Modern-Day "Burning of Witches" in Family Court

The Present Day Massacre Harkens Back to "The Burning Times"

Oct 27, 2024

It’s Halloween time and the season of witches—perhaps a good time to draw parallels between the Renaissance-Era Burning of Witches at the stake to the Modern-Day Burning of Wives in Family Court.

While a metaphor, it is more literal than most know.

The large-scale burning of witches in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was actually a “women’s holocaust” according to the excellent Canadian documentary: The Burning Times. Millions of women were tortured, imprisoned, and burned at the stake because they were women. The stamp of “witch” was just a pretext for destroying women who’d inadvertently challenged male power.

In her book, Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male Domination, Marianne Hester explains how witches were really just victims of oppression in a male-dominated society. Witch-hunts were a centuries-long genocide waged by men to maintain power over women. Hester was interviewed about her book in a recent Subject to Power podcast: They Called Us Witches. The host, Elle Kamira, noted how what women are experiencing in family courts today is eerily similar to what happened back then.

What really occurred way back then, these two exposés assert, is that millions of good, wise, and uppity women were falsely labeled witches. This labeling of women as bad and evil enabled men to imprison, torture, financially ruin, and murder them. And the ever-present threat of this fate served to keep all women subjugated.

Family Court is the modern-day staging ground for a new type of witch-burning we are calling wife-burning. And it is occurring for the same reason: to destroy women with the goal of maintaining male power and control.

Women who leave husbands and/or attempt to protect their children are inadvertently challenging male authority in the family. So, like witches, wives are being falsely accused and tortured. They are being threatened, coerced, imprisoned, financially devastated, and deprived of their children, and countless mothers are actually losing their lives.

What’s amazing is that four centuries after the “burning times” most people do not know that the torturing and burning of witches was just a cover for the destruction of women who posed a threat to male power. [The saying “History is written by the victors” comes to mind.] Worse, most do not know about the present-day wife-burning in family courts around the world.

So, no time like the present season of witches to get the word out about the true history of witch-burning and the modern-day version of it raging in family courts…

BURNING OF WITCHES

Historically, the Christian concept of witches derives from Old Testament laws regarding evil women who engaged in witchcraft.

In medieval Europe, many people still believed in magic. “White magic” was practiced by cunning folk, or wise women, for benevolent purposes. On the other hand, witchcraft was considered “black magic”, sorcery practiced by witches. It was associated with Satan and devil worship.

In the fifteenth century, women had important roles within their communities. This included being leaders, counsellors, visionaries, midwives, and healers. These women were skilled and contributed to the health of their villages. Elder women were respected and revered for their extensive knowledge. This made them a threat to men in power and is why witches are often portrayed as old women with conical hats—those hats represented wisdom.

Some beliefs and traditions were thousands of years old and not aligned with the monotheistic Church. The Church had mostly tried to incorporate pagan customs to keep commoners happy, but the Renaissance Era brought intolerance for heretics, pagans and witches.

One exceptionally misogynistic Catholic clergyman, Heinrich Kramer, made it much easier to find women guilty of being witches. After one German woman escaped his witch-hunting clutches due to having a high-status husband, he penned the mother of all misogynistic manifestos: Malleus Maleficarum [Hammer of Witches].

This book became the witch-burning Bible for men with positions of power in both Church and State. It provided numerous means of finding women guilty of witchcraft. And it had the authority of the Church, thanks to Pope Innocent (can’t make this stuff up) VIII endorsing it. It resulted in the torturing and burning of millions of women.

Not all “witches” were burned. In fact, most were “just” imprisoned and tortured. Many were pilloried (neck and hands clapped into a wooden frame) in public to shame them. Torture of various kinds sent the message to every woman to behave, to submit to male dominance. This unburdened them from having to kill them all.

Of course, there was nothing quite like the public executions, whether by burning, hanging, or drowning. Burning was the favored method, though, since it was the most excruciatingly painful way to die. The patriarchs and misogynists could relish in witnessing this horrific form of revenge on women who dared step out of line.

BURNING OF WIVES

Surely nothing remotely like that could happen today, right?

Wrong. There are many parallels to witch-burning in family courts.

The misogyny and oppression brandished in family courts just take a modern, more acceptable form. But it is for the same reason: men wanting to maintain power over women. Nowadays it is men’s power over wives that is at issue. It is wives who need to be burned—when they do not get with the program, like when they leave or accuse them of abuse or need child support.

Ex-wives today pose an even greater threat to men, as a class, than witches had posed. Men’s most cherished prerogative—power over their wives, the mothers of their children—is being threatened by women’s ability to walk out on them and live well independently for the first time since patriarchy was instituted.

The modern-day version of witch-burning is a backlash to women gaining this power a half century ago. Men were not about to let their most-coveted prerogative go without a serious fight. So they crafted a plan to maintain as much power in the family as possible.

The main staging grounds for this persecutory backlash became family courts. That is where children can be used as leverage to get women to behave, to submit. Just as the “Hammer of Witches” gave Old Boys authority to burn witches, the Family Court system gives Old Boys power to “burn” wives.

Women were deemed evil witches to justify torturing and murdering them and usurping their power. Today, ex-wives are deemed wicked liars and alienators to justify switching custody of kids to the ex-husband, thus maintaining male power and control post-separation.

The court torture involves the physical and emotional taking of children. When children are physically taken from mothers, it is extraordinarily painful. However, it is even more excruciating when children are emotionally alienated from them as well. Many children are coercively persuaded into believing their mother is bad or mad. That is burning-at-the-stake level of torture for women—and the ultimate revenge for men. This court-ordered brainwashing is an important component of wife-burning.

