“The witch-hunt, then, was a war against women; it was a concerted attempt to degrade them, demonize them, and destroy their social power” (186)

Reference: Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York, NY: Autonomedia.

For the first book of my research, Ebru encouraged me to read Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, which focuses specifically on the connection between a developing capitalist society and the need to exterminate women through the witch hunts. Federici chronicles how throughout history, social groups from the heretics (who opposed the corruption of the Church) to “witches” (mostly old, poor women whose “magical” practices were a source of fear in an emerging capitalist society) and Black slaves and Aboriginals (Aboriginals were construed as savage cannibals), were targeted and destroyed for being threats to the development of a patriarchal, capitalist society. Although she discusses other groups such as the heretics and Aboriginals, the main focus of her book is on the witch hunt in Europe, which began in the mid-fifteenth century and ended (for the most part) in the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Since my English-trained brain can’t help itself, I have organized my notes by transcribing the quotations I found most relevant and mixing them in with my own commentary and additional questions and thoughts I had while reading:

In a pre-capitialist society “female serfs were less dependent on their male kin, less differentiated from them physically, socially, and psychologically, and were less subservient to men’s needs than ‘free’ women were to be later in capitalist society” (25)

“The Cathars [a heretical sect] also rejected marriage and procreation and were strict vegetarians, both because they refused to kill animals and because they wished to avoid any food, like eggs and meats, resulting from sexual generation” (35)

It is not difficult to understand why a group such as this one would be a threat to corrupt Church leaders who are encouraging procreation with the belief that population is the key to the labour force. Vegetarianism during this time period is also interesting to me: was the Cathars’ vegetarianism also a sign of revolt, even though the meat industry didn’t really blow up until centuries later as a massive producer of capital?

As a result of “population growth [becoming] a major social concern…any form of contraception (including sodomy, ie. anal sex) came to be associated with heresy” (36)

Isn’t that interesting? At the same time the ruling class is worried about laborers is when any other form of sex that does not lead to procreation is deemed a sin/crime! In the midst of reading this, I actually had two confirmations to attend for my cousin and my little brother. The more I read, the more I felt ashamed for being Catholic. I wonder how many practicing Catholics actually know about their history…

I found it especially fascinating when Federici talked about women in these heretical sects and their roles as equals to men: “One of the most significant aspects of the heretic movement is the high status it assigned to women…in Church women were nothing, but here they were considered equal; they had the same rights as men, and could enjoy a social life and mobility” (38)

Of course, a society where women are equal to men has to be construed as a rebellious and evil regime that needs to be destroyed by the Church, and thus the heretics were tortured and hanged.

“[In the 14th century], gang-rape of proletarian women became a common practice which the perpetrators would carry out openly and loudly at night, in groups of two to fifteen, breaking into victims’ homes, or dragging their victims through the streets without any attempt to hide or disguise themselves” (47)

During this time, rape was okay, as long as it was a poor woman. She’s poor and doesn’t really contribute to the economy, so who needs her? She won’t be missed…

Is that really so different from today? I couldn’t help thinking about the missing and murdered women case and how little attention it received from authorities. This disregard for the poor, while not as blatant as in the above example, is still a profound social problem in a modern context (especially when it comes to female prostitutes).

“…the changes which the advent of capitalism introduced in the social position of women—especially at the proletariat level, whether in Europe or America—were primarily dictated by the search for new sources of labor as well as new forms of regimentation and division of the work-force” (66)

Federici talks about the shift from the availability of communal land for peasants (land that did not belong to anyone but could be shared) in the Middle Ages to enclosures (ie. privatization and commercialization). Exports during this time increased, but peasants starved because they no longer had access to these lands. Women especially suffered during the time of the enclosures: “…as soon as land was privatized and monetary relations began to dominate economic life, they found it more difficult than men to support themselves, being increasingly confined to reproductive labor at the very time when this work was being completely devalued” (74). This of course was exacerbated by the fact that “women were excluded from many waged occupations and, when they worked for a wage, they earned a pittance compared to the average male wage” (75)

Just reading this, I think about how far people often claim we have come. Yes, our technological developments have skyrocketed and we are advancing in that respect at a staggering rate. But socially: how far have we honestly come when we are still paying women less money for the same work, just as they did four centuries ago!

