In Defence of Witches: Why women are still on trial

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A stubborn misogyny, which still tints the way our societies look at single women, childless women, aging women, or quite simply, free women .

In Defence of Witches by Mona Chollet, Sophie R Lewis In Defence of Witches by Mona Chollet, Sophie R Lewis

Witchcraft and magic are very in vogue now and often absorbed into many self-improvement concepts of empowerment, though, as she observes, ‘ capitalism is always engaged in selling back to us in product form all that it has first destroyed. This is a wonderful book that does an excellent job of combining a look at witchcraft and witch-hunts with feminist and social theories in a really engaging way. There is so much more to it than that, but to unravel all that is spoken in these pages is difficult. Il n'y parle pas "que" de sorcières, mais il en fait le point de départ de réflexions toutes intéressantes et liées par la même oppression systémique contre les femmes.

This ties into Chollet’s next chapter on aging and how much aging women are criticized has a lot more to do with fertility than age. Whether selling grimoires on Etsy, posting photos of their crystal-adorned altar on Instagram or gathering to cast spells on Donald Trump, witches are everywhere.

In Defence of Witches: Why Women Are Still on [PDF] [EPUB] In Defence of Witches: Why Women Are Still on

This extends from the witch-hunts of the 16th century to more current situations such as the anti-abortion laws the US faces, to the way in which women enter a “villain era”, which is really just self-love. The villainisation of women is also seen in far more subtle ways, permeating into how women view themselves. I find it disingenuous that many of the opponents to reproductive rights in the US are similarly opposed to improvements in childcare, maternity leave or general healthcare, which does lead to disenfranchisement because ‘ the rights to contraception and abortion [have been] co-opted to reinforce the norms of “good” mothering’. As one interviewee in Charlotte Debest’s book, Le choix d’une vie sans enfant, explained, “in male culture there is no Princess Charming, no fabulous wedding with glorious suits. A journalist who, in the early 1970s, became an ardent defender of women’s rights, Gloria Steinem has always offered her critics a good run for their money.The parts about women hating marriage, fearing children, but giving in because of societal pressure (among other things) therefore becoming a husk of their former selves, aw a story as old as time. Women who disrupted the patriarchal structure by forgoing married life or children were viewed with contempt, labelled as witches, and excluded from society. Celui qui m'a vraiment donné le courage de me revendiquer comme telle, même si je n'adhère pas forcément à l'ésotérisme ambiant, même si je ne suis pas célibataire, même si je n'ai pas envie de rester sans enfant.

In Defence of Witches: The women who dared to simply exist In Defence of Witches: The women who dared to simply exist

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).Whilst it’s great to see women reclaim the villains of old, should we consider it radical for women to simply exist? In fact, the 1500s labelled witchcraft and abortion as a “crimen exceptum”, a crime so exceptional and wicked that it does not need regular proof or judicial procedures before prosecution. I was thrilled to find Chollet quoted Jeanette Winterson, an absolute favorite, on how being queer and not tied down by children or traditional marriage was freedom that helped her career.

In Defense of Witches - Macmillan In Defense of Witches - Macmillan

Here was a witch who made the baddies “bite the dust” and “offered the promise of revenge over any adversary who under-estimated you”. Sociologist Érika Flahault shows how this skepticism has been expressed in France since the appearance, in the early twentieth century, of single women living alone—where they would once have been “taken in by relations, by their extended family or local community in almost every case. Nie w każdym z poruszonych tematów mogłybyśmy się zgodzić, ale za to przy zdecydowanej większości przybijałybyśmy sobie z wielkim hukiem żółwiki.Witches are universally seen as ugly and terrifying, but there is no universal trope which says that all warlocks or wizards are evil. Ji svarsto: pykstame ant moterų, kai jos nusprendžia senti, pykstame ir tada, kai daro viską, kad tik senėjimą sustabdytų. She discusses how the women who exist outside of the boundaries of patriarchal control are deemed to be villainous and morally corrupt.