A question on Tarot and gender: In designing my deck (http://www.robertscottart.com/projects/the-urban-tarot/), I've occasionally been tempted to place a woman as a knight or prince or a man as a princess or queen. Because I know women who are more like knights and princes and men who are more like princesses or queens. And sometimes the model that seems to best fit the role as defined by a court card does not match the gender of the card. And I feel like it's silly to to box people into these normative gender roles, with women all cast as "passive" and men all cast as "active". But then I decide against...because I also don't want to confuse the meaning of the card, and gender HAS meaning. What do you think? If you had, say a woman as the Knight of Wands, what would that mean to you? Would it muddy the waters so to speak? My feeling has been that if there was a card that particularly spoke to me about transgressing gender, that I would be more inclined to cross lines, but to do it more casually was... not treating the meanings in the card and the symbols of gender with enough consideration? I admit, I am of two minds about this.
It certainly doesn't bother me - for what it's worth. I've never felt the need to see the courts as INDIVIDUALS as you might say.
And Joan of Arc did OK :)
From what I have seen online about the urban tarot I looks non-standard enough that some gender-twists shouldn't matter. I like the idea too. And as a faithful backer of your project I fully trust in any of your decisions :)
But on the other hand I remember a long discussion over at aeclectic tarot about the queen of wands in the wizards tarot looking too masculine. Which might have been more of an issue than a real gender switch, actually.
