Scan barcode
serranok's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
jacquibear's review against another edition
0.25
The introduction provided no insight into the main ideas of the book.
No sense of connected ideas within the text. Very little sense of the writing relating back to the title.
Would there have been more cohesion if read in the original French?
No sense of connected ideas within the text. Very little sense of the writing relating back to the title.
Would there have been more cohesion if read in the original French?
spenkevich's review against another edition
4.0
If you don’t hear from me, I have joined a coven and am living my best life. In the meantime, Mona Chollet has organized a book that discusses the legacy of witch hunts (specifically in France, UK and the US) and how the social issues of patriarchy that were a large undercurrent in the history of these horrors are still present in the world today. In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial is an excellent blend of past and present analysis on repression and persecution that always ties back to the idea of witches and witch hunts. Chollet is sharp and insightful, eloquently elaborating her ideas in accessible and robust arguments (wonderfully translated from the French by [a:Sophie R. Lewis|21373422|Sophie R. Lewis|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]), clustered into several main ideas for which women are often judged, such as rejecting motherhood or married life and other aspects of sexual agency, homosexuality, or aging. ‘The witch-hunts speak to us of our own time,’ Chollet writes, and this is a fascinating book that explores concepts of feminism and patriarchial policing as a call to action for a more equitable society and against violence directed at women.
‘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.’
- [a:Carmen Maria Machado|6860265|Carmen Maria Machado|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1461618720p2/6860265.jpg], from the forward
This book is less a historical critique on witch-hunts and more essays on feminism that use the legacy of witch-hunts as its center of gravity. While it occasionally seems to drift away from the theme for big chunks, Chollet always ties it back together in an effective way that keeps focus instead of merely using witches as a draw to pull readers in. I’m reminded a bit of the book [b:Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths|51734177|Antigone Rising The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths|Helen Morales|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575744639l/51734177._SX50_SY75_.jpg|72909185] by [a:Helen Morales|305145|Helen Morales|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], which kept a tighter adherence to the theme but also much looser connections that sometimes felt gimmicky, a feeling which Chollet successfully avoids. This actually paired well with my reading of The Second Sex by [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg], feeling in many ways an update on that but told through the lens of witch-hunts, as well as feeling like a good companion piece to [a:Kate Manne|16600238|Kate Manne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1689357239p2/16600238.jpg]’s essay collection Entitled, which has a lot of cross-over topics, particularly on reproductive rights.
‘It is difficult not to conclude that the witch-hunts amounted to a war against women.’
Chollet comes out of the gate swinging with her introduction that delves into historical witch-hunts. Offering informative statistics and a general overview on how they came about, fun details like Pope Gregory IX declaring cats the "devil's servants" and executing so many cats along with witches that the rat population grew and spread disease (subsequently blamed on witches), and examining issues such as criminalization of contraception and abortions occurring during the same period as witch-hunts. ‘Witch-hunters are revealed as both obsessed with and terrified by female sexuality,’ she observes in her discussion of historical documents such as [b:The Malleus Maleficarum|771091|The Malleus Maleficarum|Heinrich Kramer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416873307l/771091._SY75_.jpg|757149]. ‘When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women,’ we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity,’ said women’s activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, and while Chollet examines how men, too, were accused and murdered (though in far fewer numbers with significantly higher acquittals and tended to be accused to their intimacy with accused witches), she explains how Gage’s statement is in line with the book to come. Chollet’s introduction also serves as a criticism of the already well-trodden path of witch-hunt history books, pointing out how even those that attempt sensitivity tend to do a fair amount of victim blaming, often even asking why the groups accused of witchcraft ‘attracted to itself the scapegoating mechanism,’ while also scapegoating any reason except for misogyny and control as to why these hunts occurred.
‘For me, the history of witchcraft could equally be called the history of independence…the most troubled territories are always those that want to be independent.’
- [a:Pacôme Thiellement|2990406|Pacôme Thiellement|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1387550465p2/2990406.jpg]
Chollet ties in an extraordinary wealth of references in this book, citing many novels and films as well as frequent references to feminist figures. She also provides interesting commentary on how feminist groups often adopted the symbol of the witch for their movements (most notably the group Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, or W.I.T.C.H.). 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.’ In her forward, Machado writes:
This is another example of how ideas that are used subversively inevitably become products sold back to us to enrich the very systems they were fighting against (You can buy t-shirts with anti-capitalist slogans, for example, from large corporate retailers for $25). [a:Mark Fisher|956173|Mark Fisher|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1485275334p2/956173.jpg]'s concept of Capitalist Realism (in his book of the same name) discusses how modern media often provides sanitized versions of subversive ideas to be consumed in ways that will not actually be threatening to the systems the ideas wish to challange, so too have concepts of witchcraft often been co-opted into sanitized fun or consumable aesthetics in place of the actual cultural traditions of origination. Look at the "witchcraft" books at any major retailer and you'll see examples of this.
