The “Feminist Gendercide Narrative” of the Burning Times

If you’re one of the people who regularly refers to the periods of (inaccurate) “Pagan history” like The Inquisition, The Burning Times, and The Witch Trials as some feminist gendercide narrative I will automatically want to throttle you before you open your mouth... You know the one…

“Oh all those poor subjugated women. Women who killed because they were innocent healers and midwives. Poor victims of the patriarchy! Poor victims of evil patriarchal Christianity and their need to get rid of the old ways of the womenfolk.”

Every time I hear this narrative it makes me want to rip my hair out of my skull. This period of history was not some large anti-woman campaign to eradicate the female sex. It was not a campaign to end “the old religion” or “old ways of thinking”…. Some of these things didn’t even exist in the first place (example: The “Old Religion”. No. It didn’t exist. Stop that). Other things are just ridiculous (like the anti-woman, anti-midwife narrative).

“But Anna, most of the victims of these periods were largely women!!!!”

No one is arguing that females didn’t make up the largest number of victims, or that women in these areas weren’t undervalued members of society- thus making them easy targets; Yes, the bulk of estimated victims across all of Europe during the entire course of all three periods of history are historically believed to have been primarily female (but if you’ll be so kind as to note the words “estimated” and “entire course of […] history”) and there most certainly is a feminist issue here that must be looked at (pro-tip: That’s only the fact that women were undervalued and discriminated against, which isn’t the issue we’re talking about here).

But here’s the thing:  Narratives like the Gendercide narrative ignore the bulk of historical information on these periods. It ignores the act that Europe's population was decimated by multiple Plagues and also largely gloss over the sociopolitical atmosphere of Europe- as well as the large number of male victims (of which, most were Priests or other high ranking Church officials).

But most of all, it focuses on Women in rural settlements that predominantly worked as healers when the reason that the largest number of female victims were, overall, “folk healers” in country-ish settlements can very easily be explained. Want to know the explanation? It’s because Europe was in the middle of religious war and extreme political turmoil- which actually explains a lot over the entire course of these 3 periods but we’re going to focus on the feminist’s “gendercide” narrative they’ve turned these periods into. And what matters there in terms of the FGN is that when the power in Europe shifted from the Catholics to the Protestants and the Protestant Reformation period began, Protestants closed all of the Convents.

What’s a Convent and why does this matter? Because most Convents of the time were Nunneries (their male counterparts are called Monasteries); “Christian communities under monastic vows, esp. one of nuns. A building or group of buildings in which nuns live as a religious community; a convent”. People of the cloth often went to Convents at young-ish ages and spent upwards of their whole lives there; since these women were often women of the cloth from a young age- and largely women were uneducated at the time- it means that mostly they would have only been trained in things which would render services to the communities they served (if their Convent served one).

Now, For those of you who don’t know, the bulk of Catholic Convents in those historical periods primarily provided medical care for their communities. Thus, the women in these Convents would have been mostly trained healers of one sort or another. Healing, therefore, would have been the only true “marketable skill” that they had outside of maybe small things like sewing (which is was less socially valuable than medicine).  In case you need another refresher in history though, women were by and large not allowed to practice or be trained in medicine back then. When those Convents closed, that put the women leaving the Convents in  a bit of a pickle. It meant that there was an influx of women back into the greater population who were trained in something the average woman was not allowed to have access to- all of them with nowhere to go. Because of this, when they left the Convents they turned to where their services (the only thing they had been really trained to do their whole lives: healing) were needed most- which was, largely, rural areas with little to no existing medical availability.

Why is that a big deal though? For this one, we need a bit of a thing called perspective… Which might be hard to get for those who haven’t lived in similar communities. The closest thing I have to compare it to, though, is my own upbringing.

I come from a rural farmer’s town in the middle of nowhere a-la North-Central Oklahoma. The bulk of my community is southern, Christian, middle class, white farmerfolk. This area, on  base level, is not so different than the communities these women would have been integrated into. For anyone who has ever lived the small town life like me, you know what the largest problem is with this scenario already without needing it spelled out for you. For those of you who have never had the privilege of living in rural farmers’ settings, let me explain it to you: Communities like these are extremely small, and extremely close knit; everyone knows everyone, you can’t walk 5 feet without running into 20 people you know, gossip travels fast and can be twice as damaging, and they’re generally traditional and ‘a little behind on the times” compared to larger cities, and are stuck in their ways to boot. There is nothing nastier, sometimes, than introducing someone new into these small, tight knit communities. The only thing that can be nastier is someone managing to fall victim to their community’s scorn. Trust me. What’s worse is that it’s very easy to fall under their scornful gaze. All you have to do is “not be like them” in some miniscule form.

So now that we’ve covered that, I want you go back to that era with this perspective. For all that I loathe using Wikipedia as a source, their page on Women during the (Protestant) Reformation actually has some great sources listed and does a pretty good job of explaining why all of this is even an issue in terms of Women’s societal roles during those periods. Now amplify that scorn today by  quite a number in that era, where women are still considered property, their primary purpose is to find a husband and bear him lots of children, and they were not allowed to be educated, practice medicine, nor own property, etc, and you should see where the main issue should lay in this scenario.

Think about it. You have semi-educated, medically trained females with no lands or other property, no home, and no real existing families- who are providing a service that it is technically illegal for them to provide. They were previously women of the cloth who lived in Convents close to their whole lives and are thus completely unknown to the small, close knit communities they integrated into. They’ve also taken vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty that they more than likely won’t break (oath to God and all that jaz). Not only that, but most are also more than likely too old to marry and provide children anyways even if they did break their oaths. They also don’t have many other skills that make them valuable members in these communities (aside from their medicine, which they’re technically NOT supposed to practice outside of a convent).

