Witch hunts and gender-critical feminists

[heresyandwitchcraft]

As you may have surmised from my username, I see parallels between the witch-hunts of yesteryear and the current movement to label gender-critical women T*RFs alongside disturbing calls to use violence against such females.

I personally have found it interesting to briefly look back at the history of witch trials to get some perspective on the misogyny I perceive in this "debate." Being accused of witchcraft in many countries was (and in some places still is!) a charge disproportionately leveled at females. One might idly ponder if current transgender ideology arguably relies too heavily on belief in an unproveable/"supernatural" force (e.g. that of the "feminine/masculine" essence that transcends biology) and whether there are commonalities between such views and the beliefs in magic of yore. Who knows? Certainly both "sides" in this "debate" appear to accuse each other of moral panic, and persecution.

However, it is definitely worth thinking about historical misogyny. In my post these will be predominantly from a European perspective. I recently found out that "scolding" used to be an actual crime - reserved predominantly for angry, quarrelsome females for speaking out of turn, gossiping, or behaving rudely. This was punishable by the "cucking stool," where she would be strapped to a chair and dunked underwater. Or she might be made to wear what was known as a "scold's bridle"/"witch's bridle," which physically prevented her from speaking lest she cut her tongue, and was typically accompanied by public humiliation.

During many witch trials, once you were labelled a witch you either confessed your sins for a quick execution or you professed your innocence. If you kept denying witchery, you would be systematically broken down using brutal means. In some places, they would tie you up and throw you in the water first to test the witchcraft accusation. If you floated then your witchcraft was confirmed and you would meet a very grim fate. If you sank then you were innocent but at high risk of drowning. You'd likely be asked to name your "co-conspirators," so that the hunters could root out all the witches in the area. Importantly, there was usually no dignified way out once you were branded a witch.

One might ask whether there are any similar principles of misogyny that hold true now. I have stopped worrying as much about being called a modern witch because these historical examples weirdly remind me (eerily) of what women are currently being asked to do: shut up, stop thinking about certain issues, and play nice to keep the peace. I do not think it was an accident that there is a feminist theory that midwives (those specialists of the female body) allegedly were over-represented in being accused of witchcraft. I do not think it is completely out of the blue that it is now the female body which is again being erased from the public domain - only to be spoken of in hushed, convoluted terms. I do not think it is merely coincidental that some trans activists wonder whether women even exist, much less have the authority to speak with authority on the female experience. And I certainly do not think it's outside the pattern for misogyny that the main people being targeted in this debate are dissenting females, with some corners of the internet seeming to wish to enforce corporeal punishment on women simply for speaking, as a consequence for not acquiescing completely to an ideology.

All I can say is that I may very well be considered to be an evil witch. I know in my own heart that I have no ill-intent towards anyone, but I have no way of proving this. I have come to terms with that idea. I now take accusations against other people with a healthy pinch of skepticism - the way I would have wanted society to consider those accused of witchcraft in the past. I try to continually re-evaluate my own position and carefully examine evidence. Throughout all this I have only kept thinking it is important for the other "witches" to be able to have their opinions heard instead of calling for them to be burned at the stake.

Thanks MN for still allowing us to express ourselves. Special thanks to all the heretics, especially the ones who display so much courage and patience on a daily basis. I personally have come to see this moment in history as just the latest in a long line of outspoken women who are being outcast for daring to have an unorthodox point of view. Women still have voices, even though they may not get the respect that a man who is defending free speech might be afforded, or get any of the broad institutional support provided to some trans rights activists.

Perhaps it is considered uncouth for a woman to say that females are real and exist as their own category, unified by their sex. Humans cannot change their reproductive sex.
Females matter. Feminism was designed to help females.
Please keep talking.
And remember to practice your cackle!

Alice that took me down a rabbit hole for a wee while. I'm guessing there wasn't much washing of any kind going on in the 1500s.

www.livescience.com/3210-childbirth-natural-deadly.html

Thank you, socio, that's a really interesting article!

I always think we forget just how dangerous birth was (I remember saying at various NCT classes that my birth plan was just to come out alive with healthy baby!). Whenever I see films etc trying to portray Elizabeth I as having loads of sex - because from a modern perspective why wouldn't she want to - I think we forget the intense fear that some women felt about sex and birth. Especially from her perspective: two stepmothers died in childbirth and her own mother plus Catherine H were killed accused of taking lovers.

