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“Having a female body was the factor most likely to render one vulnerable to being called a witch…the truth about the majority of persons accused of [witchcraft]: old, unattractive, disliked, and FEMALE.”

Witchcraze: A New History of European Witch Hunts by Anne Llewellyn Barstow

The past few months the GOP has waged a war on women that places them firmly in bed with religious lobbyists, treating women like they are subhuman all in the name of patriarchal religion. Nearly every day I’ve read the news and felt the GOP is taking us back to Colonial New England where women were targeted by powerful clergy and government officials for having a female body and because they were supposedly “sexually insatiable.” Women were burned at the stake for being “witches” or “heretics”, sometimes just for standing up to the church. What’s so different about today? Instead of a stake, women’s job security is being threatened in Arizona over birth control. Instead of buring women alive, there’s government mandated rape. Every few days there’s another attack and these attacks are specifically aimed at females and their sexuality.

Since long before the Colonial New England days there have been witch hunts and nearly all those accused of witch craft had one trait in common: they were female. In the 1400’s the Malleus Malfarcas was published as a treatise to be able to recognize and punish women for witch craft. Men weren’t as often punished because “women were addicted to the sin.” Women were widely believed ...