listen i have no real attachment to this phrase but if you can’t understand that it’s a fucking metaphor you’re the dumb one
there is a long history in feminism of association with the witch as a powerful outsider, it is not and has never meant to be wholly historically accurate more in the sense of the way women have been treated when they dared to step outside their roles, that phrase means the opposite of what you’re implying it means patriarchy will never be able to murder and subdue every woman who fights against it, this is a pretty basic sentiment
but as usual you people seem to think women are too fucking stupid to use a metaphor and chomp at the bit to explain to us why we are wrong,, no one uses it thinks witches are real or anyone murdered for witchcraft deserved it like what are you actually talking about? go outside, for $1 name a woman
remember according to tumblr dot edu no women have EVER faced misogyny, a fake form of oppression that is thousand of years old and exists globally because it makes them feel bad about their favourite white man :(
Mmkay. This post really sorta pissed me off. Cooled down a little. But it still sorta rubs me the wrong way.
And the part that’s bothering me is the sort of casual dismissal that the ONLY factor in the witch trials was gender.
Like 1. Some basic comprehension would tell you that that reblog point isn’t talking about women of the past not experiencing patriarchy.
Thats stupid. Misogyny was very much a key factor in the witch trials. Automatically assuming that’s what that statement in the cap is saying is…such an awful and bad faith take imo. (I’m not going to say “no one would ever argue that take” because I’m aware that people *have* tried to argue that but. Automatically assuming *that* is what someone is trying to say is…yeah.)
Considering they may be talking about a different facet of oppression is much more likely and considering how much of the research into the various witch trials across the world has largely only considered gender, yes that’s going to be our primary gut instinct when talking about a witch trial.
However, more recently we’ve been looking at how race and ethnicity may have a played a part in witch trials. Which obviously misogyny has clearly had an impact. But…that’s not the only form of oppression and saying that’s the only one that could be the focus of this statement and someone’s issue with it…bothers me. For obvious reasons.
If we take the sort of era that comes to mind when USAmericans (which is primarily where I personally have seen this slogan the most, which is to say, white USAmerican women which I realize is very US centrist of me) talk about witch trials— those were fueled by fear. Particularly fear of the Other.
And. As you can imagine, the Other often includes slaves and indigenous peoples (ie the racial aspect)
So yes. I completely understand that it is a metaphor and a general statement that there are too many of us but something something I wish we could view things with a little nuance as to why some people may hate the phrase. It really bugs the fuck out of me personally as a person of color because it feels like a very white feminist sort of take in a society where white feminism dominates the feminist movement as a whole.
So like if we are being pedantic and being “pedantic correctly” let’s acknowledge that race and ethnicity were also factors here. Yes, even in Europe where racism isn’t exactly the same as USAmerica.
Also something something someone having a view different than your own doesn’t automatically make them stupid or wrong.
ETA: I would also like to point out that within Western society, there’s a reason why a witch in a lot of media, mirrors the antisemitic caricatures of Jews.
OP, while I’m sure a lot of people use it metaphorically, I’d be a lot more inclined to agree that (my fellow) feminists ~don’t need to be educated about this topic~ or that it’s just a phrase and not indicative of anything in particular if there wasn’t a decades-long fairly extensive cottage industry of pseudohistory of witches and witch trials originating out of neopagan-feminist circles. But there is. Like. Have you heard of The Burning Times? Bc I regret to say that shit is still with us way later than it should’ve been. There are a lot of people, especially in witchy/spiritual circles who very much do believe that the people who were executed were killed for being actual pagan witches, and there are a lot of my fellow feminists who I’ve heard parrot other common myths (accused witches were all midwives, or healers, or they were doing secret abortions/ye olde birth control, or there was otherwise something “rebellious” and anti-patriarchal that they did and were being punished for).
The “not your oppression” stuff is coming from the fact that while it was absolutely misogyny at the root (in most places anyways, barring the countries where men were primary targets because beliefs about what a witch was differed), not every woman was accused or suspected of being a witch, and ostracized women (especially ones who were multiply-marginalized—elderly, disabled, non-Christian, non-white, widowed, etc) in communities were thrown under the bus by larger groups of people who often included women, although patriarchal institutions were responsible for the vast majority* of trials executions. The person right above me is absolutely correct in pointing out that the demography of who uses the phrase does skew white and American/British. To be a woman is to be marginalized, yes, but it is not inherently to be pushed out of one’s own community. Men haven’t actually figured out a way to get by without us.
The point the second person is making is that a lot of the folks saying the slogan are more likely descendants of bystanders—who alsosuffered under patriarchy and misogyny, but not specifically due to being implicated by their community or church in a misogynistic, antisemitic conspiracy theory positing a secret satanic cult performing underground rituals to increase the devil’s power in the world before the Second Coming. That is in my opinion a bit of an issue because I think keeping in mind that it’s entirely possible for women who live under a patriarchal society to be part of a collective which ostracizes and harms “bad” women IS a key part of feminist understanding of how the world works, any feminism (I’m going to assume you’ve heard of Right Wing Women). For every town with a “witch” there could be dozens of good wives and good mothers and good daughters and good sisters, or wives and mothers and sisters who weren’t good, but weren’t so bad (or frankly just unlucky) that someone claimed Satan is involved. And good wives and mothers and sisters were still oppressed under patriarchy, often violently, and may even die as a result (child-related mortality, eg) but they were not put to death by the state because of it.
Someone aligning themself with the feminist movement doesn’t make them immune to conspiracy theories, or to practicing ostracism, or to ganging up on other women (the essay Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood by Jo Freeman talked about this inside feminist communities in 1976). There are in fact both historically and presently whole subsets of feminism that are pretty exclusively focused on ostracizing specific groups of multiply-marginalized women (homophobic feminists/“lavender menace” feminists; TERFs—JKR is really big into calling herself a persecuted witch, for one, and it’s because she’s dedicated her life to trying to destroy the rights of women with less power than her!). Consider: maybe we’re the daughters of the witches patriarchal institutions couldn’t burn, but we could be the daughters of the bystander, the “witness”, the accuser. I think that matters, actually.
Why am I going on? For the same reason I’ve studied witchcraft persecutions: because I’m a feminist and I care about women’s history and institutional and structural misogyny and how it actually works, and feminist pseudohistories and misinformation about this topic absolutely kill me because of what it does to historical victims of trials, who don’t need to have been underground radicals or rabble-rousers or 16th-century JANE to get killed. They don’t need to have been secret heroes or role models or anything else to not have deserved death. And I care way more about who they were than who anyone else wants them to be.
Also fwiw I would like to point out that despite your generalized complaints around associating the phrase with TERFs being a bad thing to do, the notes of this post are crawling with those people (I counted bc I’m bored and stopped when I hit 40 people who self-describe as such or used equivalent terminology), who are agreeing that The Genderists and TRAs™️ are hurting women by uh, talking about history, and also harassing people on the original post for being trans.
*There are some exceptions of noblewomen kicking off accusations/persecutions; Elizabeth I was the person who reinstated the English Witchcraft Act; etc.
