Exploring Witchcraft in Puritan Society

All right. So first we have to start with some basic ground rules about this witchcraft stuff. One, Puritans didn't understand witches like we do. Like if you could see my hat, like women who ran around with purple or black hats and rode on brooms. Okay? That's a much later thing . There's some of the stuff that says its older and European some of it's later but it's not how they understood witches. They thought they were minions of satan, bitches who hung with satan and and some dudes as we'll see. Um, um but then here's the thing we have to agree to: Just hold on with me. I'm not treating you like you're stupid, but we have to agree to this. Can we agree that for the purposes of this lecture witches do not exist. Okay, I'm not saying that pagans don't exist, that wiccans don't exist, that history professors with purple hats don't exist, but rather that real live witches who can do magic and sign pacts with satan do not exist. Okay? Good? All right ,having agreed that we need to keep in mind for the rest of the lecture that what we're talking about here is women and some men being accused of something they were not. Ergo, we know right off , right up front something else was going on there. Okay yeah we got that. But we can also ( we're getting this?) Yeah. Look, there it is. If you think well that's just stupid why why would anybody want to do that? Um, well Idon't know why anybody would dance naked in the woods. i guess because it's fun. Uh well probably they didn't. Why did puritans think that witches went out in the woods and danced naked? Well because it's a fundamental challenge to male authority, right? Women out at night, unsupervised by men, dancing around naked, that's just engaging in a sort of free-form sexuality. Again, without the supervision of male authority. You get some cases of of accusations that the witch possessed me. They believe that witches like to possess two groups of women, young girl ,not two groups of women, two groups of people. The first group would be young women. They thought that a witch if you were a young woman, say 14 to 24 is the usual age range, and you wanted to say that a witch possessed you, what would you have done? How would we know? Well if any of you had ever been possessed by a witch. under the witch's possession you would be a bad girl . You would say and do naughty things, um and then later on you'd be like, "It wasn't my fault! I didn't ask Johnny to look at my special pink parts, because I'm a bad girl. I asked Johnny to look at my special pink parts because i was possessed by a witch. I's not my fault!" Okay so yeah. We got that Also they uh, Witches,, sometimes or the Puritans thought they did (because remember none of this is real), uh thought that women would, that witches would occasionally possess adult men. And witches, they thought did two things to adult men. First they would hag ride them. That is hag being a synonym for WITCH that is that a witch would possess a man and when you were being possessed by a witch, guys. you wouldn't know it because she would have possessed your mind and your body. So you wouldn't remember it the next morning. So how would you know that a witch had taken you out and ridden you around the village like a pony? That is hag ridden you? Well, you ever wake up and your knees hurt and your shoulders hurt? Or your back hurts and you're like, "Man I've been laying in bed and I feel crummy and everything hurts." Well the only explanation is that you were possessed by a witch and she took you out and and she rode you around like a pony. Yeah sure ! Okay, also they thought witches like to possess adult men and ( brace yourself)... force men to have sex against their will! Oh don't you hate it when that happens? So, we can joke, but essentially forcing people to have sex against their will is rape and it's not funny. Right okay. But there was a notion that witches, adult witches, would sneak into men's rooms possess their minds and bodies so you wouldn't know the next day, uh that you'd been forced to have sex against your will. So how would you know? How would you know? How could you say, "She did this to me," when you'd been possessed and you theoretically didn't have a memory? Well, and and i don't know... let's see if any of the guys know about this... You ever wake up at night and you've had, I don't know, like sexy dreams and there's, a you know. a nocturnal emission there in the bed and you're like, "Wait where did that come from?" Well probably a witch possessed you and had sex with you. There's no other explanation. Okay so and if you're thinking well those are all stupid, there were ways to for for the culture to explain a bunch of things. For young women the notion was that young women who made these accusations. it was a way for young women to attack older women and we'll talk about that later, about why young women would want to do that. For men it was a way to talk about dangerous female sexuality and and to demon literally demonize women with their own uh hidden and maybe not that hidden sexual desires. And I DO NOT want you to write these charts down. I do not want you to memorize these charts. What I want you to do: each chart will have a a checklist, a thing, a punch line, a thing we need to learn from that so.... This chart for example um we're going to learn, we're going to learn a few things from this chart. And one of the things we're going to learn is that most most witches were women. I'm trying to get my pen to work without me stopping the recording clock. Hold on while I see if i can do that. Nope didn't work Okay. I don't know, It's not working. So anyway, you're gonna have to just trust me. So we see from this chart that historically most witches were women. Oh and by the way if you're wondering, I didn't come up with these charts. They're from a book by a woman named Carol Carlson, a book called Devil in the Shape of a Woman. And Carol Carlson in the 80s is the very first American historian to examine witchcraft with an eye to gender. That is, she's the very first historian to say, what is it about witches that's about women. No one else had done that. There were all these theories. Maybe it was about where people lived; Maybe it was about people's social and class location. Nobody had said why are most of the accused women? Um and what we find out from this chart is that most of the people accused of witchcraft were indeed women. It literally won't let me use the pen anymore, so I don't know what to say, but if you'll see in that top corner...Oh, by the way over there you'll see accused, tried, convicted and executed. I call that the hierarchy of seriousness. So accused, oh no you're a witch. Tried, you went on trial for being a witch. Convicted , you were found guilty of being a witch and executed... Oh no, you're dead. And what we see there is that most of the people who are accused, tried, convicted and executed for witchcraft are women. Okay you're thinking I didn't need a chart for that, Peg . I'm not stupid, but the reality is we get a lot of stuff about american history wrong. So we never ever want to think we know the answer, we always want to check. So here we have we've checked. So think, if you were taking notes, I think the first thing you're going to make (we're going to make a list now) the first thing we put on our list is: Most witches were women. Keeping in mind that these people weren't really witches. right? So most accused witches were women but also. notice over there under the male category, that column that we do have 75 accused uh male witches. 