In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial

by Mona Chollet

Every possible decision modern women make or role they occupy, outside of the most rigorous and regressive, can be tied back to the very symptoms of witchcraft: refusal of motherhood, rejection of marriage, ignoring traditional beauty standards, bodily and sexual autonomy, homosexuality, aging, anger, even a general sense of self-determination.

What could have once gotten a woman killed is now available for purchase at Urban Outfitters. (Within limits, of course. You can sell her crystals but refuse to pay her fair wages.)

The witch embodies woman free of all domination, all limitation; she is an ideal to aim for; she shows us the way.

“if the evil of women did not in fact exist—not to mention their acts of sorcery—the world would remain unburdened of countless dangers.”

The Malleus Malleficarum confirms that witches have the power to make men’s genitals disappear and that they keep whole collections of them in chests or in birds’ nests, where they go on desperately wiggling (although no such collection has ever been found).

“When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women,’ we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity.”

A pro-birth policy is about wielding power, not about care for humanity.

There are women who are born to be mothers. There are women who are born to be aunties. And there are women who should not be allowed to be within ten feet of a child. It is very important that you figure out which one of those camps you belong in, because tragedy and sorrow results [sic] from ending up in the wrong category.