W.I.T.C.H. protest on Wallstreet, 1968
Especially as this book tends to mostly address white, cisgender issues, it is important to note how concepts like neo-paganism being used as cutesy aesthetics has some troubling aspects of appropriation and we shouldn’t whitewash the dynamic cultural histories of paganism and ideas on magic (like voodoo) or fall prey to distorting history. One of the women involved in a 1968 demonstration to “hex Wallstreet” later regretted that they used satanic imagery and sayings:
Not allowing the fun of the imagery to distort history or appropriate other cultural traditions is something to keep in mind, especially since Chollet points out the large number of women of color who were persecuted and how much American witch-hunts were used to target the indigenous. This comes later with the topic of medicine and wellness. ‘The witch becomes the ‘antimother,’’ Chollet writes, ‘many of the accused were healers who played the role of midwife—but who also used to help women wishing to prevent or terminate a pregnancy.’ This was during a time women were denied access to medical school and Cholett discusses that part of their eradication was to silence anyone that wasn’t part of the academic cannon. As witchcraft ideas have started to be absorbed or co-opted into wellness communities or other natural health circles, the infiltration of white supremacy in the wellness industry is something that should also be kept in mind too, as well as trying to remember snake oil salesman use the same bad faith marketing as any other big industry so it can sometimes be difficult to parse out what is an effective alternative remedy and what is not.
‘Years of propaganda and terror sowed among men the seeds of a deep psychological alienation from women.’
-[a:Sylvia Federici|18583289|Sylvia Federici|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]
Chollet breaks the book into chapters to address women’s independence, reproductive choices, aging, and a final chapter on general repression of women. The first deals with many similar concepts that de Beauvoir famously covered about how women are socialized to be submissive and accessory to the male-dominated society. She examines how any variation from the patriarchally prescribed notion of what a woman should be is met with backlash, something author:Kate Manne|16600238] describes in [b:Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny|34640834|Down Girl The Logic of Misogyny|Kate Manne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1506476695l/34640834._SY75_.jpg|55801901] as sexism being
This is also an aspect of homophobia, as queer or trans women do not fit into the patriarchial mold. For instance, for that for all the browbeating to become a mother for straight women, queer women are often denied access to adoption in many countries or by certain adoption agencies. I was thrilled to find Chollet quoted [a:Jeanette Winterson|9399|Jeanette Winterson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1561070665p2/9399.jpg], an absolute favorite, on how being queer and not tied down by children or traditional marriage was freedom that helped her career. In the book [b:Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult|57033436|Toil and Trouble A Women’s History of the Occult|Lisa Kröger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650392436l/57033436._SY75_.jpg|89243254], the authors point out that witchcraft is often used in media as a queer metaphor. The show Bewitched for example, about which actress Elizabeth Montgomery says she was proud of the queer undertones, admitting it was present and alway 'about repression in general.' Montgomery would go on to be a prominent voice advocating for the queer community.
‘Women who create things other than children are still considered dangerous by many.’
- [a:Pam Grossman|13952214|Pam Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547682867p2/13952214.jpg]
Being childless is also something that women become ‘othered’ for choosing. ‘Regret is used as a threat to push women who do not wish to be mother into motherhood even when abortion is not an issue,’ says feminst activist and sociologist Orna Donarth. Chollet looks at the life of Gloria Steinem who was frequently criticized for not wanting children, or Simone de Beauvoir who wrote that ‘I never once dreamed of rediscovering myself in the child I might bear,’ in response to people telling her she is likely filled with regret. 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.
‘Men don’t age better than women, they’re just allowed to age.'
Chollet looks at how ‘men’s dominant positions in [society] allows them to be absolute subjects and to make women into absolute objects,’ and once a woman has passed a certain age she observes that society has deemed her less beautiful and therefore less valuable. She details many examples of how older women are associated with thoughts of declining virility and death (hence the “old hag” witch symbolism), but, Chollet asks ‘who thinks about death when they see Richard Gere or Harrison Ford?’ She says the only true difference with men is that ‘their decay is not counted against them’ as it is with women. Chollet looks at how the pay for women in film decreases with age while it stays steady for men, or how older men in the public eye tend to date younger and younger women as they age (this was a recent internet topic when Leonardo DeCaprio once again broke up with a girlfriend who had turned 25 [he is 48]). There is even a 2000 court case in Portugal she describes where an older woman who had significant damage to her sexual organs during a workplace accident had her compensation pay greatly reduced by the judge because ‘at this age, not only is sex no longer as important…but her interest in it will be diminished.’ It was overturned in 2017 by the European Court of Human Rights, but the message is that society sees older women as lacking sexual desirability as well as fertility and are, thereby, less valued.