13 tried and 7 convicted and 7 executed. So the second thing you can write there is: Some witches were women okay no some witches were men. Most witches were women Thing one. Thing two: some witches were men. Okay good ,there's a couple things and we're not gonna spend this much time on any other chart, but this one. See that under females it says we have 45 convicted witchcraft so 45 times the the church elders, who would be the guys running the trials, said that woman's a witch. She has allied with satan, she has done these bad things, but then they only executed 28 of them. Which means they suffered 13 witches to live. Oh and by the way a note about the numbers these aren't all of the witches that were ever, or all the women who were ever accused. These are all the records that Carol Karlson could find, because this stuff happened 400 years ago and records disappear. So we know that the numbers were larger than this, but this is what this is what she could find going through the archives and counting up. Okay okay! So we have some witches convicted of witchcraft but they're not executed. That's interesting and if we were in class I'd say, "Why do you think that is?" And you'd make a number of guesses and I would say no no no until somebody got it right. The right answer is that they would sometimes let a woman say, "I'm really sorry for being a witch and i'll never do it again," and they would they would not execute her. And then they just make her live in the community as kind of a pariah, a woman who admitted to being a witch and she becomes kind of a signal lesson about what happens if you go bad. So 13 of these women, they decided to let live. And then the question is, "What which 13? Why? And we're going to get to that and indeed if you did the reading you probably kind of already know. On the other hand if you go over to the man column you'll notice we have seven convicted men and seven executed men. So i would ask you in class why do you think they let about a third of the convicted women live but none of the convicted men? And the answer would be this and you can probably guess it so if you want to take a second pause it and think about it and then see if you're right okay. Here's the answer the answer is that, Puritans assumed that even in witchcraft, you might think well, God that's too bad, they believe in witchcraft, but at least they believe that women could have power. Turns out not so much. It turns out that they figured any place where there was a large number of witches there was probably a man witch in charge. A man witch, (Hahaha) that is, that even female witches had male bosses. And so the notion was that these male witches were the leaders and thus really really needed to be executed. Also in a world of patriarchy and coverture, while that all sounds really good for the dudes, the bad news is and and the guys listening this lecture can tell you this, is that patriarchy is burdemsome to men. It creates this high standard of behavior for men and a high punishment level for men who fail to be sufficiently manly. So the notion was that, yeah women are sub-human inferior possessions ,non-human creatures and yeah you expect them to hang out with Satan and dance naked in the woods and and be sexually naughty and et cetera et cetera because they're animals. But men men are the real humans and the men should have known better. So there's two things there with the men one this notion that they were leaders and two that the crime for a man was larger because men should have known better. So if we were making our list first, most witches were women, second ,we have some man witches, three, sometimes women were allowed to say"I'm super sorry," and not be executed. We don't know why yet. Four, all right uh so the guys don't feel left out uh the man witches. What we find out about ma witch, is if we ask what kind of guys were most likely to be accused and executed for witchcraft, what we see here is that while we have the largest accused numbers under dudes under 40, right uh 18 there and then 12 and four for in the 40s and 50s and four for over 60, when you get down to the executed there's a zero for under 40. And for and the only executed dudes are under the 40 to 59 and over 60. Which tells us that executed man witches tended to be old dudes. And then I would ask you why do you think they were more likely to find old dudes guilty of being witches and execute them? And the answer would be this: it's really....you want to say it's because old men are more powerful and thus more dangerous, but it turns out that's not the answer. The puritan society 90 of these people are farmers. This is gut-wrenching physical work, um in a world with no social security, no 401ks. no retirement. Old people are a burden on the community. So old men are vulnerable because the society doesn't need him as much and so they're far more likely to be accused and executed as witches. Which is really pretty freaking depressing. It turns out that early America was a bad place to grow old and we'll talk about that again when we look at the witchcraft video and then the handout. Not the witchcraft, the midwife video and the handout that goes with that in a couple of weeks. Right. Okay, next slide. So what's the deal with the accusers? First we'll look at people who made accusations of possession and we what we find out is that the people who made accusations of possession were far more people who made accusations of possession, were most likely to be dudes. I mean most likely to be women. I'm sorry as soon as i said dudes, I was like, "What?" No. They were most likely to be women and they were far more likely... look where single and women come together see the 42? They were most likely to be single women which is another way of saying young women and this makes sense. Young women would be more likely to say. "I was possessed by a witch ,that woman's a witch she possessed me." While the puritans believe that witches possessed men we don't have very big numbers in the man column and