Most women would rather be tortured and imprisoned than lose their children. But they are enduring both and losing their children. Importantly, the torture serves as a deterrent to women not getting with the program, as did the torturing of witches.

Just as in the burning times, the Old Boys have established a no-win situation. Women were tortured to get them to confess to being witches. One method was to lower them into water on a ducking stool. If they floated, they were a witch; if they sank, they drowned.

This plays out in Family Court: if wives continue to report abuse by the father, judges deem them liars and switch custody. If they agree to be silent about the abuse, their children continue to be abused—and usually still lose custody.

This is just too much for some women to handle and they end their lives. Some die mysteriously. So, just like in the burning times, countless women are ending up dead.

Finally, there were/are financial motives and punishments. “Witches” were financially devastated and Old Boys enriched by the taking of their property and money. Wives today are being financially devastated through the dragging out of custody litigation, which is enriching those who go along to get along. Women are being sanctioned and their careers harmed. All the while their exes are benefitting financially through reduction or elimination of child support, and being awarded child support, and via unfair division of marital assets.

These are just some of the parallels between witch-burning and wife-burning. If you think of more, you can leave them in the comments.

TAKEAWAYS

The core thing to recognize: It’s all about power. Witch-burning and wife-burning both have the main purpose of disempowering women while empowering men.

There is obvious projection occurring in both scenarios. The Old Boys deem witches and wives evil when it is actually they who are the evil ones. [Note: female judges are Old Boy-aligned.] There can be nothing more evil than burning good women to death or taking children from loving mothers and giving them to violent, abusive, and vindictive men.

Although it is more popular these days to identify as survivors rather than victims, this may be a good exception. By informing the general public that women, as a class, are serious victims of family courts, it may get some much needed attention to our cause. It is vital that people understand how horrifically women are being treated when they simply attempt to maintain custody and protect their children.

Unfortunately, protective “parent” organizations continue to mislead the public, positioning the Custody Crisis as gender-neutral and a result of judges not being trained properly. But one way this misinformation can be counteracted is by comparing what is going on in family courts today with the burning of witches.

Until and unless women come to realize that they are being deliberately victimized in their roles as mothers and ex-wives because they are women, nothing will change. Women will continue to be burned at the Family Court stake.

Join us at The Women’s Coalition where we are uniting to fight the systemic sexism.

IN OTHER NEWS

WITCHES AGAINST TRUMP

U.S. Coalitionists: VOTE FOR KAMALA!

Although the Custody Crisis is not a partisan issue per se, a vote for Trump is a vote for disempowering women and going backwards on women’s rights.

We are not going back!

A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for women’s empowerment!

SISTERS IN SOLIDARITY

The SIS October forum was great. There was so much good discussion, it went on for three hours! Thanks to all who participated. We will make change…

If you’d like to join SIS, please fill out this form. More info here. You will receive an invitation to the zoom a few days before [check alternate inboxes].

CHAPTER 27: ACT I; PART 1 [cont.] IS OUT!

CHAPTER 27 of Mother-Fucking: The Saga of One Fucked Mother begins with Act I of the “Opera”. There are three Acts with five Parts—one for each of the three Family Court trials and two Appellate trials. This chapter covers Acts I and II, which include the first two Family Court trials and the first Appellate Court trial. It is a long chapter and will be published in newsletter-sized bites.

In this next section of Act I, Part 1, Legion notes that, although she had answered all the interrogatory questions, Herry just left most of his blank. Further, he did not get his witness list to the court before the first day of the trial. And there were no consequences at all for these deviations.

The judge checked off the “listen to the children” box by speaking with them off the record about which parent they wanted to live with. But he did not let anyone know what they said, at least not Legion, and excluded their testimony from the record (one way judges cover up for fathers). These early anomalies were harbingers of how horribly unfair the process would continue to be for Legion. And, of course, the evaluator did what she was appointed to do and spun the case to the father, i.e. she lied through her teeth in the “Report”, which Legion dissects in depth.

In the last section, Legion is nervous about the trial but feels confident she will get custody as all the evidence that she had been the primary and better parent supports that, except for, of course, the cherry-picked, “male-identified” evaluator. She notes that the interrogatory questions, part of the discovery phase, are almost all about finances, not who the more nurturing parent would be. The sexism inherent in the system is becoming apparent even at this early stage of the proceedings.

Dr. Blue’s novel is based on her own experience of the Custody Crisis. It uniquely conveys how Family Court judges are “mother-fucking” women—a form of systemic oppression and violence directed at ex-wives—as protagonist Legion is systematically and methodically deprived of her children and money and reduced to “one fucked mother”.

Chapters are stand-alone interesting so you can begin reading anywhere. A Cast of Characters follows to help readers at any point. All published chapters are included in the Section: “Saga of One F**ked Mother” accessible on the top bar of the home page of Women’s Coalition News & Views. Sequential chapters are published every Wednesday and subscribers will find them in their inboxes, so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!

TEASERS

Herry’s answer only arrived when it was shoved across onto our table and into the grasp of Mr. Jinx about two minutes after head nods all around at approximately 9 am opening curtain of Wednesday, 10 May 1989 … Is this legal? … Can a litigant get away with shitass unfair stalling tactics such as this because it is legal? Or, just … because he, daMan, can. And because nobody––nobody with the legal power and prowess to do something––is going to do anything the hell at all about it.

Mirzah, Jesse and Zane were asked by Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor to come in near the end of the last day of 2½ total and to tell him one by one alone and separated from each other, what their thoughts each were on the matter of their own individual custodies. This occurred. Behind closed doors somewhere. I have never known where they were nor what any one of them said.