“…but by the mid-16th century they were receiving only one-third of the reduced male wage, and could no longer support themselves by wage-work, neither in agriculture nor in manufacturing, a fact undoubtedly responsible for the massive spread of prostitution in this period” (77)

Hmm. Desperation breeding prostitution: the lack of opportunities for other means of earning a wage had put these women into a situation where they would assumingly die if they could not earn money. Do we still see this desperation today?

“…the physical enclosure operated by land privatization and the hedging of the commons was amplified by a process of social enclosure, the reproduction of workers shifting from the openfield to the home, from the community to the family, from the public space (the common, the church) to the private” (84)

Since women are historically associated with private space, I would assert that this shift had profound implications for women. Even though we are centuries before the establishment of the common housewife, it seems that the common housewife was emerging long before we tend to think.

As a result of a declining population, women (specifically their bodies) were prized for their ability to bear children: “Dismissing the traditional Christian exaltation of chastity, the Reformers valorized marriage, sexuality, and even women because of their reproductive capacity” (87)

I will discuss this in more detail when I get to the part about the witch hunt specifically, but the main lesson I learned through this text is that it seems that women were pretty much just tools to be manipulated to society’s advantage during this time: if society was lacking in one way or another, women were treated as necessary to solve the problem. They were completely dehumanized; used as pawns in these twisted political games. So of course, when populations are lacking, women are going to be placed on a pedestal for their ability to have children.

Were men given any accountability at all for social and political issues?

HOWEVER! This apparent valorization of women also came with increased surveillance of the female body: “…the European government began to impose the severest penalties against contraception, abortion and infanticide…New forms of surveillance were also adopted to ensure that pregnant women did not terminate their pregnancies” (88)

Thus the female body was not her own anymore, and essentially acted as an instrument of the state: “…despite the differences…the female body was turned into an instrument for the reproduction of labor and the expansion of the work-force, treated as a natural breeding-machine, functioning according to rhythms outside of women’s control” (91)

One reason why people targeted and burned “witches” was because of the correlations they made between witches and the killing of children, along with the use of birth control methods.

Federici also makes connections between the regulation of the female body during the time of the witch hunt with present-day: although abortion is legalized in the West, it is still illegal in many other parts of the world (such as Brazil, Mexico and Chile). Even though abortion is legalized here, however, it is still vehemently discouraged by many religious orders and other social and political groups.

When will the female body ever be truly her own? How many more centuries will it take?

“It was even argued that any work that women did at home was ‘non-work’ and was worthless even when done for the market” (92)

“Those who dared to work out of the home, in public space and for the market, were portrayed as sexually aggressive shrews or even as ‘whores’ and ‘witches’” (96)

Women at this time were already being plucked from the public sphere. A stigma was created by men to make it nearly impossible for women to get work outside of the home, essentially forcing them to remain in private spaces only. Since they benefited so much from women’s labour, they wanted to keep women in the home (but of course, not pay them!).

Is it possible to call this slavery?

“…a new ‘sexual contract’…was forged, defining women in terms—mothers, wives, daughters, widows—that hid their status as workers, while giving men free access to women’s bodies, their labor, and the bodies and labor of their children” (97)

Another good connection to geography with regards to public and private space: “Women’s loss of social power was also expressed through a new sexual differentiation of space. In the Mediterranean countries women were expelled not only from many waged jobs but also from the streets, where an unaccompanied woman risked being subjected to ridicule or sexual assault” (100)

Some common stereotypes of women emerging in this period: “…it was established that women were inherently inferior to men—excessively emotional and lusty, unable to govern themselves—and had to be placed under male control” (100-101)

Immense misogyny was present in literature and the arts, where women were depicted as figures to be tamed and disciplined: “But the main female villain was the disobedient wife, who, together with the ‘scold,’ the ‘witch,’ and the ‘whore’ was the favorite target of dramatists, popular writers, and moralists” (101)

”The definition of women as demonic beings, and the atrocious and humiliating practices to which so many of them were subjected left indelible marks in the collective female psyche and in women’s sense of possibilities” (102)

In this example, it is evident that women’s sense of potential and self-worth is being stripped from them. Could this be part of the reason why many women tend to be more marriage- and family-oriented as opposed to career-oriented?