'To cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people's consciousness...'
- [a:Alan Moore|3961|Alan Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1304944713p2/3961.jpg]
There is an interesting thread through these chapters on how language is coded to reflect a ‘conquering state’. In the chapter on aging, for instance, she points out how a sexual older woman is termed a ‘cougar’, which has negative connotations, while men have the more positive term ‘silver fox’. There is a discussion as well how women’s sexual organs are named after the men in medical fields who ‘discovered’ how they worked, as well as how linking women to ideas of nature and the Earth became a way to encourage ideas of ownership over them, with witches being a 'symbol of the violence of nature...disorderly women, like chaotic nature, [that] needed to be control.' It even goes so far as to how professions and jobs can become connotated as more “women's work” and how feminized careers are often less financially compensated, respected, and frequently expected to take on labor—particularly emotional labor—beyond their job description (as someone working in libraries, a job she mentions as ‘feminized’, yep). As [a:Rebecca Solnit|15811|Rebecca Solnit|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1535567225p2/15811.jpg] wrote, ‘the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality,’ and Chollet looks at instances of language such ‘Ms’ becoming an accepted honorific, or even they/them pronouns gaining common usage, as a way to better identify oneself on their own terms. However, she also chronicles the excessive pushback that come in response, reminding us that when progress threatens patriarchal hierarchy even a little, the gears of misogyny and homophobia lock into attack. But this focus on language is also how she can use many films and books to elaborate her points, especially the ones that try to pacify or mock issues of women’s liberation.
'The Witch is arguably the only female archtupe that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else.'
- [a:Pam Grossman|13952214|Pam Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547682867p2/13952214.jpg]
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. I wish this book went more beyond the fairly white, cisgendered centered approach (she does a decent job pointing out how much indigenous and Black cultures are involved in the history though), though this is also Chollet’s world and experience so I’d like to read another similar book on different cultural histories of witchcraft from an author that would be a good authority on the subject. Accessible, full of fascinating facts and figures, In Defense of Witches is a great read and wonderful reference.
4.5/5
‘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.’
- [a:Carmen Maria Machado|6860265|Carmen Maria Machado|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1461618720p2/6860265.jpg], from the forward
This book is less a historical critique on witch-hunts and more essays on feminism that use the legacy of witch-hunts as its center of gravity. While it occasionally seems to drift away from the theme for big chunks, Chollet always ties it back together in an effective way that keeps focus instead of merely using witches as a draw to pull readers in. I’m reminded a bit of the book [b:Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths|51734177|Antigone Rising The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths|Helen Morales|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575744639l/51734177._SX50_SY75_.jpg|72909185] by [a:Helen Morales|305145|Helen Morales|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], which kept a tighter adherence to the theme but also much looser connections that sometimes felt gimmicky, a feeling which Chollet successfully avoids. This actually paired well with my reading of The Second Sex by [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg], feeling in many ways an update on that but told through the lens of witch-hunts, as well as feeling like a good companion piece to [a:Kate Manne|16600238|Kate Manne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1689357239p2/16600238.jpg]’s essay collection Entitled, which has a lot of cross-over topics, particularly on reproductive rights.
‘It is difficult not to conclude that the witch-hunts amounted to a war against women.’
Chollet comes out of the gate swinging with her introduction that delves into historical witch-hunts. Offering informative statistics and a general overview on how they came about, fun details like Pope Gregory IX declaring cats the "devil's servants" and executing so many cats along with witches that the rat population grew and spread disease (subsequently blamed on witches), and examining issues such as criminalization of contraception and abortions occurring during the same period as witch-hunts. ‘Witch-hunters are revealed as both obsessed with and terrified by female sexuality,’ she observes in her discussion of historical documents such as [b:The Malleus Maleficarum|771091|The Malleus Maleficarum|Heinrich Kramer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416873307l/771091._SY75_.jpg|757149]. ‘When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women,’ we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity,’ said women’s activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, and while Chollet examines how men, too, were accused and murdered (though in far fewer numbers with significantly higher acquittals and tended to be accused to their intimacy with accused witches), she explains how Gage’s statement is in line with the book to come. Chollet’s introduction also serves as a criticism of the already well-trodden path of witch-hunt history books, pointing out how even those that attempt sensitivity tend to do a fair amount of victim blaming, often even asking why the groups accused of witchcraft ‘attracted to itself the scapegoating mechanism,’ while also scapegoating any reason except for misogyny and control as to why these hunts occurred.