And again, there are far too many men (especially in USA) looking to control access to contraception and abortion.

I think another comparison with witches is their use of a demonising term "terf" to describe people who disagree with them by as well. Witches weren't women they were "witches". We aren't women we are "terfs" It's less emotive to talk or drowning witches and thumping terfs than to drown and thump women.

Sorry, something else that occurred!

In mediaeval times, belief in what witches looked like or what they could do varied from country to country. Natural magic and healing was bound up with Christianity - some monastic books on herbs and medicine etc read like incantations. As I mentioned, witchcraft began to assume the old tropes of heresy in the C15th and suddenly, at the end of that century, identikit witches straight out of the Malleus Maleficarum are found all over Europe and later in the US. Why?

A revolution in communication: the printing press. Kramer and Sprenger were best sellers all over Europe (like Dan Brown, but even more evil). I think we can see parallels with the new social media today. Ideas spread fast but so to do lies and misinformation. Also there is the exaggeration: a witch might not actually do or say anything but wicked intent is ascribed in a funny look or a mutter just as when a woman uses the wrong pronouns it becomes ‘literal violence’ and the perceived desire to eradicate individuals or ‘make’ them kill themselves. Of course men were more literate than women and controlled channels of communication but today we also see that Twitter etc tend to minimise threats against women and be more inclined to censored or ban then. Once you construct a narrative in which a group seeks to actively harm you (and absolutely, Rebecca, the use of emotive demonizing terms is key), you are absolved of responsibility for violence. It becomes 'self-defence'.

Alice I think, out of everyone, Elizabeth had many excellent reasons for not getting married, not least of which is the example of husbandry her own father displayed to her. She was very little when her Mother was beheaded, so I doubt she had clear memories of her, but you can bet your life she was told all about it, and was given a very clear understanding that her life was Henry's, to do with as he wished. Why would an intelligent, educated and strong willed woman quite literally hand over the crown of England to whoever she married? I've no idea if he'd be crowned himself, or would be a consort, like Prince Philip, but even without being King, you can bet your life he'd be the one the nobles listened to and obeyed.

Give up absolute power, for something as piffly as a willy? Not on your nelly.

Yes, we call sex attackers "monsters" don't we. We dehumanise them. Men do it too. We, as humans, can't bear the thought that these terrible acts can be committed by our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, our uncles or our sons. But they are. We turn the despicable acts into something a monster does, we call them animals, things, beasts, perverts. Nobody wants to believe that these heinous acts can, and are, performed by people who will then go and buy the Sunday paper and do the crossword whilst watching the kids play on the trampoline.

Socio, absolutely: you see this in histories of the Nazi period - those who take the line that these were 'ordinary men' who did terrible things against those who prefer to see them as deranged monsters. Sereny used to get a lot of criticism for supposedly humanizing her subjects. But I think that if we don't see them as recognizable we risk ignoring the capability many of us have for doing real evil (not the broomstick kind) through ignorance or weakness or fear. Personally, I think it's much more chilling that someone who loves their kids and can be kind could also commit horrific atrocities.

I think I am just quietly going to enjoy reading these contributions as they have certainly reached a level WAY beyond my knowledge. Absolutely fascinating stuff!

The ideas about night meetings, sexual deviance, cannibalism, child murder etc are all directly borrowed from the old accusations levelled at Jews and heretics. So whereas witchcraft allegations had formed a lurid element of the charge sheet against the Templars, for example, it gradually becomes the main event and, crucially, it shifts the focus onto women.

I am definitely speculating wildly here but I find what you've written here so interesting. On a completely separate thread I was wondering whether antisemitism and misogyny are somehow vaguely related, mainly because of what I perceive to be going on in the Labour party right now - in my view, these two forms of discrimination seem to be "blind spots" right now for parts of "the Left"... I've always thought of misogyny and antisemitism as very "old hatreds" as well.

A revolution in communication: the printing press. Kramer and Sprenger were best sellers all over Europe (like Dan Brown, but even more evil). I think we can see parallels with the new social media today. Ideas spread fast but so to do lies and misinformation. Also there is the exaggeration: a witch might not actually do or say anything but wicked intent is ascribed in a funny look or a mutter just as when a woman uses the wrong pronouns it becomes ‘literal violence’ and the perceived desire to eradicate individuals or ‘make’ them kill themselves. Of course men were more literate than women and controlled channels of communication but today we also see that Twitter etc tend to minimise threats against women and be more inclined to censored or ban then. Once you construct a narrative in which a group seeks to actively harm you (and absolutely, Rebecca, the use of emotive demonizing terms is key), you are absolved of responsibility for violence. It becomes 'self-defence'.

