Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror & Capitalism

[Canadian_watcher]

But uh... more importantly (?) this thread is one of the most fascinating I've read in a lil' spell. I am looking forward to receiving Federici's book and I hugely appreciate all the peripheral and additional contributions. I get an endorphin high from being forced to reconsider what I already "know" and this material turns my conception of the witch hunts inside out.

Yes, thanks AD for posting the reviews.. I'm as excited as the Wombat is to read the book.

[Canadian_watcher]

No way. I simply do not believe that. I really don't. In fact, I would simply chalk it up to women flipping out over nothing. Perhaps, even a flirtatious prank. I absolutely do not believe Rush has a misogynistic bone in them. No fucking way.

yeah, the guy who beat me and two other women after me was a really nice fella too. just ask anyone who he didn't sleep with.

[Plutonia]

No way. I simply do not believe that. I really don't. In fact, I would simply chalk it up to women flipping out over nothing. Perhaps, even a flirtatious prank. I absolutely do not believe Rush has a misogynistic bone in them. No fucking way.

Do you have a link to that and the years in which it happened?

As far as I know, the other girls haven't backed up Cherie's version - does that help?

Here ya go- go to town!

[seemslikeadream]

Got me so blind I can't see
That she's a black magic woman
She's tryin' to make a devil out of me

[DevilYouKnow]

That's an interesting re-interpretation of the witchhunts, considering adding her book to my Amazon basket.

Interesting also about the land enclosures and the emergence of an underclass of vagabonds from former serfs evicted from the confiscated land. I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, set in the late 17th century, where this transnational class of vagabonds figures prominently, but not much background is given as to its historical origin.

Stephen Morgan, I didn't know there existed witchhunt revisionism... "interesting" take you have there.

[LilyPatToo]

Just a note: folks interested in contemporary accounts of witchcraft trials might want to bookmark The University of Manchester's John Rylands Center for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care and check back to see a 350 year old Puritan's notebook when their unfortunate current image problems are resolved. They've scanned the entire handwritten book of Nehemiah Wallington, an English Puritan, and put it up online. There's one scan at the end of an MSNBC article here.

LilyPat

[Stephen Morgan]

I'll get right on that. Why don't you dig me up a couple dozen examples of specific men who would be rich and happy right now if it weren't for a specific woman getting a specific thing that was rightfully his.

If I'd ever made such a claim I would, of course, endeavour to provide some evidence.

Finally, morgan. I was almost going to give answers after your first post, about which sex has actually been targeted by eugenics in the real world,

I refer you to Yugoslavia, Rwanda, etc., where men were targeted for extermination so as to deprive the enemy of potential combatants. Also, the article we're talking about, of course. Gendercide, it's called. Men are the majority of the victims.

not to mention rape and violence

I suggest you go and look at some crime statistics, dearie.

Actually, I know you're too hidebound in your insistence on men being villainous and women being poor put upon little darlings, so here's a start for you:



Of course, the fact that men are the vast majority of victims of violent crime shouldn't be allow to distract from the real truth that women are in some ephemeral and conveniently evidence free way the REAL victims of all the violence in the world.

and imputation of objecthood without consciousness or sheer immutable otherness (as in many a movie poster),

Gibberish.

and to have a laugh at how someone says goddess and your first thought is some obscure SS unit (apparently not run by women).

Obscure to the mainstream, but I would expect better here.

But then came the part about how a "mass revolutionary movement" is either male or female, really obviating any need. Just how does that work? No, don't bother. Please.

No, I won't leave you in ignorance. The movement is a movement, they don't have sexes. Pay attention. Men are more rebelliously inclined, hence such movements are more likely to form in an environment of large majority-male organisations such as traditional trade unions.

Capiche, darl?

The example you picked as the "only" "successful" "female" movement is a marvelous example of tunnel vision and projection. Maybe marvelous is not the word. At any rate, unique. Do let us know if you can think of any "successful female" one-party dictatorships that massacred millions of people. You may have a case ready to explain why the Nazis or some such were actually "female.".