‘For me, the history of witchcraft could equally be called the history of independence…the most troubled territories are always those that want to be independent.’
- [a:Pacôme Thiellement|2990406|Pacôme Thiellement|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1387550465p2/2990406.jpg]
Chollet ties in an extraordinary wealth of references in this book, citing many novels and films as well as frequent references to feminist figures. She also provides interesting commentary on how feminist groups often adopted the symbol of the witch for their movements (most notably the group Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, or W.I.T.C.H.). 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.’ In her forward, Machado writes:
‘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).’
This is another example of how ideas that are used subversively inevitably become products sold back to us to enrich the very systems they were fighting against (You can buy t-shirts with anti-capitalist slogans, for example, from large corporate retailers for $25). [a:Mark Fisher|956173|Mark Fisher|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1485275334p2/956173.jpg]'s concept of Capitalist Realism (in his book of the same name) discusses how modern media often provides sanitized versions of subversive ideas to be consumed in ways that will not actually be threatening to the systems the ideas wish to challange, so too have concepts of witchcraft often been co-opted into sanitized fun or consumable aesthetics in place of the actual cultural traditions of origination. Look at the "witchcraft" books at any major retailer and you'll see examples of this.
W.I.T.C.H. protest on Wallstreet, 1968
Especially as this book tends to mostly address white, cisgender issues, it is important to note how concepts like neo-paganism being used as cutesy aesthetics has some troubling aspects of appropriation and we shouldn’t whitewash the dynamic cultural histories of paganism and ideas on magic (like voodoo) or fall prey to distorting history. One of the women involved in a 1968 demonstration to “hex Wallstreet” later regretted that they used satanic imagery and sayings:
‘the members of the Old Religon never worshipped Satan. They were followers of a tripartite Goddess: it was the Christian church who invented Satan and then claimed that witches were Satanists. We had bitten the patriarchal bait on that one…’
Not allowing the fun of the imagery to distort history or appropriate other cultural traditions is something to keep in mind, especially since Chollet points out the large number of women of color who were persecuted and how much American witch-hunts were used to target the indigenous. This comes later with the topic of medicine and wellness. ‘The witch becomes the ‘antimother,’’ Chollet writes, ‘many of the accused were healers who played the role of midwife—but who also used to help women wishing to prevent or terminate a pregnancy.’ This was during a time women were denied access to medical school and Cholett discusses that part of their eradication was to silence anyone that wasn’t part of the academic cannon. As witchcraft ideas have started to be absorbed or co-opted into wellness communities or other natural health circles, the infiltration of white supremacy in the wellness industry is something that should also be kept in mind too, as well as trying to remember snake oil salesman use the same bad faith marketing as any other big industry so it can sometimes be difficult to parse out what is an effective alternative remedy and what is not.
‘Years of propaganda and terror sowed among men the seeds of a deep psychological alienation from women.’
-[a:Sylvia Federici|18583289|Sylvia Federici|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]
Chollet breaks the book into chapters to address women’s independence, reproductive choices, aging, and a final chapter on general repression of women. The first deals with many similar concepts that de Beauvoir famously covered about how women are socialized to be submissive and accessory to the male-dominated society. She examines how any variation from the patriarchally prescribed notion of what a woman should be is met with backlash, something author:Kate Manne|16600238] describes in [b:Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny|34640834|Down Girl The Logic of Misogyny|Kate Manne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1506476695l/34640834._SY75_.jpg|55801901] as sexism being
‘the branch of patriarchal ideology that justifies and rationalizes a patriarchal social order, and misogyny as the system that polices and enforces its governing norms and expectations.’Chollet says that witch-hunts imposed patriarchal order by violence and the 19th century’s idea of the modern housewife became a new method of imposition that ‘locks women into their role as reproducers and disenfranchises them from participation in the world of work.’ 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’. When women were slow to return to work after COVID regulations laxed (and were more affected than male counterparts) but childcare options were still limited and cost restrictive, the same sort of people were quick to decry them as lazy and proclaim nobody has a work ethic anymore. ‘There is something quite intriguing in the way that society forces independent women into miserable lives,’ Chollet writes, ‘the better to confound them thereafter: “Ah! See how unhappy you are!”’