it's probably this and again the guys and if we were in the room the guys could tell you if you're a dude the last thing you want to do is go before your homies, your posse ,your bros and worse the community authorities and say yeah some bitch made me her, some witch made me her bitch. Right. So even if you believe you've been possessed by a witch men were less likely to make that accusation in open court than young women. Young women could say, "I'd been possessed " because young women didn't have any power to start with. Okay? Now i actually think that's part of what makes the witchcraft stuff interesting. Here we have young women accusing other women of witchcraft. So this isn't just a matter of men doing bad things to women. This is a matter of women helping men do bad things to women and that's interesting to me and it should be interesting to you because it complicates how we think about oppression. All right so the thing we want to take away from this slide is that the accusers who made claims of possession were most likely young women. Young women made accusations of possession. Then there's non-possession. So what are the big numbers there? Where are they? Look for them. Do you see them? Yeah! Married men. Okay, so married men were more likely to make non-possessed accusations. So righ? She ruined my crop she ruined my cows indeed remember I told you that is by far the the most common accusation. Hold on I think my husband's home.Ii'll be right back all right . I'm back sorry about that. Not that you had any time thing, but when my husband my husband comes home all the dogs bark and there's FOUR dogs and that's a lot of barking and then you know you gotta say, "Hi nice to see you." Anyway etc etc So where were we? Non-possessed accusers,.... So okay, again big numbers there at married men. So again, that makes sense. Men own the property, men would make the act whether or not women and men both worked farms the farm legally belonged to me. Men were more likely to make accusations of possession and that makes sense. All right, um so so with the thing we're going to write down there is that the most likely accusers of non-possession stuff were married men. Now let's stop for a second think about this. If we think about what we know about Puritans and coverture and patriarchy and the position of men and women. We could have guessed that in terms of power, married men were fairly high on the power-- if we thought of power as a thermometer right? With high middle low, we'd imagine that married men were kind of high up. I could wave my arms in the air right now, but you can't see me. Um so there's that, but if we go back to the previous slide, which I don't want to do but if we did, and we looked at young women and I said, "where do you think they are in terms of power?" We'd say well they're probably pretty low because they're women and they're young women, they're unmarried women, uh low. So now now we have something kind of interesting. Indeed I think more than kind of interesting. We have a powerful group, married men and a not powerful group, young single women, cooperating together to oppress some group of women we have not yet identified. That's interesting because we often think about oppression as working like one group does it to another group. But here we have two groups in very different power positions, married men young women, cooperating together ...well that's weird.... to possess a third to oppress a third group. Interesting! Now you can see why we're having this lecture. Because if this is just this slide, look married men accused women of being witches, yeah yeah that sucks, But I don't get out of bed for that stuff. Oh look in the past men were mean to women. Really? Oh thanks Peg. Thank god we have college. Okay so not that. This other thing the powerful group, the not powerful group, that's interesting. Good. Well, it's interesting to me. You're gonna have to play along. Here's another one. This is a tiny bit complicated. I always mean to rework this the wording on this slide so we understand it better but I don't um because every time i rework it it doesn't get any better. It's just a tiny bit complicated. So Carol Karlson was trying to figure out how it was that some women ended up being accused of witchcraft and how it was some women ended up executed and some women did not. And she tried she plugged in a ton of things was it were they married? Nope. Was it that they they were rich or poor? Nope. Was it where they lived? Nope. Until she came along this... Were the women, these female witches, again remembering they're not actually witches, but these women who had been accused of being witches, did they have brothers and sons or not? So a woman with brothers or sons is a woman who has heirs. So if I have brothers or sons when my husband or dad dies my brothers or sons will inherit the stuff. Not me. Okay, but if I do not have heirs, see that column with no heirs? If I do not have heirs there are no brothers or sons then when my dad dies, or my husband dies, I inherit the stuff. You see that? So women with no heirs means no male heirs, means women who are going to inherit and women with male heirs are women who are not going to inherit. And if we look at that Witches with no heirs column you can see that women were slightly, women with no heirs who stood to inherit property usually a farm but not always, were 61 percent more likely to be accused of witchcraft. 64 percent more likely to be tried for witchcraft. 76 times more, so three quarters of convicted women. were women who were going to inherit property and oh my god look at the executed line! 90% 9 out of 10 dead witches were women who had inherited or were going to inherit property. Oh that's super interesting. So if we went back to that slide about how some women were executed and some were not, we could look and find out and indeed she did and we could find out that the women who were allowed to live fell in that "with heirs" category. That is they were women who had male heirs who weren't going to inherit anything. But women who were going to inherit things were way more likely to be accused of witchcraft, way more likely to go through the process found guilty and be executed. Then let me ask you this-- so say I'm a witch I have no brothers or sons I inherit my husband's farm. It's mine. I got no brothers or sons uh my community accuses me of witchcraft, finds me guilty and executes me. What happens to my farm? Ya got it. Yeah. The state gets it. Or the government gets it, but remember this is a theocracy where the church is the government and the church elders are the ones deciding whether or not I'm guilty. So the church elders, knowing I and the sole heir, there's no heirs from my farm execute me and then the church, headed up by the church elders gets