This makes so much sense. A soup of change, ideological battles, and revolution in communication... Is this a form of exerting control in uncertain times by blaming the perennial "other" and trying to gain an unattainable state of "purity"?

Give up absolute power, for something as piffly as a willy? Not on your nelly.
LOL!

We, as humans, can't bear the thought that these terrible acts can be committed by our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, our uncles or our sons. But they are. We turn the despicable acts into something a monster does, we call them animals, things, beasts, perverts.

Yes, I think this actually is a real problem. Probably some sort of instinctive need to separate ourselves, whether that someone has an ideological difference or has committed a horrendous act. While it probably serves some form of protective function (isolating a murderer from the rest of society has to be a healthy thing - right?), it doesn't actually help us understand things, and in the context of f.ex. sexual abuse it means we may deny serious problems, such as that awful case of Larry Nassar (www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/26/larry-nassar-abuse-gymnasts-scandal-culture).

Learning so much. Thanks ladies!

But I think that if we don't see them as recognizable we risk ignoring the capability many of us have for doing real evil (not the broomstick kind) through ignorance or weakness or fear. Personally, I think it's much more chilling that someone who loves their kids and can be kind could also commit horrific atrocities.
This times a million. I think one of the things that I really took away from learning about the Holocaust was this DEEPLY unsettling knowledge...

Fascinating thread!

Heresy anti-Semitism certainly does run very deep in European culture. The outbreaks of violence against Jews really dwarfs some of the witch hunts - there was not even a pretence of trials etc, they were just wholesale massacres. I think there was certainly a fear of power - real or imagined - in both cases. There differences too: Jews were exempt from Christian restrictions on money lending and this allowed them to profit individually but was also useful to rulers who could leverage off this and tax them (so hypocritically benefited) and also made them useful scapegoats who had wholesale outsider status. Women, of course, couldn't be dismissed as a class to the same extent.

What is really interesting is that both fears are rooted in European Christian traditions but not in gospel. Jesus was very clearly of the Jewish tradition and women were important in his story: women were first at the tomb and first witnesses to the resurrection. I think there is any attempt to bury this (I blame Paul!) to make it attractive to the Roman audience. I wonder if this is the root of the matter?

Chilling is the right word. Goebbels springs immediately to mind. He was instrumental in the murders of millions of people, yet had six children who probably crawled into his lap for bedtime stories.

Of course Goebbels and Magda killed those poor kids (because she didn't want them to face a world without national socialism). They were fanatical...

Sereny interviewed so many conflicted children of Nazi officials and some of their stories are so sad (and most of them insist on rejecting sympathy because they say they aren't the real victims). Some of the interviews are collected in The German Trauma, well worth a look.

Thanks, I'll have a look in our library for her books.

Alice

I think my own thoughts on this subject are very shallow and ahistorical, because I see it from my own personal point of view as a pseudo-psychological-societal thing. Of course the religious tradition and culture must be most influential in all of this. Anti-semitism is completely separate to misogyny - truly its own horrific beast. In my own mind, I tend to look at misogyny and anti-semitism in particular as "canaries in the coalmine" when thinking about society/ideology. For whatever reason, I have spent some time pondering whether hatred of Jews and hatred of women have parallels. My own complete speculation (read: talking out of my a*se) is whether these could be some commonalities:

• the "mother" aspect: every person is obviously borne of woman although still separate from her. And Christians must acknowledge on some level that their faith is obviously borne from Judaism, even though it still exists as a separate religion. Perhaps a complex relationship is developed because within the pairs mother/child and Christianity/Judaism the entities are related yet fundamentally different.
• the "non-proselytizing" and "special" nature of each group: womanhood is (as we have established) a separate state of being which cannot really be understood by males, and males cannot take on the vital reproductive role of a female. Judaism does not actively encourage conversion, and I believe it is poorly understood by outsiders (like me). Perhaps there is something to the fact that these are both relatively "closed" groups, where the people within them may develop community bonds that feel exclusive to outsiders. I wonder whether the "hidden knowledge" is a factor here as well - we have already discussed issues like chilbirth, silencing women, and women's bodies. Similarly, in my view, Judaism has its own rituals and language. The separateness of the groups, with their own unique features, appears to spark gross obsessional behaviour in the persecutors, which can look fetishistic, invasive, and destructive.
• the tension between dependency and resentment: women's roles have traditionally been ranked below that of men, and females are typically thought of as "dependents" - yet men are raised by women and we would literally have no next generation without women. As you mention in your example Jewish people would often be relegated to roles that were frowned upon, and yet these roles could actually serve important functions for others. It seems as though such situations might engender feelings of irrationality or a strange jealousy, a bizarre drive to rid oneself of the "other" yet on some level know one knows that the "other" is needed.
• the length of time European culture has had to ruminate on these issues: obviously Judaism has been around for longer than Christianity, and females have always co-existed with males.
• the hardiness/tendency for mutation in both forms of discrimination.

