So were men
Now where is the misogyny in what you wrote?
Don’t worry, I’ll wait
Here's a good piece on the issue that you won't read (but others might) -
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Perhaps the most salient point about witch trials, students quickly come to see, is gender. In Salem, 14 of the 19 people found guilty of and executed for witchcraft during that cataclysmic year of 1692
were women.
Across New England, where witch trials occurred somewhat regularly from 1638 until 1725, women
vastly outnumbered men in the ranks of the accused and executed. According to author Carol F. Karlsen’s “
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman,” 78% of 344 alleged witches in New England were female.
And even when men faced allegations of witchcraft, it was typically because they were somehow associated with accused women. As historian John Demos
has established, the few Puritan men tried for witchcraft were mostly the husbands or brothers of alleged female witches.
Women held a precarious, mostly powerless position within the
deeply religious Puritan community.
The Puritans thought women should have babies, raise children, manage household life and model Christian subservience to their husbands. Recalling Eve and her
sinful apple, Puritans also believed that women were more likely to be tempted by the Devil.
. . . .
The accused witch Mary Bliss Parsons, of Northampton, Massachusetts, was the opposite of Webster. She was the wife of the wealthiest man in town and the mother of nine healthy children.
But neighbors found Parsons to be a “woman of forcible speech and domineering ways,” historian James Russell Trumbull
wrote in his 1898 history of Northampton. In 1674 she was charged with witchcraft.
Parsons, too, was acquitted. Eventually, continuing witchcraft rumors forced the Parsons family to resettle in Boston.
Prior to Salem, most witchcraft trials in New England resulted in acquittal. According to Demos, of the 93 documented witch trials that happened before Salem,
16 “witches” were executed.
But the accused rarely went unpunished.
In his 2005 book “
Escaping Salem,” Richard Godbeer examines the case of two Connecticut women – Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford and Mercy Disborough of Fairfield – accused of bewitching a servant girl named Kate Branch.
Both women were “confident and determined, ready to express their opinions and to stand their ground when crossed.” Clawson was found not guilty after spending five months in jail. Disborough remained imprisoned for almost a year until she was acquitted.
Both had to pay the fines and fees related to their imprisonment.
. . .
Witch trials weren’t just about accusations that today seem baseless. They were also about a justice system that escalated local grievances to capital offenses and targeted a subjugated minority.
Women were both the victims and the accused in this terrible American history, casualties of a society created and controlled by powerful men.
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https://theconversation.com/most-wi...re-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427