Colonial Slut Shaming

In class in the last few weeks, particularly with the presentations of the Witches of Eastwick and Beautiful Creatures (church scenes), the relationship between Christianity and witches has become fascinating to me, particularly relating the church’s war on sex to its war on witches. 

In what I’ve observed and learned so far, the war on witches was essentially a holy war. Accusers could charge a person exhibiting “anti-Christian” behavior with “witchcraft” or an association with the devil to maintain the power of religion in society and tight control over acceptable behavior. The “anti-Christian” act that I’ve noticed us discuss the most is sexual immorality. So I think, in part, the witch hunts were a way for the Puritan church to sustain their control over women’s “purity”. 

I think part of this association of witches to sex began with the Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer. He wrote a misogynistic rant about women being inherently sinful and easily tempted into lust. I did a little research to verify what I remember talking about in class, and Kramer basically says that the women who are the most sexually tempted to fulfill their lusts are the ones most likely to practice witchcraft. With the Malleus Maleficarum being the second best selling book after the bible, it stands to reason that his viewpoints got around. 

But more so than threatening social norms, I think that women who didn’t conform to the perfect “Virgin Mary” style pure sexual mold were a threat to Christianity and the power of the church. In the book of Exodus it says “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. Christianity traditionally promotes chastity and views sexual desire as a potential sin, needing to be controlled and suppressed, while many of the women accused of witchcraft were unmarried and perhaps sexually “immoral”. The best Christian women were married, had children, did chores, and obeyed their husbands. Women who weren’t pure and married threatened Christian values and broke the religious “rules” of society, challenging the status quo. Accusations of witchcraft became a tool of the pious to cull their social group to only the most devout Christians. Witches were accused of engaging in illicit sexual practices like kissing the devil on his anus. Puritans wanted to purify the church, so this perceived promiscuity became a way to demonize women who deviated from conservative puritan religious expectations of sexual behavior. 

During witch trials, some women were accused of witchcraft based on their sexual impropriety. I believe it was Tituba who was one of the first to be accused in Salem, and she confessed to sexual encounters with the devil. 

Purity culture is still active in the church today, focusing on teaching young women that they will lose inherent value if they engage in premarital sex or tempt men into sin with their bodies. This culture places the brunt of the responsibility for sexual immorality on the woman or the “temptress”. Kramer would agree with this. In the Malleus, he talks about women easily trapping men in sexual lust. I think this is partly why more women were accused than men (80% of the accused were women). Women are considered the most likely to fall into sin than men. It also makes sense that in a patriarchal culture society would be more interested in controlling the actions of women than men… oh wait, that still happens today. Haha lucky me. 🙄

The persecution of witches served not only to reinforce religious dogma and control but also to maintain patriarchal control over women's bodies and sexuality. Now I’m not saying they planned to do this, but by associating women who challenged societal norms with witchcraft and demonic forces, the church and community leaders could effectively silence and control them.