I could not quite say what it was about 2017 that brought witches to mind. Pop culture references might have triggered it (looking at you Samantha Bee and Broad City). There was also that horror/not horror/scarily accurate movie The Witch.
Now, now, hold it right there. Yes, you, panicking about another damn feminist polemic. While I wear the feminist badge proudly, this is not a feminist piece. It might ring more true for those on the feminine spectrum, yes. Still, I would suggest the amount of fear you feel reading these opening paragraphs is about how much you need to read them. It will go a long way to help us both understand the rage of many of the people in our lives. Perhaps it will even explain your own rage. All I know is that something must change about the way we use the word ‘witch’.
I take it back; perhaps this all started with a book I read. Most things do. It was Witches, Sluts, Feminists by Kristen J. Sollee. While it focused on the history of witchcraft in Europe and North America, Sollee’s main argument was that ‘slut’ is the new ‘witch’. There was always something sexually charged about calling a woman a ‘witch’, a threat to wholesome society. These days, ‘slut’ takes on that particular role. Both words have been used to police the out-spoken, the empowered and the sex-positive. Many have swung from a rope or have burned at a stake for little less than being different over the centuries. It was uplifting to read the stories of folks reclaiming ‘witch’ and ‘slut’ as their own.
Reading Sollee’s book resonated with me as I spent time with my own family in the Old Country. I was in that precarious space of unmarried and 30. So my family talked to me and about me differently. I am a mixed kid who has had the privilege of travel so I know that an unmarried woman above a certain age is always viewed as some kind of threat. As I adjusted to this new way of being seen, I started to notice a theme in the stories about my non-male relatives. I had always accepted as fact that grandma was ‘mean’ and grandpa was ‘gentle’. My father’s family is a matriarchy since the person with the highest authority is a nun. But only technically, since a nun sacrifices gender and sex for eternal service to the Big G in the Sky. My family accepts the nun as powerful because she is not a woman anymore. Grandma, well, she was mean. The most I could learn about Grandma was that she was into ‘spiritism’. This immediately made me interested. I found instead that my family wanted me to understand that ‘mean’ women mess with the spirits, and vice versa. Beyond that, mouths clamped shut.
Allow me to keep track of the words: Witch. Slut. Spiritist.
To my family’s dismay, I started to take city buses. I cannot resist public transportation, no matter how dangerous. Who does not want to go upwards of 20 miles for cents on the dollar? It also gave me time with another book on this journey: Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution by Mona Eltahawy. Eltahawy is a polarizing figure in the Middle East. Since her incendiary article in Foreign Policy, critics have called her many things. Many of the critiques of her article are fair. Misogyny is not inherent in Islam, a point she is careful to make in Headscarves and Hymens. So let me be clear here as well: no one’s country or religion makes them a terrible human being. If someone does not treat people well, it is likely due to a history of abuse, ignorance or patriarchy.
Eltahawy takes issue with certain interpretations of Islamic law and those clerics who use it to oppress others. She has never stopped being a Muslim woman and continues to practice her faith while still identifying as a feminist. She was all anyone could talk about for a solid part of 2012. She sparked an important conversation, nonetheless. Respect must be shown to the ‘mad’ woman who calls out injustice, even if she is on her own. After all, don’t we all go a bit mad when we aren’t listened to?
Witch. Slut. Spiritist. Mad.
On those brand new buses into the city, I cried reading Eltahawy’s words. She has always been unafraid to call the discriminatory personal status laws in the Middle East and North Africa hatred. These are laws that cover family issues such as marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. What concerns Eltahawy and many other human rights critics is that these laws are biased against women, queer folx and free speech. They vary between region, country and cleric. In severe cases, women are required to marry their rapists. Generally, they are wards of their fathers or husbands. Sex outside of marriage is illegal across the region, particularly if it is queer. Consequences for free speech and political dissent have, of course, grown stronger since 2011.
Do not be mistaken, I was not crying because I was reading about gender discrimination on a bus in the Sahara. And believe me, there are an overwhelming number of incidents of sexual harassment on buses and train cars like it. I cried because I had lived that discrimination, even as a first-generation American. Hate may be legal in the cities of North Africa but it lived in the White Baptist halls of the schools I went to in the United States of America. I cried from bearing the weight of that hateful gaze no matter where I was.
Since I have been back in these United States, it has become harder and harder to deny how heavy that weight is. The Supreme Court confirmation hearings, for example, have been pure spectacle. Citizens have a right to judge all public servants based on their treatment of those more vulnerable than they are. We rarely do that, though. Private conversations in kitchens and coffee shops do not count. I mean actually holding our representatives, our colleagues, our bosses, our friends to account for how they treat others. Yes, #MeToo and all that but, have you noticed how hard it is to make the accused face actual consequences?
It is difficult to make someone face their mistakes. The more public, the more like a circus it becomes. I will be a tad bit more US-centric here: it has been difficult to charge anyone in the Trump administration with anything. By anything, I mean the full spectrum of tax evasion to rape. I mention this because of how many times I have heard someone in that circus say the word ‘witch-hunt’. I had trouble understanding who exactly the witches were: were they the ones who accuse or were they the ones being accused? It was a special kind of twisted to hear wealthy, prominent white men compare their public scrutiny to a hate crime. That is what witch-hunts are folks:hate crimes. Guess what? The numbers do not support the idea that prominent white men are being hunted.
This graph was originally printed in The Economist but don’t let the article fool you. Take a look at how hate crime rates have grown since 2015.
I am left with the same question: who were the witches? The numbers in the graph above would suggest they weren’t white men in 2015, especially in the United States.
A portion of the infographic published by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
If we take a more global look, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights shows that the most hunted were not women in 2016. Many identified as women, many did not, most were queer, and a great deal were brown or black. Humanity has so much fear and hate for more than just women who are different. What was it exactly that they had for us to be afraid of?
It is strange, but the word that comes to mind is power. Humans are tribal and more often than not, we kill or maim what we are afraid of. Sometimes, for brief beautiful moments in time, we rally together and rage against hate crimes and turn the world upside down. Sometimes, we stop hunting witches and we become them.
I would like to add another word to that list I was keeping track of: Witch. Slut. Spiritist. Mad. Revolutionary. That is what I ask those of you who feel rage and dismay to become. If you are feared for being different, for simply being what you know in your soul you are, you are a witch. You are a revolutionary. You have the power to protect one another. You have the power to create community. You have the power to reject courts and systems that do not serve you. You and I are the ones who grant them authority. Let us not do that anymore, shall we? Our time will be much better spent creating.