They were male, of course. My point is basically that Nazis and the Trade Union Congress are similar, but one is evil and the other good. A fist is a fist, whether hitting a murderous skin-head or a harmless child. So these organisations provide a collective force which can be used for good or evil.

[Stephen Morgan]

Firstly, apologises for tardiness, busy day.

Willow, think of it as useful - I need a good claw-sharpening once in a while.

I suppose I'll get more practice at being long suffering as I try to reason with people intend on libelling me.

Triangle Shirtwaist




no vote

Look ma, no votes! Now, what's your point?

The witch trials were a minor footnote at most, a few hundred people killed over several centuries, barely enough to make a ripple.

The venerable Wikipedia says otherwise.

Current scholarly estimates of the number of people executed for witchcraft vary between about 40,000 and 100,000. The total number of witch trials in Europe which are known for certain to have ended in executions is around 12,000.

I was talking exclusively about England, but I admit to not having looked up the exact number of trials beforehand, unlike the exact number of English witch burnings, which at 2 is easy to remember.

Nonetheless, my point is upheld, 12,000 executions over an entire continent over half a milleniumis meagre pickings for the grim reaper compared to many contemporary battles, let alone plagues and famines. Even compared to executions for other crimes, in fact. It's wholly inadequate to form a psychological warfare campaign on behalf of capitalists intent on the enslavement of the female sex.

It's no where near as bad as it used to be.

And might I observe that the sky is nowhere near as purple with green polka-dots as it used to be?

And we try to keep an eye out for flagrant violations of the posting rules pertaining to gender, while allowing for discussion of the issues here.

In this particular case, I think Stephen has a few valid points

Golly. I suppose being the only one in the thread to present any facts may have been an advantage after all.

interspersed between the more flagrantly repellant fodder.

Could I be so bold as the ask for examples?

The gender assignment of persons executed in the witch hunts is realistically unknown. Certainly during the Massachusetts episode, men were executed, tortured and imprisoned right alongside the women.

Colin Wilson makes a convincing case for the Salem witch-trials having been partly legitimate, with at least some of the accused guilty of witchcraft. The Salem trials were stopped, of course, when the Governor's wife was accused and he decided to immediately forbid any more prosecutions.

My belief is that men and women were more or less equally involved in the witch-cult, maybe a small-to-moderate female majority, given the numbers of convictions. However as the organisation existed and exists in secret official membership policies probably vary from place to place, time to time and so on. And are difficult to get your hands on.

The standard as enforced (ehem) is that the statements have to be so over the top flagrant when it comes to gender that it's rather pointless to even post the rule. It has long been acknowledged that we have an over-indulgent host. I wouldn't trade that for the downsides of other management styles, I just wish the line around the woman-haters was bumped ever so slightly to the more restrictive side, because this shit is over the top, for fuck's sake.

I'm still not entirely sure which shit specifically you think to be over the top. I mean, I can see how Canadian_watcher, with her warped view of accused witches in the historical period as being victims of a patriarchal conspiracy could consider someone clearly siding against the witches to be anti-female, wrong though she may be, but I fail to see any other grounds this thread may have produced for labelling me in any way anti-female.

Anyway, I don't want you banned, no matter how much you may preach intolerance for those you disagree with, no matter how much you may crow over the lack of a proper educational provision for men as in the other thread, and so on.

Perhaps you would like an ostrakos system introduced, an ostracism whereby if a petition large enough can be established people will be banished as in ancient Athens?

I have a wild impulse to appeal to Mrs. Wells somehow.

I didn't know such a person existed. Still, I'm sure our illustrious host would choose only the most liberal-minded and warm-hearted of women who would both favour free speech and keep a level-head when faced with opinions she disagrees with, assuming for a moment that I were to have any.

