One knows of the witch-hunting practices in medieval Europe and the Salem witch trials. But, witch-hunting is a thing of the past, a bad memory that’s locked up in the depths of our history and forgotten.
The 21st century is regarded as the age of women empowerment, independence and equality, right?
As the old adage goes, history repeats itself; and it often goes unnoticed by people living in the present.
Slut-shaming refers to stigmatizing a woman who seems promiscuous or provocative by the larger society. It seems to be a modern-day parallel of witch-hunting.
Most people hunted down during the Salem witch trials were women since witch-hunts were all about oppressing and persecuting the powerless. In 1692, 14 out of the 19 people found guilty of and executed for witchcraft, were women.
Salem Witch Trials
Men rarely faced these trials, but when they did, it was because they either questioned the existence of witches and thus, were accused of heresy and tried for it; or because of their acquaintances with these women. The few Puritan men who were accused of witchcraft were either the husbands or brothers of the alleged female witches.
Society believed that women who have babies, raise children, manage domestic chores and remain subservient to their husbands, were good Christian housewives. Any woman brave enough to venture outside these norms was accused of witchcraft and was usually executed.
Powerful men, magistrates, judges and clergies, enforced these rules in early American society. The story of Eve and her sinful apple, humanity’s first sin, confirmed their beliefs about women being the vessels of the devil.
In one instance, two Connecticut women accused of witchcraft were described as “confident and determined, ready to express their opinions and stand their ground when crossed.” This bit proves that women who were ambitious, spirited and “set on their ways” made for the perfect victims of these witch-hunts.
Times have changed, and the idea of witchcraft underwent some patriarchal distortion. Women became the ambassadors of witchcraft. Female tropes or archetypes like the femme fatale, seductress, siren, mistress and vamp, were shown to be independent, strong women. They were demonized in the media and labelled as a social evil, a threat to civil, human society even.
Slut-Shaming Strong Women
The urban society claims to treat women as equals but continues to stigmatize the idea of a liberated woman. Women owning their sexuality is still seen as a moral crime in our society. We often label independent, free-spirited women as sluts. Writers, journalists, activists, politicians, scientists and women in power are labelled as sluts by their contemporaries.
Slut-shaming goes way deeper than we realize. It makes a woman a social outcast. It increases the threat of sexual violation of women. The so-called “sluts” are fetishized and seen as mere objects of pleasure. While men are applauded for having an active sex life and often praised for being a Casanova, women are shunned and accused of moral degradation by their peers for the same.
The taboo around sexual experiences of women and the idealization of the sexual purity of women arises from an intense desire to control women. This same desire led to witch-hunts in medieval times. Slut-shaming impairs potential opportunities for women and defames them on public platforms. In a nutshell, it murders the very soul of a woman.
So, is it not a modern-day parallel to the bygone practice of witch-hunting? Women are being ostracized and threatened for not accepting the rampant sexism, which is the core of our society.
When Nietzsche said, “When a woman has inclinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexual organs,” and when Saul Bellow said, “Women are rails on which men run,” these men summed up everything that is wrong with our society and the way it views women.
Slut-shaming is, what I would like to call, intellectual witch-hunting, and it is still very much prevalent in our “progressive” urban society.