The outcome of the witch hunts: “While at the time of the witch-hunt women had been portrayed as savage beings, mentally weak, unsatiably lusty, rebellious, insubordinate, incapable of self-control, by the 18th century the canon had been reversed. Women were now depicted as passive, asexual beings, more obedient, more moral than men, capable of exerting a positive moral influence on them” (103)

“…no less than the international division of labor, the sexual division of labor was above all a power-relation, a division with the work-forcem while being an immense boost to capital accumulation” (115)

Interestingly, Federici mentions Descartes' argument concerning why humans are superior to non-human animals that might be useful for my discussion of the gendering of vegetarianism: “Nothing, [Descartes] claimed…causes so many errors as the belief that animals have a soul like ours. Thus…he devoted many months to studying the anatomy of animal organs…He even performed many vivisections, likely comforted by his belief that, being mere brutes ‘destitute of Reason,’ the animals he dissected could not feel pain” (148)

I’m wondering also if this need to classify one being from another can also be connected to the binaries that were beginning to be constructed with men and women (public versus private, rational versus irrational, etc.)

One of the main points of Federici’s book: “Feminists were quick to recognize that hundreds of thousands of women could not have been massacred and subjected to the cruelest tortures unless they posed a challenge to the power structure” (164)

“What has not been recognized is that the witch-hunt was one of the most important events in the development of capitalist society and the formation of the modern proletariat” (165)

My jaw dropped on the floor when I came across the following statement:

“…even today, some historians ask up to believe that the witch-hunt was quite reasonable in the context of the contemporary belief structure!” (169)

Are you KIDDING ME? Reasonable? No matter when in time it occurred, mass genocide…especially for social and political power…is never REASONABLE. The fact that some people can look back on history and make excuses for the wrongdoings of the people of previous centuries is precisely why we haven’t really made that much social progress…and precisely why all of the same groups are still being oppressed.

Let’s just keep looking at the past and say “well, that was reasonable at the time.” A hundred years from now, are we going to look at how we treated members of the queer community and say “well, that was reasonable at the time” while we proceed to oppress some other social group?

I apologize for the rant. That comment just got me extremely heated.

“…we must conclude that witch-hunting in Europe was an attack on women’s resistance to the spread of capitalist relations and the power that women  had gained by virtue of their sexuality, their control over reproduction, and their ability to heal” (170)

As a result of women gaining power in a rising patriarchal society, women of course had to be put in their place.

The greatest benefit of the witch-hunt was that because it was seemingly bullshit and (let’s be real here) witches don’t exist, political leaders could accuse virtually ANYONE of being a witch that they wanted to get rid of. Since getting proof for something that is FICTIONAL is impossible, essentially everyone was guilty: “The very vagueness of the charge—the fact that it was impossible to prove it, while at the same time it evoked the maximum of the horror—meant that it could be used to punish any form of protest and to generate suspicion even towards the most ordinary aspects of daily life” (170)

“In England, the witches were usually old women on public assistance or women who survived by going from house to house begging for bits of food or a pot of wine or milk; if they were married, their husbands were day laborers, but more often they were widows and lived alone” (171)

Since these women were perceived as social burdens, being unable to contribute to the new capitalist society while also taking public resources, of course it would be in the best interest of the state to eradicate them. When I think about the missing and murdered women case, I see a big connection: even though the state is not actively going out and murdering prostitutes, we are allowing other people to get away with it with little or no attention to the issue.