the farm. OOOOOh. That's super interesting Huh, so now we're not talking just about religious dysfunction or at least we're talking about sort of maybe a classic religious dysfunction which is religion used to enrich some people and to control people. Right? So you get rid of some troublesome woman and you get her stuff. That's a win-win. We take these women who are potential inheritors or maybe they already have inherited. They've got a little bit of community power because they're now ... they are see remember if their inheritors and their husband or father are dead now they are "femme sole" they own a farm, they have a little bit of power, what does the church do? They say, "oh you must be a witch" and they execute them. You get rid of the powerful woman and you score her property! YEAAA!!! (Clapping) Okay one more Slide. The last one is the only one without the sort of the witchcraft. Instead you have over there look at the column under time period. It says, there's the 1630s and 40s the 1650s and 60s the 70s the 80s and the 1690s. So we have here the colony getting going from being the 1630s to being said. We have a colony covering a century of time.Right? So the colony chronologically maturing and and it turns out when men wrote their wills when men wrote their wills there were two ways they could write their wills. They could leave their wife ownership of the farm. "Im a man, I own a farm, I'm writing my will , I could say when I die my wife gets the farm. When she dies we'll give it to my sons or you could say my wife gets "Use Value". That is, I'm going to leave my farm to my son but my wife gets to live on the farm until she dies. And and if you're thinking well there's really no difference there is. Owning things gives you power. So they're in the 1630s and 40s in the very beginning years of the colony, men were about 50 percent as likely, about half of men respected their wives enough to leave their wives their property. And the other half of men were like no I'm gonna I'm gonna pass her up, because she's just a woman and give the stuff to my so. And what happens as you go down that thing, is you find out that about half the men leaving the property to jump down to the bottom of that ownership column where it says 25. About only a quarter of men respecting their wives enough to leave them property. So what that chart tells us is that women in Puritan society were losing power over time and I like that chart because it tells us something opposite from the way we understand American history. That is we understand American history generally to be: Every decade we get better, everybody gets more power, every decade things get better for women, brown people everybody. And it turns out (and you probably know this), it turns out not to be true. And indeed what we see here with this chart very clearly is that over time women in Puritan society are losing power. Okay? So it's true that if things are getting better in Puritan society and they may very well be, they're getting better for somebody, but not for women. Who are they getting better for? You're right.... MEN. So yeah depends on who you ask the question about. You can also guess outside of this whole thing that things are not getting better for the Indigenous people and that things are not getting better for the people they import from Africa. So the ONLY group of people things are getting better for in this society is men. And particularly property owning men. Okay. So that's a very different thing. So again, the the last point we want here is that Puritan women were losing power over time and here's the other thing we can know about that ...if if you belong to a group that's losing power. like say Hispanic Americans in the Trump era, if you you're in that group you not only you know you're in that group, you know that your group is losing power at that moment and you don't like it. When when your group is losing power you know it and you don't like it. No group likes to lose power. Easy. peasy, so we can also guess that women knew that they were losing power over time. They weren't stupid. They're just as smart as you and me. Okay. All right so here here's our big sum up: i'm gonna i'm gonna read through it briefly but you feel free to pause it and this is where you need to catch up on your notes, okay? But anyway, first thing most witches were women. Yeah. Second thing: there were some man witches. They were considered dangerous because they were leaders. Yeah. Three, older women were more vulnerable to witchcraft accusations and executions. And remember i said it's because the society didn't need him as much. Four: possessed accusers were most likely young women. A not powerful Puritan group. Five: non-possessed accusers were likely to be adult men, that is a powerful Puritan group. Oh remember how we have the cooperation stuff. Two groups cooperating together to possess a third group opress a third group. Six: women inheritors were way more likely to be executed. That is nine out of ten dead witches were women inheritors. There's the big one. That's my favorite statistic. And seven: Puritan women were losing power over time. Right? Okay, so what does that mean? Oh Peg, I'm exhausted, I'm 41 minutes into this lecture and I'm just exhausted. What's it mean Peg why are you telling me this stuff? Okay well before I go on to the last couple of slides let me tell you this-- You may not remember it but I promised you the first night or the second night that I would never ever lecture you about stuff just for the fun of it. That every lecture would be, I would connect it to something in your life that it would be there would be a point about how you understand the world you live in. And so is the case with this this business about power and witchcraft and I'm particularly interested in why did women collaborate with men to oppress women. I'm not particularly interested in why did men oppress women? In patriarchy men oppress women Not all men. Dudes don't get defensive and upset. I don't think any of you did it, but men as a group oppressed women that's the nature of patriarchy. Okay? So I don't find that interesting. Upsetting, yes, but not particularly interesting. Where this gets interesting is when women collaborate with us and in that we can learn some lessons for our life. So before we go on to that let's let's sum up what all this previous witchcraft. Puritan witchcraft cases were moments of patriarchal control of powerful or potentially powerful women, the inheritors right? And and killing women and getting them out of the way as a way of controlling them. Okay so here's where we get to the nitty-gritty of why you should care about witchcraft cases in colonial America-- so something that happened two, three, four hundred years ago. Ah yeah, why Peg, why? Well it has to do with