So in summary, just hypothetically from my own Euro-centric, uneducated perspective (and I hope not in a way that offends anyone - let me know and I will delete this post) I speculate on whether anti-semitism and misogyny are somehow interlinked because in both examples we have discrimination against an ancient "Other," where that group has commonalities with the in-group and has always lived among them, yet is separate. Where there is (perhaps on a subconscious level) a knowledge that actually we are indebted to this "other," yet get a perverted desire to also assign them our own failings and wreak "vengeance" on them for completely fabricated slights instead of owning up to our own mistakes. Perhaps societally we have developed a tendency to act (in a really very crude analogy) like murderous teenagers who blame their parents for everything. I wonder whether these two targets (women and Jews) have been available to fulfill the role of scapegoat for the longest time in a broader cultural sense. I also wonder whether anti-semitism is/was so much more brutal is because Jewish people have classically been the minority, whereas women have safety in numbers and are more "protected" (females being required for the very continuation of the species).

Apologies for somewhat incoherent nature of this post, it is the result of my own meditation on this subject and I haven't come across too much outside material to help clarify my thoughts.

In my daily life I come across very little antisemitism, probably because there aren't many Jews. I come across more anti-Islam stuff (brewing terrorists)and anti-East European (taking all our jobs).

Aren't many Jews in Fife I meant to add. It's not a very multicultural area. I know of several mosques around but no synagogues. In our GP practice we have several Brethren and Jehovahs witnesses but no Jews I can think of.

Yes, rebecca. I agree that anti-Muslim bigotry and actually a general xenophobia seem to be prevalent.
Heartbreaking and scary.

Sorry, now rather drunk, but the relationship to contemporary immigrants is really interesting and sad. I've mentioned that women turned on each other and I think it's a factor that a marginalised group will 'prove' loyalty by aligning to the powers that be to protect themselves. We saw that in brexit, where established immigrant communities voted leave. The awful thing is that those who actually drive this fear will exploit the division but will never actually make good on promises.

A relative told me she was seeing it in the British Indian community (the idea they'd integrated and others were taking advantage etc). I said that Farage and his ilk didn't really care, they'd exploit them and then throw then under a bus later as they didn't think they were really British.

Ironically, Jewish communities in Europe in the middle ages had most freedom in the Islamic part of southern Spain where there was considerable religious and intellectual freedom.

When I'm sober, is anyone interested in the North Berwick case (Rebecca, you can wave across the Forth!)? They're a favourite of mine...

Oh, and yes, Heresy, I think there is a lot to untangle in that. Also a great deal of knowledge came to the west in the mediaeval period largely through the Arabic discoveries of lost Latin tracts and Jewish Cabbala (not the nonsense Madonna version!). There was a really uneasy relationship with this reality.

anti-Semitism certainly does run very deep in European culture
In Britain there was a massacre of 150 in York and expulsion of Jews.
www.haaretz.com/jewish/1.5205561
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England_(1066%E2%80%931290)#Massacres_at_London_and_York_(1189%E2%80%931190)
Also in Oxford there was a murder and expulsion of the Jews: there's a little monument to it by the Botanical Gardens.
www.oxfordchabad.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/450812/jewish/A-Brief-History-of-Jews-of-Oxford.htm

Posting as a shameless placemark!
This thread is fascinating.

When I'm sober, is anyone interested in the North Berwick case (Rebecca, you can wave across the Forth!)? They're a favourite of mine...

Yes please!

I learn so much from Mumsnet. I want to get all of you in a pub and put the world to rights. Actually I think we might just manage it!!

heresy yes please. I'll wave too, I'm in Fife as well...