- Oh yeah.
Two can play that game.
You know, today, women are in positions of power
and changing the world like never before.
But it wasn't always that way.
There was once a time that in order to get things done
or even be taken seriously,
you had to be a man.
But that wasn't enough for some strong women.
So they decided to make some big moves
and change the world by pretending to be men.
(horse whinnying)
Here are 10 times women disguised as men made history.
(battle cries)
Number 10 is Saint Marina the Monk.
In the fifth century,
Marina was born in north Lebanon
to a devout Christian father named Eugenius.
He wanted to marry her off before retiring to his monastery.
But Marina joined her father instead as a monk
and renounced her femininity
and took on the named Marinus,
living an ascetic lifestyle with no one suspecting
that she wasn't a man.
While traveling in Tourza on monk business,
an innkeeper accused Marinus of knocking up his daughter.
But she wouldn't reveal her secret
and was banished from the abbey
and ordered to raise the bastard boy.
After four years,
Marina was allowed back into the monastery until his death,
where they discovered Marinus was really Marina.
Oh yeah, that's a tough one.
How do you get accused of that without being like,
yeah, see that's impossible,
'cause the thing is.
Number nine is Joan of Arc.
Joan of Arc was born to tenant farmers in 1412
in Domremy and became patron saint of France
on May 16th, 1920,
over 500 years after her death.
King Henry V of England invaded France in 1415
and took the northern region of Burgundy,
which began the Hundred Year War,
leaving the future of France in limbo.
But in 1422,
Joan had holy visions from Saints Michael and Catherine
telling her that she was destined to save France.
At 17, Joan cropped her hair like a boy,
dressed like a man,
and visited Charles Dauphin at his court
in exile in Chinon,
convincing him to provide her
with an army to kick the English out.
With zero military experience,
Joan led France to great victories,
that was, until she was wounded in battle
and later tried for witchcraft, heresy,
and dressing like a man on May 30th, 1431
and was burned at the stake at only 19 years old.
She saved France and she still gets burned at the stake
for having different jiggly bits?
Just disappointing.
Number eight is Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
Believe it or not,
two of the greatest pirates in history were women,
Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
Anne Bonny was born in Ireland in 1698
and was raised as a boy,
but was later disowned for almost murdering a suitor.
She married sailor James Bonny,
but soon left him for pirate John Rackham
and joined his crew on the Revenge.
Mary Read was born in 1685 in England
and was also raised as a boy,
worked on British navy ships,
fought in the army as a man,
and in 1720,
was aboard a Dutch ship captured
in the West Indies by the Revenge.
To recruit Mary,
Anne tried to seduce her,
discovering that he was a she,
and together they terrorized the Caribbean
until Captain Jonathan Barnet
caught them on October 20th, 1720.
Anne and Mary were spared execution as both were pregnant.
Let's be completely honest.
If this was made into a movie,
it would probably sell well,
it would be very confusing,
and it would definitely be rated R.
Hah, get, they were pirates.
Joke.
Number seven is Dr. James Barry.
Dr. James Miranda Steuart Barry
was a renowed 19th-century British surgeon
that was the first of his countrymen
to perform a successful Caesarian section
in Cape Town, South Africa in 1826.
But nobody knew until Dr. Barry's autopsy
that he was born Margaret Bulkley
around 1798 in County Cork, Ireland.
In 1809, Margaret enrolled as James
in Edinburgh University's Medical School,
where she excelled,
refined her skills at St Thomas' Hospital London,
and was passed by the Royal College of Surgeons in 1812.
Dr. Barry was a surgeon in the British army
on the front lines in Europe, India,
and South Africa as well as Canada,
and rose to the highest military doctor rank
of inspector general.
Barry was also a vegetarian
and had a fiery temper that led to duels.
What'd you call me a lady for?
Clearly I'm a man.
En garde.
Today, Barry is celebrated
as the first female doctor in Britain.
Number six is Charlotte Bronte.
Charlotte Bronte is one of the great Victorian authors
whose semi-autobiographical Jane Eyre
is considered one of the greatest books ever published.
But the early feminist tome was not originally published
under the name Charlotte Bronte,
but instead the manly sounded Currer Bell.
Like most women of her time,
Charlotte was told by every man
from her strict father,
Reverend Patrick Bronte,
to the English Poet Laureate Robert Southey
to stick to homemaking and child rearing.
London publisher Smith, Elder, and Co.
printed Jane Eyre in October 16th of 1847 to great fanfare
and only found out her secret
when Charlotte visited their office a year later
to show her true identity.