This is also an aspect of homophobia, as queer or trans women do not fit into the patriarchial mold. For instance, for that for all the browbeating to become a mother for straight women, queer women are often denied access to adoption in many countries or by certain adoption agencies. I was thrilled to find Chollet quoted [a:Jeanette Winterson|9399|Jeanette Winterson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1561070665p2/9399.jpg], an absolute favorite, on how being queer and not tied down by children or traditional marriage was freedom that helped her career. In the book [b:Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult|57033436|Toil and Trouble A Women’s History of the Occult|Lisa Kröger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650392436l/57033436._SY75_.jpg|89243254], the authors point out that witchcraft is often used in media as a queer metaphor. The show Bewitched for example, about which actress Elizabeth Montgomery says she was proud of the queer undertones, admitting it was present and alway 'about repression in general.' Montgomery would go on to be a prominent voice advocating for the queer community.
‘Women who create things other than children are still considered dangerous by many.’
- [a:Pam Grossman|13952214|Pam Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547682867p2/13952214.jpg]
Being childless is also something that women become ‘othered’ for choosing. ‘Regret is used as a threat to push women who do not wish to be mother into motherhood even when abortion is not an issue,’ says feminst activist and sociologist Orna Donarth. Chollet looks at the life of Gloria Steinem who was frequently criticized for not wanting children, or Simone de Beauvoir who wrote that ‘I never once dreamed of rediscovering myself in the child I might bear,’ in response to people telling her she is likely filled with regret. 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.
‘Men don’t age better than women, they’re just allowed to age.'
Chollet looks at how ‘men’s dominant positions in [society] allows them to be absolute subjects and to make women into absolute objects,’ and once a woman has passed a certain age she observes that society has deemed her less beautiful and therefore less valuable. She details many examples of how older women are associated with thoughts of declining virility and death (hence the “old hag” witch symbolism), but, Chollet asks ‘who thinks about death when they see Richard Gere or Harrison Ford?’ She says the only true difference with men is that ‘their decay is not counted against them’ as it is with women. Chollet looks at how the pay for women in film decreases with age while it stays steady for men, or how older men in the public eye tend to date younger and younger women as they age (this was a recent internet topic when Leonardo DeCaprio once again broke up with a girlfriend who had turned 25 [he is 48]). There is even a 2000 court case in Portugal she describes where an older woman who had significant damage to her sexual organs during a workplace accident had her compensation pay greatly reduced by the judge because ‘at this age, not only is sex no longer as important…but her interest in it will be diminished.’ It was overturned in 2017 by the European Court of Human Rights, but the message is that society sees older women as lacking sexual desirability as well as fertility and are, thereby, less valued.
'To cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people's consciousness...'
- [a:Alan Moore|3961|Alan Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1304944713p2/3961.jpg]
There is an interesting thread through these chapters on how language is coded to reflect a ‘conquering state’. In the chapter on aging, for instance, she points out how a sexual older woman is termed a ‘cougar’, which has negative connotations, while men have the more positive term ‘silver fox’. There is a discussion as well how women’s sexual organs are named after the men in medical fields who ‘discovered’ how they worked, as well as how linking women to ideas of nature and the Earth became a way to encourage ideas of ownership over them, with witches being a 'symbol of the violence of nature...disorderly women, like chaotic nature, [that] needed to be control.' It even goes so far as to how professions and jobs can become connotated as more “women's work” and how feminized careers are often less financially compensated, respected, and frequently expected to take on labor—particularly emotional labor—beyond their job description (as someone working in libraries, a job she mentions as ‘feminized’, yep). As [a:Rebecca Solnit|15811|Rebecca Solnit|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1535567225p2/15811.jpg] wrote, ‘the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides that brutality,’ and Chollet looks at instances of language such ‘Ms’ becoming an accepted honorific, or even they/them pronouns gaining common usage, as a way to better identify oneself on their own terms. However, she also chronicles the excessive pushback that come in response, reminding us that when progress threatens patriarchal hierarchy even a little, the gears of misogyny and homophobia lock into attack. But this focus on language is also how she can use many films and books to elaborate her points, especially the ones that try to pacify or mock issues of women’s liberation.
'The Witch is arguably the only female archtupe that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else.'
- [a:Pam Grossman|13952214|Pam Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547682867p2/13952214.jpg]
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. I wish this book went more beyond the fairly white, cisgendered centered approach (she does a decent job pointing out how much indigenous and Black cultures are involved in the history though), though this is also Chollet’s world and experience so I’d like to read another similar book on different cultural histories of witchcraft from an author that would be a good authority on the subject. Accessible, full of fascinating facts and figures, In Defense of Witches is a great read and wonderful reference.
4.5/5
veronicakg's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0