Now they have several things working against them which all but guarantees their roles as victims during these trials:

• Their society, yes, was largely anti-woman at its core- meaning women were more likely to be targeted as a whole in the first place.
  
  
• They had already been previously victimized by the Protestant closing of their Convents- making it far more likely for them to be a repeat victim.
  
  
• They were new to these communities- making them unknown outsiders, which are more likely to be the subject of gossip, intense social scrutiny, and getting blamed when things go wrong.
  
  
• They did not coincide with or follow how these communities viewed womens’ roles, making them “unwanted” outsiders to boot- and those who were considered “unwanted” members of society were more often than not subject the most to accusations of witchcraft.
  
  
• They were Catholic in an era where the large part of Europe had already converted to Protestant, and the Catholics and Protestants were currently at war.

There were a lot of complex things that factored into these women ending up the majority victims of these events.

“But Anna, everything you wrote supports the feminist gendercide narrative!”

No it does not. The Inquisition? The Burning times? The Witch Trials? These themselves were not Anti-Woman gendercide. And if you think what I just wrote backs up the FGN you weren’t paying attention, so let me break it down for you.

Firstly, there is absolutely NO historical data what-so-ever that backs up the feminist Gendercide narrative. None at all except the large estimated number of female victims overall- across tonnes of countries and their different (but similar) events- which has already been historically explained. The fact that there was a sudden influx of them after the Convents were closed by the Protestants probably didn’t help anything for the numbers of women who were targeted. In fact, it’s generally believed that if the Convents had not closed (among other factors not covered by the FGN), the overall number of estimated female victims would have been far lower than it turned out to be.

Secondly, was European society largely anti-woman at it’s foundation? YES! Most definitely!  These Women would have embodied everything considered “socially unacceptable” for women at the time, and thus would likely have been considered an “unwanted” member of the community and society, with their undervalued status already making them easier and more common and probably targets. Is this a Feminist issue? Most certainly. But it's not the right one that the FGN focuses on; No one is arguing that overall their society was largely anti-woman. No one is arguing that. No one is saying that it (read: their inherently anti-woman stance, and the lack of value placed on women) didn’t contribute to the ease at which women were made the victims of these events. 

But that does not mean that these events themselves were explicitly anti-woman gendercides. India and China's practice of murdering newborn females simply because they're female is gendercide. Women making up a disproportionate amount of the victims because of socio-political turmoil and a culture which inherently devalues women does not mean that an entire group of events were specifically Anti-Woman or that the people carrying out these actions were specifically out to target women as it’s victims, meant to eradicate women, etc., by proxy. If that were the case, then there would have been less- if any- male victims and historical records show us otherwise on all accounts.

All it means is that Women were already undervalued in their society which made it more likely for them to be targeted in the first place because they were already practically the lowest rung of society and did not have things in place to protect them from becoming victims. There is a hug and glaring difference and it’s a lot more complicated than that... But that’s not even the main point.

And don't get me wrong, here. The main point is not to say that Women were not disproportionately targeted, or that they suffered no injustices, or that there were not Feminist issues that need to be addressed. They were, they did, and there most certainly are. But the main point is to say that specifically the Feminist Gendercide Narrative itself ignores historical data, undervalues and ignores what happened at large in favor of the overall result, oversimplifies a period of history that involves far more than just the Burning Times itself, and ignores the bulk of what these Women went through before they were even targeted as victims of the trials.

It washes over the fact that they (specifically the majority of the female victims) weren't the "poor innocent Folk Healers" they are made out to be in these narratives- but were, by and large, Catholic women who spent upwards of their whole lives in those Convents only to be kicked out of their homes and completely uprooted from essentially the only life they had known (one in service to their God, often doing extremely important community services); It washes over the fact that they were forced to those rural communities against their will, because those were the only places left that they could survive; the only areas left where they could practice what was basically the only thing they were trained to do their entire lives – even if that thing was illegal and socially “wrong” for them to have been trained in it; It washes over the fact that these communities then turned on them too… Not because they were women, but because they were- in multiple ways- outsiders to these well established and extremely close-knit communities; outsiders who did not socially fit into those communities due to their history; And it does it in favor of martyring them as some poor, helpless folk healers who were targeted by an evil patriarchal society because of no other fact than they were women- and that wasn’t why, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Yet the FGN erases all of the victimization that led up to and made it easier for them to become victims of these trials in the first place.

Turning these periods of history into some “anti-midwife”, “anti-woman”, feminist narrative not only does the victims a huge injustice but these narratives are also wildly inaccurate and ignore about 90% of the actual historical data from that area. These periods weren’t a mass and intentional“gendercide” of the female populace by a group of angry men who were hell bent on eradicating women and their “healing practices”. This wasn’t some anti-woman campaign. They became victims not because of some evil patriarchal scheme against women like these feminist gendercide narratives try to scream that they were, but because they were easy targets in the first place when a continent split by heavy political and religious unrest needed someone to blame.

What are these periods of history? They are narratives about why more should be done to protect the undervalued and already marginalized in our society to keep them from further being victimized. They are narratives about human and communal nature, how humans and communities perceive threats, and how mass hysteria and hive mind kills and can turn deadly in a second. They are narratives about what happens to those deemed “outsiders” in our communities when the going gets tough, and the issues of “othering” people in the first place. But more importantly these periods are are an important social narrative about greed, corruption, power, and the exploitation of others. They are narratives about how power corrupts, and the lengths people will go through to get what they want when it does.

The fact is and remains that they weren’t victims just because they were semi-educated female healers; these periods in history are most certainly not a feminist gendercide narrative. It’s a huge injustice to the victims to simplify it into some historically inaccurate feminist narrative about a "gendercide" that never happened.