In addition, Charlotte's sisters,
Emily and Anne,
also published books until the fictional surname Bell,
including Wuthering Heights,
another Victorian classic.
I thought about publishing my top 10s
under a new channel,
Princess Banana Hammock.
Look for it soon.
Or not.
It's not that great of a name, I guess.
Number five is Sarah Edmonds.
Sarah Emma Edmondson was born in December of 1841
in New Brunswick, Canada,
where she worked in the fields in boys' attire.
She assumed the persona of Franklin Thompson
to sell Bibles and later enlisted
in May of 1861 in the 2nd Michigan Regiment
of Volunteer Infantry.
Franklin Thompson was a Union army field nurse
serving in the Battles of Bull Run,
Antietam, and Fredericksburg.
She also went behind enemy lines 11 times as a spy,
pretending to be a black man,
an Irish peddler, and a black laundress
to gather intel on the Confederacy.
She deserted in April of 1863
and assumed the identity of Sarah Edmonds,
a nurse in the U.S. Christian Commission
in Washington, D.C.
In 1882, Sarah won a petition
to get Franklin Thompson's deserter status expunged
and receive a full pension with back pay.
Oh my God, everything she did took some serious cojones.
And she didn't even have cojones.
That's just extra impressive.
Number four is Dorothy Lawrence.
Dorothy Lawrence broke the glass ceiling
of investigative journalism by disguising herself
as a man during World War I.
She published articles in The Times
and Fleet Street newspaper,
but was rejected from serving
in the Voluntary Aid Detachment when war erupted.
She traveled to France anyway in 1915
and convinced two British soldiers
to provide her with spare uniforms,
hiding her curves.
Her male alter-ego,
sapper Tommy Dunn,
was on the front lines in the sniper-infested Somme
before her gender was revealed
after she collapsed from exhaustion.
After the Great War,
she published Sapper Dorothy Lawrence,
The Only English Woman Soldier in 1919,
but was redacted by the War Office.
Sadly, she died penniless in an insane asylum,
and her body was dumped in a pauper's grave
in New Southgate Cemetery, London.
Number three is Billy Tipton.
Billy never had a sex change
and kept her true gender secret
while proving herself in a man's world
of big band jazz as a piano and saxophone virtuoso.
She played with luminaries Jack Teagarden and Russ Carlyle
before starting her own trio in the 1950s
that toured across halls in North America.
Billy was a family man,
married five times,
somehow deceiving and satisfying all of her wives,
and even adopted three sons,
none of whom admit to knowing the truth.
Her true gender was only discovered
after paramedics removed her clothing
in order to resuscitate her after she collapsed
at her home in Washington in January 21st of 1989.
Talk about a self-made man, woman.
Man, woman.
Okay, that's just confusing.
Number two is Rena "Rusty" Kanokogi.
Rena "Rusty" Kanokogi broke the sexist world of sport
over her knee when she won the 1959
New York State YMCA Judo Championships,
but had to give up her gold medal.
Born in 1935 in Brooklyn, New York,
she could not compete in local judo clubs
simply because of her gender.
So she traveled to Tokyo, Japan in 1962
to continue her judo training
and became the first woman
to earn a seventh degree black belt.
Men's judo became an Olympic sport in the year of 1964,
and she threatened legal action
unless women were treated equally,
launching the Women's World Judo Championships
in 1980 in New York City,
mortgaging her house just to cover the costs.
Women's judo became an Olympic sport in 1988,
and Rusty coached the U.S. team in Seoul.
So next time someone says you fight like a girl,
you better say thank you.
And number one is J.K. Rowling.
The final imposter is a household name
to kids and adults of every age
for her whimsical wizard series, Harry Potter.
Before she became richer than the Queen of England,
J.K. Rowling was on welfare writing the Sorcerer's Stone.
Literary agents rejected
her original Harry Potter manuscript
under Joanne Katherine Rowling,
but agent Christopher Little saw the potential.
They sold the book to Bloomsbury,
who published it under the more masculine J.K.,
since the book's target audience was young men.
The Harry Potter series was so big
that J.K. Rowling published the Cormoran Strike series
of gritty crime novels under another pseudonym,
Robert Galbraith.
But Rowling was finally outed as a female
by the Sunday Times on July 14th, 2013,
when a university's computer program
was able to analyze her writing style.
Well, it just goes to show you,
women are capable of anything.
Now I have a terrible craving for Butterbeer.
Excuse me.
So that was 10 times women disguised as men made history.
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Thank you guys for watching,
and I'll see you in the next video.
Goodbye now, hoo hoo.