female history is an insult'

• Feminists denounced the new non-binary portrayal as offensive and sexist 

Harry Potter author JK Rowling ridiculed the Globe Theatre's portrayal of Joan of Arc as non-binary, after women's rights campaigners said the switch was 'insulting and damaging'.

Ms Rowling is a long-time campaigner of women's rights and has spoken out over concerns on transgender people having access to women-only spaces.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre's portrayal of Joan of Arc as non-binary and using the pronouns 'they/them' has sparked extensive backlash from feminists and historians.

Heather Binning from Women's Rights Network told MailOnline the play was damaging to women.

She said: 'This demonstrates just how our arts and creative industries have taken on the woke mantle without realising that 'being kind' to one group of people actually hurts and damages another important and fundamental group.

'Joan of Arc was female. Her early years were spent cooking and cleaning and looking after the animals. When she was 10 she had a vision that she was to fight for France. In order to do this she took on the outward appearance of being male.

'This had nothing to do with 'feelings' and everything to do with the biological reality and disadvantage that being female brought. Many women throughout the ages have had to adopt 'maleness' in order to be taken seriously and advance their ambition.

'To rewrite female history is an insult. Using they\them pronouns for an individual is grammatically incorrect and ugly, and confusing to many in society who struggle with language.'

Feminist academics said the twist on Joan 'was modern nonsensical ideology'.   

Dr Sarah Rutherford said the idea the historical heroine could be non-binary was insulting.

She said: 'This offends me. Joan of Arc is a female cultural icon.

'She was escaping the constraints of being a woman at that time. Non binary, I have been told, means neither male or female.

'We know she was a woman. Please stop applying a modern nonsensical ideology to historical figures.'

French say new portrayal is 'insulting'

Joan of Arc devotees in France have spoken with horror about the depiction at a British theatre, Peter Allen writes.

‘I, Joan’ is billed as ‘questioning the gender binary’ of the Saint, who is revered across France.

‘This is playing with history,’ said Francois Durand, an 82-year-old retired civil servant who was visiting the famous gold statue of Joan in the centre of Paris.

‘Joan of Arc is first and foremost a Catholic saint, and somebody who represents heroism,’ Mr Durand added. ‘Her sexuality is irrelevant.’

Franco Spano, a 21-year-old student, agreed that the portrayal sounded ‘insulting and stupid’.

Mr Spano added: ‘It just doesn’t make any sense at all – just sensationalism.’

And another visitor to the statue who asked to be referred to solely by her first name of Noelle, said: ‘This just sounds ridiculous – of course it’s wrong.’

Joan of Arc is a national hero in France after saving her country from the English during the Hundred Years War in the 15th Century.

Ann Widdecombe, former Conservative MP and a Catholic herself, told MailOnline holy figures in religion should be treated with respect.

She said: 'It is insulting when people play around with the saints just because they want to make some kind of point.

'It is a farce beyond measure. Joan of Arc was a woman. There is no evidence she thought of herself in any other way.

'She was a woman, how on earth someone can suggest she was non-binary is beyond me. This play is effectively de-womanising her.

'They are effectively re-writing history, I think she would have laughed at it in utter scorn while Shakespeare would have clutched his head in disbelief.'

Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told MailOnline yesterday: 'Playwrights are allowed to have a bit of poetic license but I think what is interesting about the play is that it very much falls in with the idea of rewriting history.

'The reinterpretation violates the historical reality. It's plundering history to legitimise views in the here and now.

'Someone like Joan of Arc would not have any idea what non-binary was. It is a recharacterisation of something that did not even exist at the time.

'I imagine in time someone will suggest Jane Austen was transgender or George Elliot was non-binary.

'It completely violates the meaning of history – it's the projecting of a fantasy backwards.

'For French patriots Joan of Arc is someone very special. Her role was all the more heroic because she was a woman.'

Joan of Arc was born in 1412 into a pious Catholic family of peasants.

She began to hear voices at the age of 13 and believed God had chosen her to lead France to Victory against England in the 100 Years War.

She convinced Charles of Valois to let her lead the army to the besieged city of Orleans, where it was victorious.

But after the prince became King Charles VII, Joan was captured by English allies, the Burgundians.

She was tried for witchcraft, heresy and dressing as a man, among 70 charges.

She was burned at the stake in the market place of Rouen at just 19 years old, in 1431.

Now they are saying Elizabeth Tudor was Non-Binary also. 'I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too'. Pictured: The Coronation Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, c1600

With the possible exception of Queen Boadicea, Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I (pictured) are two of the most kick-ass women in history

The decision by the Globe Theatre to re-cast first Joan as ‘non-binary’ (on stage), then Elizabeth, offends many feminists, including J.K. Rowling (pictured: Joan being burned at the Stake)

Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake as a heretic by the English in 1431, after claiming she acted under divine guidance when leading the French army to victory at Orleans

Devotional Ring that once belonged to Joan of Arc

Ring worn by French heroine Joan of Arc

Gold Statue of Joan of Arc in Paris

1957 Nuclear Disaster in Britain which was covered up

The cover up that kept Britain's worst nuclear disaster secret

It was Britain's worst nuclear disaster, but it is likely you have never heard of it.

Unlike Chernobyl in Ukraine, or Fukishima in Japan, Windscale in Cumbria is not vivid in the public imagination.

