Suzanne Harrington: Witches, 'sluts' and feminists — and why we need them
"In 1486, a fun-sounding German Catholic, Heinrich Kramer, published his witch-hunter manual, Malleus Maleficarum — which sounds a lot like an Angelina Jolie role — in which he declared “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust which in women is insatiable”. Well, yes."
It's Halloween week! Like patisserie week, but with witches. What better time to consider my hastily cobbled together theory that men in the Middle Ages accused women of being witches — and murdered 60,000 of them — because of clitoris envy. Did they though? Or have I just totally made that up?
No, really. Were men so jealous of women’s ability to come and come again — and again and again — that they rounded us up, labelled us witches, and accused us of having sex with the devil? Or imps or other fictional beings? It hardly mattered.
What mattered was instilling fear and control. And although this clitoris envy theory is based on absolutely zero evidence, and only occurred to me this morning, it seems as plausible as any other reason for the persecution of “witches”.
In her book , anthropologist Emma Quilty takes us on a trip through contemporary witchcraft and witchery, asking “Why has #WitchTok taken off? Is it a flow-on effect of the #MeToo movement? Or something else? Why does the world need witches now? Why does the world need witchy feminists?”
Same reason we have always needed witchy feminists.
In 1486, a fun-sounding German Catholic, Heinrich Kramer, published his witch-hunter manual, Malleus Maleficarum — which sounds a lot like an Angelina Jolie role — in which he declared “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust which in women is insatiable”. Well, yes.
When men need time to recover from their petite mort, women can keep going — did this physiological superpower drive Heinrich to distraction?
Was his persecution of “witches” based on his inability to satisfy the insatiable?
We’ll never know, because he’s been dead for half a millennium, but the idea of men being driven to murderous rage by women’s sexuality has hardly gone away, has it?
Witchcraft historian Malcolm Gaskill describes Heinrich as a “superstitious psychopath”. Today, would he be an incel? A high-ranking Republican?
In her 2017 book , author Kristin Sollee argues that the female-focused term of abuse “slut” is just a 21st century word for the female-focused term of abuse “witch”.
And that women labelled “witches” were the first feminists — by necessity. Just as being labelled “witch” in past centuries resulted in ostracism, abuse, and possible death, being labelled “slut” today still holds immense pejorative power, even in post-feminist societies.
Hence the efforts made by women to reclaim the term, to transform it into a positive affirmation. Sluts are the new witches. Has anything really changed?
In 1683, nine years before the Salem Witch Trials, in which ordinary women were tortured and murdered by their communities, a middle aged, half-starving English immigrant called Mary Webster was dragged from her house and hanged from a tree for being a “witch”. She survived, somehow. The law prevented Mary from being hanged again.
Her ancestor, Margaret Atwood, wrote a poem about her, Half-Hanged Mary: “Before I was not a witch. But I am one now.”
Atwood imagines her ancestor taking back her power, untouchable within her woman-hating community. The Handmaid’s Tale is dedicated to her.
Which is why the supermarket sexy witch costume, in which so many of us will be dressing up on Friday — all black nylon, applique bats, purple lace, and flashes of fishnet — would surely make the ghost of Mary Webster rise from her Massachusetts grave and bludgeon us all with her broomstick.
But the real question is this: What would Half-Hanged Mary make of 2025’s Maga Gilead?
