Icons: Chevalier D'Eon

Chevalier D'Eon (1728-1810) is seen today as an early and important gender-nonconforming public figure. After an impressive career as a spy and diplomat, she lived as a woman despite facing public scrutiny.

We're celebrating Pride Month with Icons: supreme queens of queer culture. Some are household names... others are a little more behind the scenes. All of them have defied social norms and influenced generations of people to be unapologetically themselves.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more.  Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. 

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Liz Smith, Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Ale Tejeda, Sara Schleede, and Abbey Delk. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. 

Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello. For Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Wamanica. We're celebrating Pride Month with icons supreme queens
of queer culture. Some are household names, others are a
little more behind the scenes. All defied social norms and
influenced generations of people to be unapologetically themselves. Today we're

(00:23):
talking about someone who's seen as an early and important
gender nonconforming public figure. After an impressive career as a
spy and diplomat, she lived as a woman despite facing
public scrutiny. Let's talk about Chevalier Dion on October fifth,
seventeen twenty eight. Chevalier Dion was born Charles Genevieve Louis

(00:47):
Auguste Andrea Timothy Dillon de Beaumont. Today she's known by
the French title for Knight Chevalier. Her family was aristocratic
but also poor and lived in the Burgundy region of France.
During the Chevalier's lifetime, the language around gender nonconformity was different.
There's some evidence that she claimed she faced family pressure

(01:09):
to live as a man in her early life, and
there were also very public rumors about her gender identity.
Some even placed bets on it. When Chevalier Dion began
dressing as a woman publicly later in life, she faced
ridicule in the form of crude cartoons, and her political
status and career were stripped away. It's hard to know
exactly how she felt about her gender at the time,

(01:30):
and her story is complicated, so we're going to refer
to the Chevalier by the pronouns she used at the
end of her life to understand more about this later
part of her life. However, we're going to start her
story before she lived openly as a woman. From a
young age. Chevalier Dion proved to be an excellent student
and a skilled writer. The Chevalier attended law school and

(01:54):
secured a place in the French civil service. She became
the secretary to the Ambassador to Russia and spent time
at the Russian Royal court, all of which were roles
only men could attain. In Russia, Chevalier Dion likely experienced
Empress Elizabeth's metamorphosis balls, where it was encouraged for men

(02:14):
to don dresses and women to wear more masculine attire.
Though she had an official public role, Chevalier Dion also
had a secret mission King Louis the fifteenth had tapped
her to join Le Secrete Deuois, or the King's Secret
It was a network of spies created by the king
to forward his political ambitions in foreign countries like Russia.

(02:37):
It was so hush hush that many top members of
the French foreign ministry had no idea it existed. When
the Seven Years War broke out between France and Great
Britain and their allies, Chevalier Dion was called back to
fight as a soldier. In seventeen sixty two, the chevalier
was sent to London to help negotiate the Treaty of Paris,
which brought an end to the war. Savage as a

(03:00):
diplomat earned her admittance to the Order of Saint Louis,
and she officially gained the title of Chevalier. France had
lost a lot in the treaty, all of its North
American colonies, and had a huge amount of debt from
the war. King Louis wanted revenge, so he tasked his
secret service, including Chevalier Dion, with concocting a plot to

(03:21):
invade Britain. The king gave Chevalier Dion an official job
as an ambassador to the British Court and a secret
mission to scout around for witnesses in British defenses and
find potential French allies in Parliament. But Chevalier Dion quickly
ran into problems with her assignment. She often clashed with

(03:42):
other French civil service, and she also had expensive tastes.
She was reprimanded for importing too much wine on the
crown's dime. Eventually, the Chevalier's insolence was too much. The
King ordered her back to France, and she knew she
risan being sent to the infamous Bustille prison, so she

(04:03):
refused to return home, and the British Foreign Minister declared
she could remain in London as a private citizen. King
Louis was furious. His government attempted to kidnap the Chevalier
and drag her back to France by force, but Chevalier
Dion pushed back, threatening to publicize her secret mission for
the king. She even published a scandalous book with letters

(04:26):
from her time as a diplomat. It was just enough
to embarrass the king, and she had plenty more she
could make public. The King agreed to pay her a
yearly pension in exchange for her silence, and she could
stay in London. The Chevalier's public feud with the French
crown made her a minor celebrity in England. Around this time,

(04:47):
rumors began to fly about her gender. Soon the speculation
became so widespread that bookkeepers were organizing bets. Chevalier Dion
had to hire guards to escort her out of the
house because people had started trying to tear off her
clothes in public. By the mid seventeen seventies, King Louis
the fifteenth had died and his son Louis the sixteenth

(05:09):
assumed the throne. He had a renewed interest in making
the secret Durois disappear, so in seventeen seventy five, a
government representative set out to negotiate with Chevalier Dion. She
confessed to him that she was indeed a woman. As
part of the negotiations, the king made it clear that
the Chevalier Dion was to return any and all papers

(05:31):
about her spy work, and she must live publicly as
a woman. She accepted and returned to France in seventeen
seventy seven, at the age of forty nine. She was
formally presented at the Court of Versailles, reborn in the
eyes of the French public in a powdered wig and
an elaborate gown made by Marie Antoinette's dressmaker. But Chevalier

(05:53):
Jon's public life as a woman also meant an end
to her political ambitions. The French government wouldn't let her
fight in the American Revolution. When she continued to ask
to form an all female battalion, they arrested her, so
Chevalier Dio went back to London. She was skilled with
the fencing sword and earned money by staging duels and
salons around the city, always choosing to fight in a gown.

(06:17):
She also became deeply invested in early feminist thought and
curated one of the largest collections of feminist works in
Europe at the time. Some feminists accepted her In return.
Mary Wollstonecraft pointed to the Chevalier as a shining example
of what women could achieve when given the opportunities men
were always afforded. After the French Revolution erupted in seventeen

(06:40):
eighty nine, Chevalier Diol lost her pension, and she fell
into poverty. When she died in eighteen ten, at the
age of eighty one, she had been living as a
woman for more than three decades. In the centuries since
her death, historians have continued to reevaluate Chevalier Dion's life story.
Some believe her life life as a woman was a

(07:00):
calculated political move to help her get back in the
French government's good graces. Others believed she was simply seeking
to live authentically and a time before transgender identity was
widely understood or accepted. All month, we're highlighting icons. For

(07:23):
more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica
Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and
co creator. Talk to you tomorrow.