The Burning Times: fascinating docu on women's power before Christianity

claig - it was always my understanding that witch hunts were worse where Protestantism was strongest, and correspondingly fewer tortures/executions in the more Catholic states

I don't particularly want to undermine feminist effort, but I don't want the truth about women's experiences to be reduced either. That documentary did not say 'feminist effort' to me!

Btw, does it not occur to you how awful it is that you are posing as a feminist and saying it's ok for women to lie about what's happened to women? Do you not realize you are weakening every feminist argument there is about rape myths?

It is not ok to lie, and especially not ok to lie and justify it by saying you're making a feminist point.

dittany, they did write women out of Christianity before 1100. Watch the video. Read this thread. They said Christianity was 'new' in 1132.

There were women in that thousand years who were struggling and working; they were real people who don't deserve to be ignored. You may not like that they lived under a Christian Church. They may not have liked it either, but some of them managed to cope with that patriarchial structure and still make something of their abilities. Would you like us to pretend Maggie Thatcher wasn't a real woman leader just because the government in this couuntry is a patriarchial structure?

Why do you think it's ok to lie about women's history? Why is it not important enough to be reported with truth? Why do you need a fairytale to remind you to be angry about women?

Sakura (and anyone else): you might like to read the Women's History of the World by Rosalind Miles. I can't remember what she says about the persecution of witches, but it's a fascinating rewriting from the female perspective.

I didn't realise that protestants were part of it. I got the impression that it was only Catholics, but apparently not.

www.twpt.com/burning.htm

Here is some info on the documentary from Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burning_Times

Cross-post.

What SGM said!

I don't need fairytales about strong women being oppressed to remind me to be angry and sad about what happens to women. There's quite enough reality for that, thanks. To imply, as this film does, that we need a fiction in order to get angry about women's oppression is to suggest that there's not enough real oppression to merit that response. It diminishes what has happened to women, which is exactly what anti-feminism is.

I can't understand how anyone could think they were a feminism and defend this.

Alice - I felt angry that the fact their persecution and very real sufferings, which I think still has echoes for women today, was used so carelessly that it detracted from the horror. It absolutely deserves better.

The truth that women were persecuted makes me angry and sad. I think this is a double persecution though, to lie about them as if they don't matter.

How did the idea that women were persecuted make you feel?

I am at the idea that trying to be accurate about something important is considered as directing our attention in the wrong place. I just don't get it.

I didn't like that neo-pagan evangelical documentary and have come away feeling incredibly irritated and patronised, this idea of wicca and everything pre-Christianity as some sort of utopian matriarchy is ridiculous.

Alice - Yes ... I think it's very like the attitudes in Victorian times that, although people knew Jews had been persecuted and tortured across medieval England, it was still somehow ok to caricature them and to have characters like Fagin be so popular.

I don't know if that means the Witch Trials need to be studied more, or if it's more that we need to start being uncomfortable about nasty stereotypes of women - maybe the latter?

Hang on, everyone knows about it, it's taught at school, yet people think it's funny to dress up as witches at halloween, and write kids books about it making out the women were evil? And that is mainstream. Hmm wonder why that could be...

That's true. Norse beliefs would have been interesting, though I think tough to study because of the gap between them being practiced and being written down.

I thought a lot of what it said boiled down to 'women were once revered/powerful ... conveniently before recorded history ... '. I mean, fine, if you think that's true, show me why you think so! The way they located this supposed 'pre-Christian' period of woman power in the millenium when we know perfectly well many women were being oppressed and their rights restricted, is horrible.

This "documentary" not only ignores a thousand years of Christian history, but focuses almost entirely on pre-Roman religion. It ignores entirely a few hundred years of norse beliefs.

It cheery picks what it wants you to see. It does this as it clearly has a bias to the wiccan faith - which often identifies with pre-Roman beliefs. That is religious polemic. History is not simply about the presentation of facts. It is about putting those facts in context, detecting the bias in the presentation and analysing it appropriately. Accept things at face value at your peril.

I think there is a deeply ingrained sexism in history, though. There must be - women's experiences have, by and large, been considered less important in history. It's a conspiracy in the sense that it's enforced by cultural assumptions about who's important and who's not.

It's just that, to me, the way to combat that is to learn and teach about what really happened and to clamor for proper and respectful study of women in the past.

Dittany, I know sod all about certain areas of history. That is because history is huge and you cannot know all of it.

Do I therefore think there is a conspiracy to cover up the bits I don't know about? No.

Whatever she is, she ain't a feminist documentary maker base on this!

I meant the thousand years from the coming of Christianity, to 1132, when (according to that documentary) it was 'new'. You would know this if you had read the thread with a view to anything but proudly proclaiming your ignorance and equating it with feminism. Millions of real women lived during those 1000 years. They matter.