Gendercide In Seventeenth Century Europe

This essay will asses how appropriate the label ‘gendercide’ is in reference to the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In order to do this, this essay will discuss in detail how ‘witches were found and tried, what exactly a ‘witch’ was, and what their punishments were. Witch-hunts were widespread in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe had seen many changes within societies; this was mainly due to religion, neighbourly relations and economic motivations. The reformation, and then after the counter reformation took place during this period and people were changing their religious loyalties, this caused great tensions between people in Europe as religion was profoundly important to them at the time. Witch-hunts occurred within both faiths, in Catholic and Protestant countries, and the belief that witches existed extended throughout all social classes. Scotland had one of the largest witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries. To label The ‘witch hunts’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a ‘gendercide’ would be very appropriate. The number of people killed during the witch-hunts is not definite, many historians argue over the figures, however it is believed to lye between 40,000 to 1 million. The majority of the deaths were understood to be women, although 25% of those accused of being witches , were in fact men, although greater focus was put on the prosecution, trials and executions of many innocent women which shall be discussed later on in this essay. A witch was classified as a person who not only performed harmful magic, but who also made a pact with the devil, and paid some sort of homage to him. A lot of the accused witches were old, poor and unattractive women living on the edge or margins of society. Interestingly, the pact between a witch and the devil, was of sexual nature. According to news from Scotland “the witches have confessed themselves that the devil doth lick them with his tongue in some privy part of their body” this had been claimed during the trial of Ms Agnes Sampson, an accused ‘witch’, who had been tortured into confession. “she had all her hair shaved off and her head thrawn, she refused to confess to anything, until the devils mark was found upon her privities , she then admitted anything that was demanded of her.” The woman had clearly been tortured into confession. It had been said that the devil left a mark on a witch in an area which would be very hard to find, and so, like Agnes Sampson, many women were shaved and searched thoroughly in order to find this mark. Agnes Sampson was thrawn, or wreched with a rope which inflicted an inexplicable level of pain upon the accused woman. Males had been permitted to shave a woman on trials entire body- an access which in todays world would be wholly unacceptable, and would never have been granted. The woman in society was viewed as the lower sex, and the males of the time believed they had some sort of right to do whatever they wanted to a Woman’s body, which is sexism at its finest, and explains why these witch-hunts can be branded as a gendercide. Although the witch hunts were ultimately based on sexism and of the torturing of women as mentioned earlier, the stories of the women’s sexual acts with the devil are simply fascinating, and very elaborate. It was said that the sperm of the devil was extremely cold- akin to his …show more content…
They were easily targeted in the society in which the witch hunts occurred. Even today witches are presumed to be women, when people dress up for Halloween, we don’t associate men with the witch costumes, in films and tv shows it is the same, frankly witches are perceived as women. The treatment of women during the witch-hunts, which have been described in this essay are harrowing, and the thought of such treatment toward women seems inhumane in todays world. The witch hunts could not be described more accurately, than being a mass murder of women- The witch hunts were a brutal persecution of the female sex, and as proven in this essay, nothing short of a