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

Yes, Dittany I agree. But the point is how? How do these situations develop? Part of looking at a backlash is mapping out how it happens, and what dangers it can lead into.

Some of the rights we have had in the UK we have only had for a tiny amount of time, and we could easily lose them. We could end up going backwards not forwards. That has clearly happened in other countries - Iran for example.

I did what to this thread dittany - talked about the subject of the OP and disagreed with you? Why is that such a problem? I suspect the clue's in the second part, not the first.

Yes, I do feel angry and contemptuous about that film. I've made it quite clear why. I am, if you really want to know, quite proud of what I've posted on this thread: it made sense, and I think it was the right thing to say, and it wasn't made easier to say by your attitude, which seems to be simply to insult everyone who disagrees with you.

If you don't enjoy this discussion, is there a need to spoil it for others who were enjoying it?

The 'subject of the thread', according to the OP, is the film. Not 'women being oppressed according to Dittany', nor even 'the witch trials', but the film. If you want to discuss the witch trials, you probably do need to start another thread and it sounds as if lots of people would be happy to post on it and talk about what they know and think.

Tyr, I understand the point you're making.

I'm going to describe this in terms of Germany, as it is the best known example, but I think you're saying a similar thing about N.I.

The Germans had a bad time as a consequence of WW1 and the economic situation they were put in afterwards. Part of this was that there was a disruption in their culture and history. Their needs to form an identity were not being met. As part of filling this identity need, they invented a whole load of stuff about their pagan past and their Aryan routes. No distinction was made between the stuff that was invented for their identity and the reality of the past. They took this and went from being a disadvantged nation to being a nation that oppressed others, and this invented identity was one part of the reason why they did this.

At the same time, there were other reasons why the Holocaust happened - there was also a misuse and misunderstanding of science, particularly evolution, and a misuse of technology, and many other reasons.

But just because people have misused technology, and the theory of evolution, and the development of identity through taking on disparate elements of the past, that doesn't mean those activities will always inevitably lead to hatred and victimisation of others. They are still valuable as ideas.

And it is possible to form both a personal and a group identity that recognises that your situation in life includes both contemporary experiences of injustice and that has been built upon injustices experienced by people who were members of your group in the past. It is also possible that people build such an identity, and use it to overcome the injustice their group faces without it leading to the victimisation of another group. I don't think feminism is going to lead the victimisation of men as a group, so I don't have an issue with women discussing their victimisation and where it might have come from.

I do sometimes have an issue with that when it comes to pagans, because there are clear issues with racism in Europe (Odinists especially have to deal with this among their numbers) and treatment of native peoples in North America. But the vast majority of pagans are not building an identity for that reason; they are doing so because mainstream culture isn't meeting their needs. As long as they are aware of the potential implications, which many are, then there shouldn't be an issue.

This thread started with a link to the film, which some of us think is a poor representation of the Witch Trials and also not terribly good feminism, to put it mildly. It didn't start with someone saying 'let's discuss the Witch Trials'. So it's not derailing the thread to discuss the subject of the OP, which is the film and its content.

If you want to talk purely about the Witch Trials, wouldn't it be better to start out from that OP, not from this one, given what's happened on this thread?

Personally, I was really enjoying the last few pages of this discussion and I think it's a shame to write that off just because we did all move off-topic on a thread that's now 34 pages long.

That last post was to Dittany.

Yes, but as I said yesterday (a response to your post, but perhaps you missed it as you were not around at that point), there are different levels of persecution. Societies can discriminate more or less extremely. The witch trials were extreme. How does that develop?

dittany, we have been talking about these things too. If you go back a few pages, you'll see that we were talking about women being treated as livestock and sold by their husbands. It's an interesting discussion and seemed to those of us posting to be related to what we're talking about now.

As to what you say about patriarchy liking hierarchies, that's true, but I disagree that binaries are a side issue. Men vs. women is a binary in itself, and the patriarchy likes to pretend it is the most important one.

You may be right that a man would have got further with cross-disciplinary studies, but I doubt it in this particular case. What is far more likely is that men will choose to study what the discipline pleases to call 'canonical' texts - that is, those written by and for men. If a man did want to study women's texts like mine, I can't see that particular group of academics being much more supportive towards him than me, because quite a lot of them wouldn't realize they were enforcing a sexist boundary. They've been trained to think it's a disciplinary boundary.

MillyR,

Fair enough; the thread started on a theme and moved on. That is a reasonable argument but, in another sense, it moved little from the process of taking bits and pieces from here there and everywhere to support a position.
Prejudice thrives where one group defines itself in contrast to another, be it racial, religious or sexual. Tolerance thrives where there is understanding of the roles of the different strands of humanity in our world. That is over simplifying things- almost trite, but true.
Where a group perceives itself as oppressed and reacts against it, the tactics frequently reveal an ugly side of human nature, often surpassing that of the perceived oppressor.
Springing to my mind as an example is the brutality of certain groups in N.Ireland, not just to their perceived enemy but to those within their own group who challenged them.
However, the trait exists within all of us and I see it on this thread. Challenge the validity of a position and you are attacked and accused of being ?MRA,? another group challenging what they perceive to be discrimination against their ?group?
Perish the thought that the interests of that ?group? and your own might not be mutually exclusive. The irony in one group employing that term as an insult is lost.
Then someone, (Garlicbutter, I think; I?m losing track of all these posts) states that they don?t entirely disagree with (I think) one thing I said and she is attacked and insulted.
I don?t believe we have to look to world events to understand how prejudice, misunderstanding and discrimination arise- nor indeed to see where they might lead, if unchecked.

Dittany, we're on the feminist section. From what I have seen of most of the main posters on this thread, regardless of which perspective they've argued from, they already agree that we live in a patriarchy and that women are oppressed by men.

SAF, yes I think it is a way of having knowledge at a deeper level, that includes spiritual and emotional ways of knowing, and combining different ways of knowing, without having to intellectualise them.

Dittany, I did ask twice for your point to be discussed. I do want to know how such situations arise. GB has said she knows quite a bit about how those situations arise, so perhaps she will come back when she has time and discuss it.

Or perhaps you could. How do you think situtions of extreme persection develop? What are the warning signs? What are the steps on the way?

Most people don't want to talk about the torture and murder of women, beyond the fact that is happened to X number of women at X time, because people are uncomfortable discussing what is involved in torture, particularly as it oftern discussed and viewed as a form of popular entertainment when it is done to women.