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Oct. 10, 2024
They Called Us Witches
In the midst of The Enlightenment, when men in the West hailed reason and rationalism, and aspired towards lofty ideals such as liberty, equality and religious tolerance - another darker social phenomenon was taking place. Over a period of more than 200 years, thousands of women (and some men) across Europe were thrown in jail, tortured, hanged and burned - accused and tried for witchcraft.
In this episode Elle talks to Marianne Hester, a world-leading researcher in gender-based violence, with expertise in domestic and sexual abuse and violence, coercive control, sexual exploitation, and forced marriage.
In her book Lewd Women and Wicked Witches, Marianne looks at male violence and domination through a historical lens, locating the “witch hunts” - the violent persecution of women - in a period of massive restructuring of society, within which a male-female conflict over resources and power was raging. In this hour we talk about how and why women became targets of the “witch craze”, what the “witch hunts” accomplished for the patriarchs, and how those historical events shaped the gendered ideology we still live with today.
Episode Links:
Journal of Gender-Based Violence
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Credits
Host: Elle Kamihira
Produced by Elle Kamihira
Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio
Cover Art by Bee Johnson
Music by Beware of Darkness
Marianne Hester
Professor Emeritus in Gender, Violence & International Policy
Marianne Hester is Professor Emeritus in Gender, Violence & International Policy at the University of Bristol, UK. She also serves as the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Gender-Based Violence. Her research covers many aspects of gender based violence, and is rooted in the needs of survivors as well as in feminist epistemology. In 2012, she was awarded an Order of the British Empire for services to research and to the community in tackling domestic abuse, and elected as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2017. She works closely with NGOs tackling gender-based violence, and frequently acts as advisor to governmental departments.