And that is because the full extent of the fire that broke out in 1957 at the nuclear site now known as Sellafield was covered up by the government, even though it led to dozens of cases of cancer.

One local union leader went as far as saying that the consequences could have been as bad as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, had efforts to put water on the blaze backfired. 

On October 10, 1957, a fire broke out at the Windscale nuclear plant in Cumbria. Above: Workers in protective overalls seen in the immediate aftermath

Windscale opened at the site of a Second World War munitions factory in the late 1940s. It was Britain's first nuclear complex.

It was set up to produce plutonium for Britain's nuclear weapons programme. 

In 1956, Calder Hall nuclear power station opened alongside it to produce electricity for millions of homes.

The fire began on October 10, 1957, in No 1 of the twin 'piles', or reactors, at Windscale. 

A worker pours milk into a container after the fire. Milk from diaries in a 30-mile radius of the plant was discreetly taken away to prevent it ending up in shops

Workers at the site after the blaze

The fire began on October 10, 1957, in No 1 of the twin 'piles', or reactors, at Windscale.

It burned for 50 hours before being discovered and took three days to bring under control.

It was caused by heat building up in the reactor after a series of safety blunders.

The reactors had a graphite core with uranium rods. They were air-cooled through two 410ft chimneys. 

The decision to turn up the cooling fans after raised temperatures in the reactor had been noticed actually made the situation worse by helping to fan the flames. 

Windscale's deputy works manager, Tom Tuohy, risked his life by inspecting the ruined reactor and putting water on it. 

The latter decision was allegedly fraught with risk. 

Cyril McManus, an ex-commando and local union leader, said in 2012 book Sellafield Stories: 'He was standing there putting water in and if things had gone wrong with the water, it had never been tried before on a reactor fire, if it had exploded, Cumberland would have been finished.

An RAF helicopter loaded with instruments to test radiation levels flies near the Windscale site following the fire

A sign ordering workers who had been near the reactor that caught fire to report for monitoring

'Blown to smithereens. It would have been like Chernobyl.'

Other efforts to put the fire out – including using scaffolding poles to try to push the burning fuel cartridges out of the core – initially failed.

By the early hours of October 11, more than 10 tons of uranium was on fire.

Tuohy then ordered for the ventilation system to be shut off and for the cooling fans to be stopped too. He hoped to starve the fire of oxygen.

Although the fire was eventually extinguished, contaminated air escaped through the plant's 400ft-high chimney and rose over the Lake District.

Radioactive particles eventually fell on the local countryside and were also blown further inland towards Wales and over the sea to Ireland.

The authorities hoped that the full extent of the accident would never become public knowledge.

But in the days after the fire, reports from government scientists highlighted cases of cows across the Lake District having been contaminated by eating grass covered with radioactive dust.

Milk from diaries in a 30-mile radius of the plant was discreetly taken away to prevent it ending up in shops.

However, a delivery from Grasmere in the Lake District did make it into the supply system. 

Rather than announce the blunder, Harold Macmillan's government kept the truth a secret to avoid 'unnecessarily alarming' the local population.

Macmillan ordered a wider cover-up over fears that the British people would be opposed to nuclear energy if they found out about the accident.

He was also concerned that his attempts to rebuild Anglo-American relations after the Suez debacle of 1956 would be scuppered if the incompetence of the nuclear industry was revealed.  

The Government made sure the official report into the fire blamed operator negligence and failed instrument readings.

And ministers then sealed the write-up for 30 years.

The consequences would have been far worse had filters not been installed on the chimneys at Windscale during their construction. 

The installation of the filters was demanded by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sir John Cockroft, who led the project. 

However, at the time, the filters were known as Cockroft's Follies because they were regarded as a waste of time and money. 

As it turned out, the filters saved lives. 

The reactors at Windscale were closed after the fire and plutonium production was instead moved to an expanded Calder Hall.

In 1982, a report issued by the British National Radiological Protection Board estimated 32 deaths and at least 260 cases of cancer could be attributed to the fire.

In October 1993, two people who fell ill with leukaemia after the Windscale fire lost their four-year battle for damages.

A judge said there was a lack of evidence to support the notion that radioactive emissions following the fire caused their disease.

The Windscale disaster ranked at level five on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).

The scale - which runs from 1 to 7 - classifies the seriousness of nuclear-related incidents.

Only two events have earned the top tanking of seven - the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl and the 2011 disaster at Fukishima.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14555149/The-cover-kept-Britains-worst-nuclear-disaster-secret-despite-fears-bad-Chernobyl.html

The world's plutonium capital: Sellafield now sells reprocessed nuclear waste

Sellafield

Sellafield is built close to the village of Seascale on the Cumbrian coast facing the Irish Sea

Sellafield currently holds most of the UK's 110,000 tonnes of uranium, 6,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, and around 120 tonnes of plutonium. 

Sellafield

Sellafield is owned by the Government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and around 10,000 work there

Sellafield plant has almost 1,000 buildings

Sellafield has its own railway, road network and a police force with more than 80 dogs

The Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria 

Radioactive cats inhabit the site and have sheltered under the warmth of giant steam pipes for decades

The felines had stool samples analysed by a world-renowned expert in nuclear contamination

Cats which are pooping plutonium are being rehomed to families.

Sellafield insists the cats have been tested and do not have radioactive excrement

Retired process worker Alan Mossop, 64, worked at Sellafield for 40 years and said cats slept under steam pipes