I think you're bending over to make points for morgan that he really isn't that concerned with. The topic is just another convenient vehicle with which he can chauffeur his hate, IMO.

All points are important to me, although I'm not sure which ones barracuda is sympathetic to, as I say above.

So Jeff, you want this to be a little cafe society, that's fine, but do you really want keep all the ladies out?

I certainly don't, I've said it before and I've said it again, I have no desire to lessen your participation in this board. Nonetheless, I can't read an article like the OP, containing so many misleading statements, such a warped view of history (which is something of a passion of mine) and just say "Hey, let it be daddio. C'est la vie." Perhaps it's a psychological disease I have, but I am compelled to repudiate a silent acquiescence to the dishonesty. And obviously, when I see what I consider to be hate speech towards men I must respond, as in the other thread, as you do to what you consider hate speech towards women.

Willow, there are a lot of man haters here too. Some have personally hurt my feelings with some of the most awful insults an obsessive, emotional man can get. But "as a man" you don't see me getting all worked up over it, because there's nothing to get worked up over. That's where my "man" comes in.

Yeah, feelings, I think I've got some of those. Sleepy. Apprehensive. Sneezy. Dread, I have that one quite often. I don't get too upset about most insults, but the misrepresentation of me as a woman-hater is quite upsetting. It'd be alright if I hated women, wouldn't mind then, but that's not the case. It seems that anything I say which one of the local feminist contingent disagree with, or simply finds distasteful, like the simple fact that only two women were burned in England which makes woman-burning an unlikely ploy to drive a capitalist usurpation of traditional female roles, gets twisted into me saying "women are all evil".

We're simply denizens of this joint, RI, and all of us will come to the emotional aid of the others and also tell them to fuck off. I've had miniature arguments with both you and Stephen. We have more in common than we realize within the heat of these "battles". We all good muthafucks!

And argumentative, all good argumentative muthafucks.

[barracuda]

It's no where near as bad as it used to be.

And might I observe that the sky is nowhere near as purple with green polka-dots as it used to be?

Well, we used to have GM Citizen, FourthBase, and a few others around with their own style of male-victimhood. GM eventually got bored, I think, and 4B had a nervous breakdown as I recall. But I probably exaggerated when I said "no where near as bad". It's just a little better, really.

Golly. I suppose being the only one in the thread to present any facts may have been an advantage after all.

It helps in any discussion, I think.

Could I be so bold as the ask for examples?

Yes, you may be so bold.

Colin Wilson makes a convincing case for the Salem witch-trials having been partly legitimate, with at least some of the accused guilty of witchcraft. The Salem trials were stopped, of course, when the Governor's wife was accused and he decided to immediately forbid any more prosecutions.

I blame Cotton Mather and Tituba for just about the whole affair. They should have gotten together and ironed it out between 'em.

[Stephen Morgan]

Stephen Morgan, I didn't know there existed witchhunt revisionism... "interesting" take you have there.

If you compare me to a holocaust revisionist again I will be forced to call you a poopy-head. Be warned.

Also, a revisionist must wish to revise history. IN this case that would be the OP, not me. I say only two witches were burned in England, due to our humane policy (although this was short-drop hanging back then, so not as human as the later long-drop hanging introduced after the legalisation of witchcraft) of hanging witches in stead and our low level of witch convictions, this is accepted fact. Similarly that there were not hundreds of thousands of executions, this is fact. That men were a large minority of the witches prosecuted, that heretics were mostly men and really were burned, all these are facts. Unlike the mad claims in the OP about hundreds of thousands of executions, about thousand of burnings contributing to the rise of capitalism, and so on.

Admittedly, my stand on the witches actually being witches rather than old hags targetted by yokels for persecution due to their senility and affection for dark cats is unorthodox. That's hyperbole, incidentally, obviously as the historical establishment believes a large minority of accused witches to be men they can't have been targeted for being hags. I merely seek to denigrate the orthodox mechanistic perspective of witches being uniformly innocent victims by characaturing it.