class status anxiety and stockholm syndrome so we're going to talk about these two things now. And Idon't have a lot of words there except the two things because there are too many words to say so. Class status anxiety is that thing that we all have whether you know it or not, that is we have anxiety anxiety anxiety (aaaahhhh) about our class status. So we all are anxious about where we are in the class ladder or am I in my upper middle class, am I middle class and my lower middle class and my upper working class, am I am I the working poor? Am i rich? We're all anxious about that but the thing that we're really anxious about is about shifting positions in that class status ladder. And it turns out the thing that really makes us anxious isn't what you'd think. That is we talk a lot about moving up the class status ladder. That is why i assume that you're in college, because you want to get some kind of degree so that you can get some kind of better job so that you can paid more so that you can buy more [ __ ] you don't need. Or you know food. Um anyway, but it turns out that's not what keeps us up at night succeeding and moving up the ladder doesn't make us nearly as anxious as our worries about failing and sliding down the ladder. So it's class status anxiety is a thing that sociologists and historians both talk about. That it is about this or fear of sliding down the ladder and then it turns out what we do as human beings and certainly as Americans is in our anxiety about sliding down the class status ladder we project that anxiety on the group below us that we fear joining. This explains for example why so many poor whites hate poor brown people. Because poor whites, in a in a white supremacist society and that's what we live in whether you want to admit it or not, um the only thing poor whites have to feel superior to with poor blacks or poor hispanics or poor asians is at least they're white. But there's all this anxiety about slipping down now poor whites don't wake up and think oh tomorrow I might be black but that I might become um that I that I feel anxious about that I may become even a more even despised member of a society because in the capital society we did we tend and it's not fair we tend to despise people lower on the ladder. Which is one of the reasons we fear falling down. There are a lot of reasons. Simple inability to take care of your family or yourself would be probably the biggest reason right. So class status anxiety is about how we fear moving down the ladder of class status and then project those fears and anxiety which is closely related to hate onto the groups below us. So this helps us explain for example in way back in the witchcraft cases we were just talking about, why young women were so eager to point the finger at older women. That is, why women were willing to help men oppress other women. Class status anxiety. These young women belong to a group that was losing power over time remember the previous slide yeah they didn't like it. Of course they knew it if anyone who's in a group that's losing power knows it. It's one of the reasons the conservative right and white supremacist uh identifying people are so anxious and worked up right now and so hysterical and so willing to believe the very worst things about the left because they understand at the base of it peeps and this is important to know they understand they're losing power in America. Snd this freaks them out. Nobody wants to be in a group that's losing power. Same thing with these young women way back in the witchcraft uh trials. Also uh it explains why women in general are as inclined as men to oppress women. That is, remember the very first lecture i said anyone can be a feminist, men or women. Anyone can be as sexist, men or women. It is not so simple as men are sexist and women are not. Women are feminists. No. Feminists come in both genders. Sexist come in both genders and I would argue that a female sexist is actually worse than a male sexist. Male sexist I understand because there's something in it for yo. The female sexist you're just screwing with your own group. i guess they do it because there is something with it. The thing about class status anxiety is well actually, we'll get to Stockholm Syndrome, but by identifying with a more powerful group, men, women think they can gain power so they curry favor with a more powerful group by oppressing other women. Class status anxiety. Do you get that? It's really it's it is i'm talking about about a whole bunch of things all at once, but sort of essentially, fundamentally, that thing where where groups will hate groups below them. Why is that? Rich whites aren't particularly worked up about black people. And and trust me not for a second is our president either. He does it because there's power in whipping up the people who are anxious about that that's all it's. I'm not saying the guy's not a racist, because if you use that stuff to gain your own power that makes you a racist, but Idon't think I don't think the current president has any strong feelings about anyone besides himself. Because he's got a psychological problem. Nonetheless, Stockholm syndrome is really interesting if we were in class I'd say okay who knows this? And a couple of you would raise your hands and i say okay somebody explain it/ But Stockholm Syndrome was first noticed back in the 60s by some psychologist in Stockholm there was a bank robbery, the bank robbers took captives took uh prisoners took uh what do you call that hostages hostages! And very quickly the hostages, by the end of the day, They were negotiating with the police on behalf of the bank robbers who they have sympathy for. These poor bank robbers they're misunderstood. You should let them go, it's not their fault. That is Stockholm Syndrome and it's Stockholm Syndrome is is for example another way we think about Battered Wife Syndrome-- that is uh women who are abused by their husbands are very likely to also defend their husbands and their husbands actions. This is probably true really for all spouses, but and I recognize that there are in some relationships men who are battered, but I will tell you I live in a country where we only recently decided to care about abusive spouses when we found out some very small number of men were abused. But when it we thought it was just women nobody cared. So I'm still pissed about that. Uh anyway, so Battered Wife Syndrome is sort of that allying yourself with your abuser um children do this with their parents but they have to because children are so dependent. I would argue that wives in many cases are dependent too which is one of the reasons ladies you should get your own job, buy your own stuff, buy your own shiny stuff , and be able to take care of yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't get married. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a spouse, but you shouldn't be dependent. Dependency is dangerous. It relies on the absolute goodness of the person you're depending on and it turns out there's not a ton of absolutely good people out there. And i don't mean absolutely good men i mean absolutely good people because you could be relying on another woman if you're not heterosexual. Right? Anyway so Stockholm syndrome is is is about this thing where we don't like powerlessness so if Im taken hostage in a bank robbery I am at that moment powerless and I don't like that. That my very human nature rebels against the powerlessness of that. And so what i will do is I will search the area for someone powerful to ally myself with. iI i've been taken hostage by guys with guns, then is the guys with guns with power and i will align myself with them so as to lend myself some power to escape the powerlessness which which is extremely upsetting to me or to anyone. So class status anxiety is where people are often people with with little power are often likely to ally themselves with people with power in part to make themselves feel more powerful in part in the hopes that perhaps the powerful will lend them some power. This is generally a false hope, but nonetheless. Stockholm Syndrome then begins to help us understand why for example some poor brown people nonetheless describe themselves as Republicans and if there are any Republicans listening, I do not mean to insult you though I understand I just did but the truth is you can say what you will the truth is the Republican party is not interested in helping poor people or women, so when women or poor people align themselves with the party that is fundamentally only interested in helping the rich they're engaged in Stockholm Syndrome. They're engaged in allying themselves with someone who is abusing them and not going to help them but doing it because it appears like that's where the power is and that's that's maybe they will lend me some. This for me, for me this explains say the rallies of the Predator In Chief-- those aren't powerful people who show up at those and go freaking bug nuts for that guy. So Stockholm Syndrome also helps us understand why women will ally themselves with men against other women, both in the witchcraft cases, and in any time in American history including right now. That is if if the women and men listening to this don't know some woman who hasn't stabbed an individual woman or women in general in the back in some way.... My mother and I love her is a conservative woman who will not vote for women because she doesn't think they should have power. That is a woman who is stabbing women in the back she is saying women aren't fully human um that that is in part about not really stockholm but something like stockholm syndrome where we align ourselves with a powerful group that does not have our best interests in mind whether it's conservative white dudes if you're a woman or a brown person or um um witchcraft accusers if you're a young woman in Puritan New England. It also helps us understand why women in America and if this is something we're talking about race a lot right now and i that I think that's cool iIm a tiny bit frustrated that America is incapable of talking about sexism at the same time because we're also a really sexist nation. The Karen stuff is a super good proof of that. Yeah i get there's some privileged white women who are obnoxious, but the ways in which the society was really really excited, including women, to jump on demonizing women who were while maybe being dickish, but also like for a while there if you were assertive and white you could call the Karen, like i wasn't allowed to be assertive at all anywhere and so it was it was the Karen stuff is a way of keeping women down it is a thing used by other women to keep women down. The stockholm syndrome and class status anxiety help us understand and the witchcraft cases why women oppress women, because that's perplexing and depressing because the reality is people the women make up 51 to 52 of every single population in the world and we always have because we are constitutionally stronger than men so few of us die at birth and we outlive men and we don't outlive men because we don't work as hard and we get to take more naps. We are constitutionally stronger, nature built us that way because we have babies and raise them. So constitutionally strong we're not physically stronger. I can't pick up a 50 pound sack of flour , but um I can withstand a headache better than my husband can. Man you have no idea! Anyway so um these are the these are you're wondering like why, Peg why? Well with the witchcraft lectures because it's part of Colonial American, because it's interesting, why are you still talking about this stuff. Because I think it's super helpful to try and figure out why women remain a second class population in America and why we still don't have women in most positions of power. it's not just men. It's women keeping us down too because we make up a majority. If tomorrow morning all American women stood up and said it ends today sexism, sexual abuse, keeping women out of positions of power it all ends today it would end today. Because ladies we outnumber the men. Trust me they know that um but but it's not that's not going To happen, it's never going to happen because we are divided by so many things there is no group called women that meets on Tuesdays to decide to end sexism sadlY. And we are divided by race, class ,gender, sexuality, all that stuff, religion ,but we're also divided by issues of Class Status Anxiety and Stockholm Syndrome and I think that's helpful because if we can't explain why women why even though we're a majority we're still oppressed then we're left with only two things: either one women really are inferior and that's why we have a second class status still today in America or there's some other really complicated stuff going on. To explain it. And I will tell you this for sure, the complicated answer is almost always the correct answer. IF someone comes to you with a simple clear easy answer to a hard question, why is there racism? why is there sexism? iIf the answer is something simple and clear something that might be offered to you by say an orange man at a rally it's probably the wrong answer because complicated issues require complicated answers. And it's why you have to you have to think you don't have to go to college but you have to think to be a real American it requires you this is a complicated country with complicated problems. and you have to think you have to you have to think. You can't just play with your phone and watch netflix movies you have to think you have to think for yourself which is hard. Anyway Ihave spoken. Next slide

All right.
