From: ljcummings@poppy.uwaterloo.ca ()
Subject: Medieval Witchcraze/Patriarchy
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: 30 Jul 92 17:57:57 GMT

	A several days ago I asked for some help on some short essays
which I was doing for a class.  I got a tremendous response, and
everyone was very helpful, especially in their suggestions on books to
read.  I read pertinant Chapters of Mary Daly's Book Gyn/Ecology as
well, the number of Andrea Dworkin Books around were limited, and I
read only a couple chapters of Woman Hating.
	Both Books were very enlightening, and I plan to do much more
reading before I return them.  Several of you will most likely notice
some of the ideas you sent me reeflected in the following question
answers.  Whilst I did not give each person (there were really too
many) credit, I did include a footnote thanking soc.feminism as a
whole.  However, in the conversion from WordPerfect to Ascii, the
footnotes were stripped.  So the quotes may be slightly harder to
place, as well as a couple other footnotes on other topics.  I was
limited to 500 words each (may have gone over on the second), and this
made me remove substantial portions, such as the freudian stuff, from
both of the answers.  It was hard to know what to keep and what not
to.
	If some points seem rather ... unusually hard to understand,
it is most likely corroborating or agreeing with something that my
teacher had said in class.

Here are my attempts. More advice and commentary of course welcome.

Ljcummings@poppy.uwaterloo.ca
---------

1."  Why has the European witchcraze become a rallying point
for contemporary feminists?

     The European witchcraze was a gynocide of astounding
importance and impact.  Many people believe, and rally around the
point that hundreds of thousands, or as many as nine million,
women may have been murdered for absolutely no good reason.
     This however is a mistaken belief.  Not that the women were
murdered, or in such huge numbers, but that it was for no good
reason.  The men of the inquisitions had very good reasons for
their actions.  They believed themselves to be justified in
murder because of the belief that they were purging the holy
church of evil diseased portions which infected society.  While
of course these are not 'good reasons' in the modern sense, it is
just these reasons which contemporary feminists are using to
rally people to the cause of feminism.
     "It was clear to 'everyone' during the witchcraze that the
witchburners were doing God's will by slaughtering women."(Daly)
For this reason, the witchcraze, as the ensuing paranoia which was
shown in the play Vinegar Tom, spread quite rapidly.  What this
allowed for was the purging of  all the social deviants of the
society.  This meant any who did not fit within the current
social scheme.  As the film viewed in class (The Burning Times)
notes, there was a rise in the female population preceeding this
time.  Explanations suggested for  this range from the death of
men in war, to the supposed greater immunity of women to certain
diseases.  Whatever the cause, a demographic increase in the
female population could only lead to less women finding husbands,
and hence more unmarried, unattached, or otherwise socially
deviant women.  This is a natural breeding ground for those women
to become a threat to the male-dominated society by the
development of their independence.
     Another facet of the growing independence of women which was
reacted against in this period was that of healers and midwives.
For a long time it was women who were trusted in the
administration  of cures and the delivering of children. However
with the rise of  the male medical profession, witchcraft formed
a convenient excuse to eliminate the competition.  It was
declared illegal to practice medicine without have studied it at
university, and since women were excluded from university it
their actions became dangerously illegal.
     As well, it is the belief of the era that women are lesser,
more carnal creatures, as expressed in the famous Malleus
Malificarum which claims "All Witchcraft comes from carnal lust,
which is in women insatiable"  By the projection of their own
repressed lusts and desires onto women men find a cause for their
control.
     It is these points about the European witchcraze which
causes contemporary feminists to use this holocaust of women as a
rallying point.  By the examination not of the whole abominable
act of kill millions of innocent women, but at the social causes
behind their needless death is the motivation for many feminists.
It was not long ago that Andrea Dworkin wrote that "though the
witches are dead, burned alive at the stake, the belief in female
evil is not, the hatred of female carnality is not."
-------------
2.   "At the heart of patriarchy is a deep fear of women's
     sexuality."  Discuss the meanings of the term
     patriarchy (Including how it is used by contemporary
     feminists) and comment on this statement, bringing in
     the notions of good and evil as morally or naturally
     determined.

     The Webster's Dictionary which I own defines patriarchy as a
social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the
clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and
the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line, and a
society organized according to these principles.
     This meaning, while correct, does not reflect the entire
usage in the contemporary english language.  This definition does
not take into consideration the implicit subjugation of the women
of the society.
     The majority of western society and culture has its basis in
judeo-christian origins.  Mary Daly writes in her book
Gyn/Ecology that "Patriarchy is itself the prevailing religion of
the entire planet" thus forcing us to notice that nearly every
society on earth is, or is rooted in, a patriarchal system.
     There is in most people a deep fear of the unknown, and
hence in men a deep fear of women's sexuality.  For centuries
upon centuries men have known little about the desires and wishes
of women, and even less about their reproductive system.  For men
cannot have children, nor fully understand menstruation, and thus
are uncomfortable with these and other sexual aspects of women.
Women's sexuality is so mystifying to men because it is out of
their control.  The sexism of our society has bred the perceived
need for control into most men, and hence they fear women, and
their sexuality.  This need for control is really a projection of
their own loss of control of what Freud termed the Id.  Through
control they satisfy their own inferiority complexes
     In the Judeo-Christian mythos we have evil as influencing
woman, who then corrupts and is the cause of the Fall of man.
This is a patriarchal covenant, for it is God the Father who has
be sinned against, and Eve the woman who is blamed.  If we look
at the concept of evil as naturally determined in the Judeo-
Christian mythos the inferior position of women is thought of as
God (The Father's) Plan.
     However, if we believe this evil to be internal, or morally
shown through one's acts, this introduces the moral
responsibility necessary for the Christian notion of sin.  It is
the social belief that the sexuality of women, as displayed in
the Judeo-Christian Genesis myth, is evil it must be asked
whether it is a moral or natural evil.  If one is to believe the
myth, then the choice to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge
is a moral evil of disobedience (to God the Father), first by
Eve. Yet through the inheritance of Original Sin one must
conclude that the evil must now be a natural, or external evil
since it is impossible for us to have influenced the original
decision.
     Contemporary feminists no longer use the definition of
patriarchy as just a society set up according to these misogynist
principles, they use it as referring to our own society in its
present form, and as prevalent enemy in the war for freedom.  As
many battles have been won by feminists, the hardest has been the
education of people to their own sexism.  Up until recently, men
had little understanding of the female reproductive system, and
assumed that it made women lesser creatures.  This was the
projection of their own fear and uncertainty onto women.  It is
only now that society is attempting to break free of its sexist
shackles that it is more socially acceptable for men not to feel
un-masculine when not in a position of power in relationship to a
female counterpart.
     I write as a man, who is a product of his society, and hence
will never be able to fully understand the position which women
have played in our history.  And yet, I am able to see that the
way society is and has been rooted in patriarchy is wrong.  This
is because of the education that feminists have provided,
education which teaches us to look at ourselves, not to project
on others, our own faults.  As Jung once wrote:
	It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man
	bungles his own life and the lives of others
	yet remains totally incapable of seeing how
	much the whole tragedy originates i himself,
	and how he continually feeds it and keeps it
	going.




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