“[Women’s] claim to magical power undermined the power of the authorities and the state, giving confidence to the poor in their ability to manipulate the natural and social environment and possibly subvert the constituted order” (174)

Another theme I noticed in those who were targeted in the witch hunts were those who rebelled and advocated for social change. Of course, the ruling class does not need these women giving them problems, so they eliminate the problem by eliminating the women.

Women who were targeted as witches were those who went outside of acceptable social norms of the time: “She [the witch] was also the loose, promiscuous woman—the prostitute or adulteress, and generally, the woman who exercised her sexuality outside the bonds of marriage and procreation…The witch was also the rebel woman who talked back, argued, swore, and did not cry under torture” (184)

“After revealing himself to her, [the devil] would ask her to become his servant, and what would follow then would be a classic example of a master/slave, husband/wife relation. He stamped her with his mark, had sexual intercourse with her and, in some instances, he even changed her name” (187)

I found this quotation fascinating in that it contrasts the relationship between the “witch” and the devil to the relationship between a husband and wife. In this time and even today, the wife plays a servant role similar to that of a “slave,” obviously husbands have sex with their wives, and women still change their last names to their husband’s name.

Hmmm…

Is Federici trying to say that marriages are no different from the relationship that these people accused the devil (an evil being) of having with a “witch”?

“Not only did the witch-hunt sanctify male supremacy, it also instigated men to fear women, and even to look at them as the destroyers of the male sex” (188)

Women, once again, being used as scapegoats and conveniences to men: “Other men took advantage of the climate of suspicion surrounding women to free themselves from unwanted wives and lovers, or to blunt the revenge of women they had raped or seduced” (189)

“…witches were also accused of generating an excessive erotic passion in men, so that it was an easy step for men caught in an illicit affair to claim they had been bewitched, or, for a family wanting to terminate a son’s relation with a a woman whom they did not approve, to accuse the latter of being a witch” (190)

It seems to me that the witch hunts were a way to absolve men from all accountability of their mistakes and wrongdoings. I find it interesting also how the woman is being accused of being too sexual but the man is given no blame in the act: this is still true today when considering the excuses that men STILL MAKE about women dressing too provocatively and “asking for it.”

Even more to add to my gendered vegetarianism topic: “Regardless of age (but not class) in the witch trials, there is a constant identification between female sexuality and bestiality. This was suggested by copulation with the goat-god (one of the representations of the devil)…and the charge that the witches kept a variety of animals…that helped them in their crimes and with whom they entertained a particularly intimate relation” (194)

Could this be connected with the stereotype of women’s intimate relations with animals, or in other words, their connection to nature and sentimentality?

“…not only female sexuality, but femininity as such, was akin to animality” (194)

The reason for the termination of witch-hunting: “What ended the witch-hunt…was the annihilation of the world of the witches and the imposition of the social discipline that the victorious capitalist system required” (202)

“The witch hunts that are presently taking place in Africa or Latin America are rarely reported in Europe and the United States, in the same way as the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, for a long time, were of little interest to historians. Even when they are reported their significance is generally missed, so widespread is the belief that such phenomena belong to a far-gone era and have nothing to do with ‘us’” (239)

Once again, I cannot help thinking about the missing and murdered women case. The horrors of witch hunting and the murdering of prostitutes and other crimes against women and the poor are allowed to continue because these people are social burdens, they do not contribute substantially to capital, and thus will not be missed if removed. The fact that these attitudes still exist in modern society—whether we’ll admit it or not—really disgusts me. When I began reading this book, I was amazed at how far back Federici takes the reader: I recall her even mentioning the 6th century at one point. My brain can hardly process the years separating myself and the people in Federici’s book, and yet the parallels that can be made to the social structures of today closes this vast gap between us in disturbing ways.

Whether we want to admit it or not, people still maintain similar attitudes to those who persecuted “witches” all those hundreds of years ago. I hope with my project I will be able to bring society’s hypocrisies to the forefront to show that we haven’t made as much progress as we continually tell ourselves we have made…

Women in the West may not still be victims of witch-hunting, but we are certainly still victims of the misogynistic ideas that fuelled the fires all those years ago.