So first we have to start with some basic ground rules
about this witchcraft stuff. One, Puritans didn't understand witches  like we do. Like if you could see my hat, like women who ran around with purple or
black hats and rode on brooms. Okay? That's  a
much later thing . There's some of the stuff that says its older and European some of it's later but it's not how
they understood witches. They thought they were minions of satan, bitches who hung
with satan and and some dudes as we'll see. Um, um
but then here's the thing we have to agree to: Just hold on with me. I'm not treating
you like you're stupid, but we have to agree to this.
Can we agree that for the purposes of this lecture
witches do not exist. Okay, I'm not saying that pagans don't exist,
that wiccans don't exist, that history professors with purple
hats don't exist, but rather that real live witches who
can do magic and sign pacts with satan do not exist.
Okay? Good?  All right ,having agreed that we need to keep in mind for the rest of
the lecture that what we're talking about here is
women and some men being accused of something
they were not. Ergo, we know right off , right up front
something else was going on there. Okay yeah we got that.
But we can also ( we're getting this?) Yeah.
Look, there it is. If you
think well that's just stupid why why would anybody want to do that? Um, well Idon't know why anybody would dance naked in the woods.
i guess because it's fun.  Uh well probably they didn't.
Why did puritans think that witches went out in the woods and danced naked?
Well because it's a fundamental challenge to male authority, right? Women
out at night, unsupervised by men, dancing around naked, that's just
engaging in a sort of free-form sexuality. Again,
without the supervision of male authority. You get some cases of of accusations that the witch possessed
me. They believe that witches like to
possess two groups of women, young girl ,not two groups of women, two
groups of people. The first group would be young women. They thought that a witch if you were a young woman, say 14 to 24 is the usual
age range, and you wanted to say that a witch
possessed you,  what would you have done? How would we know? Well if any of you had ever been possessed by a witch. 
under the witch's possession you would be a bad girl . You would say and do naughty things, 
um and then later on you'd be like, "It wasn't my fault! I didn't ask Johnny to look at my special pink parts, 
because I'm a bad girl. I asked Johnny to look at my special pink parts because i
was possessed by a witch. I's not my fault!" 
Okay so yeah.  We got that Also they uh, Witches,,  sometimes or the
Puritans thought they did (because remember
none of this is real),  uh thought that women would,
that witches would occasionally possess adult men. And witches, they thought
did two things to adult men. First they would hag ride them.
That is hag being a synonym for WITCH that is that a witch would  possess a
man and when you were being possessed by a witch, guys.  you
wouldn't know it because she would have possessed your
mind and your body. So you wouldn't remember it the next morning.
So how would you know that a witch had taken you out and ridden you around the
village like a pony? That is hag ridden you?  Well, you ever
wake up and your knees hurt and your shoulders hurt?
Or your back hurts and you're like,  "Man I've been laying in bed and I feel
crummy and everything hurts." Well the only explanation
is that you were possessed by a witch and she took you out and and she rode
you around like a pony. Yeah sure ! Okay,
also they thought witches  like to possess adult men and ( brace yourself)... force men to have sex against their will!
Oh don't you hate it when that happens? So, we can joke, but essentially forcing people to have sex against their will is
rape and it's not funny. Right okay. But there was a notion that
witches, adult witches,  would sneak into men's rooms possess their minds and
bodies so you wouldn't know the next day, uh
that you'd been forced to have sex against your will. So
how would you know? How would you know? How could you say, 
"She did this to me," when you'd been possessed and you theoretically didn't
have a memory?  Well, and and i don't know... let's see if any of the guys know about
this... You ever wake up at night and you've had,
I don't know, like sexy dreams and there's, a you know. a nocturnal
emission there in the bed and you're like, "Wait where did that
come from?" Well probably a witch possessed you and had sex with you.
There's no other explanation. Okay so and if you're thinking well those are
all stupid, there were ways to for for the
culture to explain a bunch of things. For young
women the notion was that young women who made these accusations. it was a
way for young women to attack older women and we'll talk about that later, 
about why young women would want to do that. For men it was a way to talk about dangerous female sexuality
and and to demon literally demonize women  with their own uh hidden and maybe not that hidden sexual desires. And I DO NOT want you to write these
charts down. I do not want you to memorize these charts.
What I want you to do:  each chart will have a
a checklist, a  thing, a punch line, a thing we need to learn from that so....
This chart for example um we're going to learn, we're going to learn a few things from
this chart. And one of the things we're going to learn
is that most most witches were women.  I'm trying to
get my pen to work without me stopping   the recording clock. Hold on while I see
if i can do that.   Nope didn't work Okay. I don't know, It's not working. So
anyway, you're gonna have to just trust me. So we see from this chart
that historically most witches were women.
