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

sparky - interesting you mention female circumcision, I've had Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Waris Dirie (I don't know how well know she is - she's not a feminist theorist like Ali but writes of her own experience - shockingly) in my head for a lot of this thread. I think what Ali says about not patronizing non-European cultures by assuming they can't achieve feminism is very, very important here.

[........men have to use violence to keep it.........]
yes-and/or fear.
well-this is what i was trying to say earlier Dittany.
when i spoke about a hypethetical friend[which wasnt very hupethetical]
garlicbutter posted back with basiccally[cant remember exact words-and sorry garlicbutter-im not having a go or belittling youre words]
"you have to tell the police=this is wrong ect"
but yes-i know its wrong but.............
we are frightened of the police!!
we might not know the right words or understanding but we see it as patriarchy-we feel it.
so its not much point in saying these things.
the fear has got to be tackled first.

yep-i agree dittany-men have made instruments of torture for women
they also invented a headbrace with tongue clamp for "nagging wifes"
then paraded them in the street wuth it on.
and female circimsision!

Yes, I agree Milly. I forget who said what, but Brian and I were talking about the situation with miscarriages in America being investigated in case the women had tried to abort their foetuses, and the way this seems so similar to witches being accused of procuring abortion. It's the same exact images of women having control over their own bodies that are attacked.

LRD, I think a lot of the point of that 'how the patriarchy came to be' discussion addressed the original thread topic - why are women feared so much that they are killed for it. That would make fear the root cause of why men want power.

Also, dittany, you should read my post a few pages back, replying to (I think?) SAF who compared the patriarchy to evolution. People were discussing whether patriarchy were in some way 'accidental', and I did point out that there is only evidence to show how men in general oppress women, not the other way around. The evidence shows that men have done these things. The point isn't a new one you've just come up with that we were all failing to make - it's been made and discussed already.

Right .... but the date was my point, so ... what did I get off wiki? The only other time I remember mentioning it - as I've just said - was to say it said the cross they mentioned was 9th century and I'd agree with them.

I don't want to rehash these arguments because it's clear we're not going to agree, but neither am I going to watch you pretend I don't know what I'm talking about.

dittany, I hope you're just misremembering, but it's cheap to say I 'had to go on wikipedia' to object to that film. I didn't. I know perfectly well what the pertinent date is, and as far as I recall the only time I mentioned wiki was to confirm that, based on my knowledge, it was correct.

Do you ever feel bad about misrepresenting what other women say or do?

You're not wrong that it's important to talk about what men have done to women, but when we have been talking about it, and you come in saying we haven't, don't you think that's ignoring and belittling the women we've just discussed?

But the communities and the church were run by men.

It doesn't answer the question to say that men keep control through violence. All control ultimately relies on violence, either through physical violence or physical harm through economic deprivation.

That wasn't the question asked in your link. The question was why men do it.

So address the question.

Then I would suggest it is a case of two different levels of power wanting the same thing at the same time.

At a local level, communities were lacking resources (due to plague etc). They could get more resources off people they considered expendable - women who were old or single. I think that was the case all over Europe, but was only supported by the authorities in areas where they felt they needed to impose more control. So in Spain, where they had already imposed an orthodoxy, when witch craze set in, rather than go out to burn witches, they imposed a ban on witch accusations.

In countries where the authorities felt their control was under threat, due to religious conflict, they supported and encouraged the accusation of witches, so they could be seen to be exerting power. So where Protestant religions were new, they held witch trials. Where Catholicism was under threat, they held witch trials.

I was also wondering how it fits in with all the people who were killed for being heretics. Was that mainly men or women? If people were going to accuse many women of being ignorant or too stupid to have a view, would it then undermine that claim if you killed them as a heretic? Do you have to acknowledge someone as having an intellect in order for them to be capable of heresy? In that case, it would be more sensible to accuse women of witchcraft instead, which doesn't imply any intellectual ability, and in fact can be seen as a challenge to people who are in authority due to being educated? But I don't know about that. I don't know how many men were murdered as heretics, or why.

We did try and talk about the women this happened to. You wrote that off as people making it into a local event in order to deny the scale of the witch hunts.

I really can't think of any angle from which to talk about the witch hunts of which you would approve, unless I listed a range of sadistic tortures used. I am suspicious of the motives of people who want to get into depth about torture methods. I can't think of any reason why we need to discuss torture in any more detail than was covered in the film.

Oh come on: it's far more likely as we've all said that men (and women) would say 'oh, silly women with no grasp of history whatsoever, got the basic premise totally wrong'.

And yes, the thread moved on. It went in different ways. Which threads do. Or we could stay stuck in the 'actually it's got everything wrong' 'no, it hasn't and anyone who says it has is a simpering pawn of the patriarchy' and go round and round and round.

I've skimmed over the last 15 posts or so. I'm feeling stressed already, and don't need yet another bunfight just now.

I think the 'off topic' discussion is relevant to the matter of how & why women can be generically demonised.
We spoke about superstition, and surmised that the mysterious things (to a pre-scientific mind) a woman's body can do might look supernatural to men.
We discussed the fact that fear can provoke oppression.
We looked at women's internalisation of their own marginal status within communities - this is directly relevant to the witch trials, too, as so many 'witches' were denounced by other women.
That more women exercise 'out of the box' thinking, with a broader perspective than 'binary' intellect allows, is a massively feminist point. Not only because of the academic & professional ramifications, but because it's something that has always caused unease amongst male rule-setters.

Feminism needs philosophers because it is a philosophy. In trying to stifle philosophical engagement, Ditanny, you exert the very same binary thinking and dumbing influence you wish to free women from.

I can't help remembering, too, that you once lambasted me for trying to bring a thread I started back on topic. You said I was wrong to try and stifle the ongoing discussion. I felt you were right about that! So how about taking your own advice?