procedures and sentencing. Kramer and Sprenger wrote a text
called the Malleus Maleficarum. The Malleus Maleficarum
was high Catholic theology and working Catholic jurisprudence. It might be compared to the Amerikan Constitution. It was the law. Anyone who challenged it was guilty of heresy, a
capital crime. Anyone who refuted its authority or questioned
its credibility on any level was guilty of heresy, a capital crime.
Before I discuss the content of the Malleus Maleficarum, I
want to be clear about the statistical information that we do
have on the witches. The total figure of nine million is a moderate one. It is the figure most often used by scholars in the field. The ratio of women to men burned is variously estimated at 20 to 1 and 100 to 1.
Witchcraft was a woman’s crime, and much of the text of
the Malleus explains why. First, Jesus Christ was bom, suffered, and died to save men, not women; therefore, women were more vulnerable to Satan’s enticements. Second, a woman
is “more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal
abominations. ”1 This excess of carnality originated in Eve’s
very creation: she was formed from a bent rib. Because of this
defect, women always deceive. Third, women are, by definition, wicked, malicious, vain, stupid, and irredeemably eviclass="underline" “I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house
with a wicked woman.. . . All wickedness is but little to the
wickedness of a woman. . . When a woman thinks alone, she
thinks evil. ”2 Fourth, women are weaker than men in both
mind and body and are intellectually like children. Fifth,
women are “more bitter than death” because all sin originates
in and on account of women, and because women are “wheedling and secret” enemies. 3 Finally, witchcraft was a woman’s crime because “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is
in women insatiable. ”4
I want you to remember that these are not the polemics of
aberrants; these are the convictions of scholars, lawmakers,
judges. I want you to remember that nine million women were
burned alive.
Witches were accused of flying, having carnal relations with
Satan, injuring cattle, causing hailstorms and tempests, causing illnesses and epidemics, bewitching men, changing men and themselves into animals, changing animals into people,
committing acts of cannibalism and murder, stealing male
genitals, causing male genitals to disappear. In fact, this last—
causing male genitals to disappear—was grounds under Catholic law for divorce. If a man’s genitals were invisible for more than three years, his spouse was entitled to a divorce.
It would be hard to locate in Sprenger and Kramer’s gargantuan mass of woman-hating the most odious charge, the most incredible charge, the most ridiculous charge, but I do
think that I have done it. Sprenger and Kramer wrote:
And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who. . . collect
male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat
oats and com, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report? 5
What indeed? What are we to think? What are those of us
who grew up Catholics, for instance, to think? When we see
that priests are performing exorcisms in Amerikan suburbs,
that the belief in witchcraft is still a fundament of Catholic
theology, what are we to think? When we discover that Luther
energized this gynocide through his many confrontations with
Satan, what are we to think? When we discover that Calvin
himself burned witches, and that he personally supervised the
witch hunts in Zurich, what are we to think? When we discover that the fear and loathing of female carnality are codified in Jewish law, what are we to think?
Some of us have a very personal view of the world. We say
that what happens to us in our lives as women happens to us
as individuals. We even say that any violence we have experienced in our lives as women— for instance, rape or assault by a husband, lover, or stranger—happened between two individuals. Some of us even apologize for the aggressor—we feel
sorry for him; we say that he is personally disturbed, or that he
was provoked in a particular way, at a particular time, by a
particular woman.
Men tell us that they too are “oppressed. ” They tell us that
they are often in their individual lives victimized by women—
by mothers, wives, and “girlfriends. ” They tell us that women
provoke acts of violence through our carnality, or malice, or
avarice, or vanity, or stupidity. They tell us that their violence
originates in us and that we are responsible for it. They tell us
that their lives are full of pain, and that we are its source.
They tell us that as mothers we injure them irreparably, as
wives we castrate them, as lovers we steal from them semen,
youth, and manhood— and never, never, as mothers, wives, or
lovers do we ever give them enough.
And what are we to think? Because if we begin to piece
together all of the instances of violence— the rapes, the assaults, the cripplings, the killings, the mass slaughters; if we read their novels, poems, political and philosophical tracts and
see that they think of us today what the Inquisitors thought of
us yesterday; if we realize that historically gynocide is not
some mistake, some accidental excess, some dreadful fluke,
but is instead the logical consequence of what they believe to
be our god-given or biological natures; then we must finally
understand that under patriarchy gynocide is the ongoing
reality of life lived by women. And then we must look to each
other— for the courage to bear it and for the courage to
change it.
The struggle of women, the feminist struggle, is not a struggle for more money per hour, or for equal rights under male law, or for more women legislators who will operate within
the confines of male law. These are all emergency measures,
designed to save women’s lives, as many as possible, now,
today. But these reforms will not stem the tide of gynocide;
these reforms will not end the relentless violence perpetrated
by the gender class men against the gender class women. These
reforms will not stop the increasing rape epidemic in this
country, or the wife-beating epidemic in England. They will
not stop the sterilizations of black and poor white women who
are the victims of male doctors who hate female carnality.
These reforms will not empty mental institutions of women