I therefore expect an apology for this slur on my character.

[Stephen Morgan]

Well, we used to have GM Citizen, FourthBase, and a few others around with their own style of male-victimhood. GM eventually got bored, I think, and 4B had a nervous breakdown as I recall. But I probably exaggerated when I said "no where near as bad". It's just a little better, really.

I definitely remember not being on the same side as 4b. And I thought GM was revealed by compared2what to be some sort of ARG sock puppet monster, although I didn't really follow all that. 4b, though, definitely wasn't on my side, he was very cruel to me.

Anyway, my point is that this board has never been in any way anti-female. Rather, the nature of the board's clientele can be seen by the frequent reaction to my posts in threads like this, a rush to pile on and reinforce each other in the vitriolic denunciation of the blasphemer. That's me, if my metaphor got away from you.

It helps in any discussion, I think.

Well, morally, but it doesn't seem to have done me any good in a more pragmatic sense.

Yes, you may be so bold.

Begging your pardon, sir, but may I have examples, most illustrious interlocutor, of my most shameful and degenerate statements?

I blame Cotton Mather and Tituba for just about the whole affair. They should have gotten together and ironed it out between 'em.

A bit of an inter-racial gang bang might have made America a better place from then till now. And I use gang-bang in the colloquial sense, not the sense of being a mass rape, just to be clear.

Although I remember an issue of Paranoia magazine, one of the last ones before it shut down, about a white man in the area putting together an army of ghosts, witches and armed Injuns. Before Salem. Hmm. Must look that up, actually. Got killed by His Majesty's armed forces in the end, I think. I've always thought that America, a name I believe Lovecraft links to the ancient pagan deity Amaracu, is inherently evil, that anyone setting foot there should abandon all hope and save his soul by fleeing into the safety of death. Canada too. The natives probably got use to it, like the white man was used to alcohol, but when the white man got to the evil land without the necessary psychological protection, the same thing happened as happened to drunken red indians, but without the relaxing effects of alcohol. Just an idea, though, not the sort of thing you base everyday RL judgements on.

[norton ash]

Canada too. The natives probably got use to it, like the white man was used to alcohol, but when the white man got to the evil land without the necessary psychological protection, the same thing happened as happened to drunken red indians, but without the relaxing effects of alcohol. Just an idea, though, not the sort of thing you base everyday RL judgements on.

Just a bad idea, that one. I'm appreciating your side of the debate, btw, but your metaphor above is effectively offensive to everyone.

[Stephen Morgan]

Canada too. The natives probably got use to it, like the white man was used to alcohol, but when the white man got to the evil land without the necessary psychological protection, the same thing happened as happened to drunken red indians, but without the relaxing effects of alcohol. Just an idea, though, not the sort of thing you base everyday RL judgements on.

Just a bad idea, that one. I'm appreciating your side of the debate, btw, but your metaphor above is effectively offensive to everyone.

What metaphor? Anyway, I've probably been reading too much Lovecraft. Messes with your mind a bit. That and not having any sleep.

[norton ash]

your metaphor?

That the settlers were unprepared for the ancient evil of North America like the 'drunken red indians' were unprepared for alcohol. That the settlers couldn't enjoy the psychic terror quite as much as we might have, had it been more like the 'relaxing effects of alcohol' experience those lucky red indians got.

Too many people in jail tonight in this frozen place of dead roads, of all colours, thanks to the relaxing effects of generations of alcohol. Lots of little bones in the ground too. Rising screams in black, tangled winter woods and fields of ice that Lovecraft never heard.

I've always thought that America, a name I believe Lovecraft links to the ancient pagan deity Amaracu, is inherently evil, that anyone setting foot there should abandon all hope and save his soul by fleeing into the safety of death. Canada too.

Or we could just relax and have a drink. There's a Lovecraftian scene very likely going on under a bridge a few blocks from here. I'll introduce you.

[undead]