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

by Mona Chollet

The term “biological clock” was first used to refer to women’s fertility in 1978, in a Washington Post article titled “The Clock is Ticking for the Career Woman.”64 In other words, this expression was an early harbinger of the imminent anti-feminist backlash, and its dazzlingly successful integration into the female anatomy makes it a unique phenomenon in the history of evolution—it would have given Darwin pause for thought. Since women’s bodies give them the option of carrying a child, of course Nature would prefer that women also change the resulting infant’s nappies, once born, that they attend all meetings with pediatricians and, while we’re on the subject, that they mop the kitchen floor, do the washing-up and remember to buy loo roll for the next twenty-five years. This is known as “maternal instinct.” Yes, Nature orders precisely this, and not, for example, that, in order to thank women for taking on the major task required for perpetuation of the species, society do its best to compensate them for the inconveniences they thereby suffer; nothing of the sort. If you thought that might make sense, you haven’t really understood Nature.