Right wing conservatives are having conniptions over Taylor Swift now.
This is the latest in a long list of "satanic panic", culture war deflections away from rampant sexual abuse & misconduct by rapist & pedophile pastors & leaders in the evangelical church.
Taylor Swift is not a "witch", she's just reclaiming that appellate from centuries of misogyny.
Which got me thinking about the whole thing of women, and "witches".
And witch-hunts.
When you think of a witch, what comes to mind?
Pointy hat, green face, straggly hair, crooked teeth, long fingernails on claw-like hands, ragged robes, cackling laugh ... flying on a broomstick?
I think about the way that being called a witch is the worst pejorative we can hurl at a woman we're mad at. Worse than female bovine, or female dog, or female genitalia.
I hadn't even reached puberty the first time I was called a 'witch'.
I asked my father why he only paid my mother $50 per week in child support - a fact I had gleaned from over-hearing a strained phone call between my Mum and her mother. In my autistic logic, if he increased that to $100 per week, then my mother would have $20 per person to feed herself and four young children, instead of only $10. I knew that my Dad, with his fancy house, cars, expensive suits, liquor & dinner parties, could well afford this, and it might help my Mum be less stressed.
My Dad slapped me across the room.
His mistress hissed, "You little WITCH".
And it occurred to me that since then, not a year of my life has gone by without me being called a 'witch' by someone, for some reason.
We were taught that rebellion was as the sin of witchcraft.
And 'rebelling' was any dissent, any questioning, any doubt ... even, and especially, if your pastor was a pedophile and his son in law, being "groomed for leadership", was showing similar behavioural traits.
"Touch not the Lord's anointed" we were told, again and again and again. I think we could have done with a little less of that and perhaps a little more "Let not the Lord's anointed touch the flock".
Witchcraft is "domination, manipulation and control". How that was drummed into me. A woman failing to be sufficiently "submissive" in her marriage (read: dodging abuse) was therefore "operating in the spirit of witchcraft"
We watched and flinched and cowered and fawned, as we saw mighty men of God raised up - men with mansions and sports cars and sneakers and private jets - men who were "anointed of God", men who only had to wave and rows of people fell down under the power of the spirit, men who smiled charmingly into the camera and urged the people on the other side of the screen to give "seed money" to their ministries.
Men of God who used, deceived and exploited their workers and followers, and then led them down rabbit holes of false doctrine and conspiracy theories and worship of corrupt political figures.
Oh but *they* weren't doing "domination, manipulation and control".
It was us.
Women.
Women who wore eye make up.
Women who cut their hair short.
Women who preached.
Women who worked outside the home.
Women who used contraception to space their children.
Women who didn't stay.
Women who fled.
Who committed the sin of "unforgiveness".
Rebellious women. Jezebels.
Witches.
At 17, I sat in an evangelical church that called all the girls in the church up to the altar to repent of "witchcraft" - for "having too much influence over their brothers".
At 25, I sat under teaching at "Ellel Ministries", which claimed that after witchcraft was removed from the penal code of England, the divorce rate shot up.
At 30, I read Backlash, about how evangelical leader Pat Robinson claimed that feminism makes women 'divorce their husbands, kill their babies and practice witchcraft'.
It seemed that successfully avoiding and evading the presumed domination of men, or thwarting the intended agency of men, was the ultimate 'witchcraft'.
I was called a witch because I argued with my husband.
I was called a witch because another person in the church had a "vision from God" of me with a demon's head.
I was called a witch because I am a doula, and I help women to give birth safely, in peace and quiet and respect.
I was called a witch because I help women have water births, because warm water helps soothe the pain of labour contractions ... but someone had "revelation" that using water is "witchcraft"
I was called a witch because I am a trained herbalist with a degree in Western Herbal Medicine, and I know herbs.
I was called a witch because I said gender hierarchy doctrine of "male headship" is a false doctrine used to oppress women.
I was called a witch because I wouldn't stay quiet about the rampant clergy sexual abuse perpetrated throughout the evangelical church - by the very men who lectured us on submission, and morality, from their lofty pulpits.
I was called a witch because I would not shut up, sit down, back off, go away, go home, or just not be.
And after a while, it does make you wonder ... am I actually a witch???
And I wondered if those million or so women, back in the day, who were tortured and executed as 'witches' ... really WERE witches
or if they were just women, like me
Women with the instinct to heal and comfort, tend and care, who gathered herbs and roots and bark and weeds and berries and mushrooms, and knew what to do with them.
Women who knew how to use Queen Anne's lace to prevent a pregnancy and Mugwort to induce menstruation after a missed period.
Women who knew about the moon and menstruation and fertile mucous and when to insert the moss.
Women who knew how to love and encourage and hold other women in the throes of childbirth, and how to reduce the risk of deadly haemorrhage.
Women who could, and did, reduce the suffering and oppression of fellow women.
Women who knew how to ease human suffering and help their loved ones feel better.
But the Hammer of Witches said, "If a woman DARE to cure, without having studied, she is a witch and must die."
But as Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English pointed out, in "Witches, Midwives & Nurses" ...
"... there wasn't any way for a woman to study".
Well, I guess that's one way of establishing medical monopoly.
Kill the competition.
Domination.
Think of the scary witches of your childhood nightmares.
How is it that we came to be afraid of the women who were witches ... instead of the men who burned them alive?
Yes, I read that saying too.
And this one:
"We are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn".
I come from a long line of godly, upright women of faith.
We don't have anything to do with the Occult, magic, casting spells or pagan rituals.
We know the Word.
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
We are alive.
We are GOOD girls.
Good women.
Goodwives
Goody-two-shoes
Godsibs.
Who must not gossip.
But there is an echo in my bones.
And I think there still is, in many women, who are so very careful
To not be 'too controlling'
Or some godly, threatened man might say, "I smell the vapours of hell on you" to you, too - like the priest said to Claire Fraser.
And I think about those ancient witches
Woken in the middle of the night to flaming torches and shouted accusations and heavy boots and dragged off to a dungeon somewhere.
Her ugly green face - the bruising of repeated beatings
Her crooked nose - broken and bashed
Her straggly hair and ragged clothes - from weeks or months trapped in a a place with no sunlight, and no chance to wash
Her crooked leer - because they knocked out her teeth
Her clawed hands - ruined from torture
Her spindly legs - from starvation
Her eldritch laugh - because she's borderline insane, hysterical with terror.
And the broom? Because women were always, always, always cleaning.
And I think they were women just like me.
Because I know the evidence now is just as spurious as the evidence was back then.
I don't know who wrote the following.
But I do know women are still
scared.
“Each year they parade her about, The traditional Halloween witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, a toothless mouth beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting form. A bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.
Most think this is abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature, I disagree, I believe this to be how witches were really seen.
Consider that most witches were women, were abducted in the night and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under secrecy of darkness and presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.
Few, if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to her, and to give names or say whatever would stop the questions.
Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed witch. As the witch was paraded through the town, in route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various, horrible ways, all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body.
The jeering crowds viewed the result of hours of torture. The face, bruised and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth, and torn gums that leer beneath a battered disfigured nose.
The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers locked like cropping claws to steady her broken body.
All semblance of humanity gone. This was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a witch.
I revere this Halloween Witch and hold her sacred. I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity.
Each year I shed tears of respect.”
- Author unknown