Oh and by the way if you're wondering, I didn't come up with these charts.  They're
from a book by a woman named Carol Carlson, a book called
Devil in the Shape of a Woman. And Carol Carlson in the 80s is the very
first American historian to examine witchcraft with an eye to
gender. That  is, she's the very first historian to say, 
what is it about witches that's about women. No one else had done that. There
were all these theories. Maybe it was about where people lived;
Maybe it was about people's social and class location. Nobody had said
why are most of the accused women? Um and what we find out from this chart
is that most of the people accused of witchcraft were indeed
women. It literally won't let me use the pen
anymore, so I don't know what to say, but if you'll see in that top corner...Oh,  by
the way over there you'll see accused, tried,
convicted and executed. I call that the hierarchy of
seriousness. So accused, oh no you're a witch. Tried,
you went on trial for being a witch. Convicted , you were found guilty of being
a witch and executed... Oh no, you're dead. And what we see there is that most of
the people who are accused, tried, convicted and executed for witchcraft
are women. Okay you're thinking I didn't need a chart for that, Peg . I'm not stupid,
but the reality is we get a lot of stuff about american history wrong.
So we never ever want to think we know the answer, we always want to check. So
here we have we've checked. So think, if you were taking notes, I
think the first thing you're going to make (we're going to make a list now)
the first thing we put on our list is: Most witches were women.
Keeping in mind that these people weren't really witches. right? So
most accused witches were women but also. notice over there under the
male category,   that column that we do have 75 accused
uh male witches. 13 tried and 7 convicted and 7 executed.
So the second thing you can write there is:
Some witches were women okay no some witches were men. Most witches
were women Thing one. Thing two: some witches were
men. Okay good ,there's a couple things and
we're not gonna spend this much time on any other chart, but this one.
See that under females it says we have 45
convicted witchcraft so 45 times the the church elders, who would be the guys
running the trials, said that woman's a witch. She has allied
with satan, she has done these bad things, but then
they only executed 28 of them. Which means they suffered 13
witches to live. Oh and by the way a note about the
numbers these aren't all of the witches that were ever, or all the women who were
ever accused. These are all the records that Carol
Karlson could find, because this stuff happened
400 years ago and records disappear. So we know that the numbers were larger
than this, but this is what this is what she could find going through the
archives and counting up. Okay okay! So we have some witches
convicted of witchcraft but they're not executed. That's
interesting and if we were in class I'd say, "Why do you
think that is?" And you'd make a number of guesses and I would say no no no until
somebody got it right. The right answer is that they would
sometimes let a woman say, "I'm really sorry for
being a witch and i'll never do it again," and 
they would they would not execute her. And then they just make
her live in the community as kind of a pariah,  a woman who admitted to being a
witch and she becomes kind of a signal lesson
about what happens if you go bad. So 13 of these women, they decided to let
live. And then the question is, "What which 13? Why? And we're going to get to that and indeed if you did the reading
you probably kind of already know. On the other hand if you go over to the man
column you'll notice we have seven convicted men and seven
executed men. So i would ask you in class why do you think they let about a third
of the convicted women live but none of the
convicted men? And the answer would be this and you can
probably guess it so if you want to take a second pause it
and think about it and then see if you're right
okay. Here's the answer the answer is that, Puritans assumed
that even in witchcraft,  you might think well, God that's too bad, they
believe in witchcraft, but at least they believe that women could have power.
Turns out not so much. It turns out that they figured any place where there
was a large number of witches there was probably
a man witch in charge. A man witch, (Hahaha) that is, that even female witches had
male bosses. And so the notion was that these male
witches were the leaders and thus really really needed to be executed. Also
in a world of patriarchy and coverture, while that all sounds really
good for the dudes, the bad news is and and the guys
listening this lecture can tell you this, is that patriarchy is burdemsome to men.
It creates this high standard of behavior
for men and a high punishment level for men who fail to be sufficiently manly.
So the notion was that, yeah women are sub-human
inferior possessions ,non-human creatures and yeah you expect them to
hang out with Satan and dance naked in the woods and and be
sexually naughty and et cetera et cetera because they're animals.
But men men are the real humans and the men should have known better.
So there's two things there with the men one this notion that they were leaders
and two that the crime for a man was larger because men
should have known better. So if we were making our list
first, most witches were women, second ,we have some man witches,
three,  sometimes women were allowed to say"I'm super sorry," and not be executed.
We don't know why yet. Four, all right uh so the guys don't feel left out
uh the man witches. What we find out about ma witch,  is if we ask
what kind of guys were most likely to be accused and executed for witchcraft,
what we see here is that while we have the largest accused numbers under dudes
under 40, right uh 18 there and then 12 and four
for in the 40s and 50s and four for over 60, 
when you get down to the executed there's a zero for under 40.
And for and the only executed dudes are under the
40 to 59 and over 60. Which tells us that executed man witches 
tended to be old dudes. And then I would ask you why do you think they were more
likely to find old dudes guilty of being witches and
execute them? And the answer would be this: it's really....you want to say it's because
old men are more powerful and thus more dangerous, but it turns out that's not
the answer. The puritan society 90 of these
people are farmers. This is gut-wrenching physical work, um in a
world with no social security, no 401ks. no retirement. Old people are a
burden on the community. So old men are vulnerable because the society doesn't
need him as much and so they're far more likely to be
accused and executed as witches. Which is really pretty
freaking depressing. It turns out that early America was a
bad place to grow old and we'll talk about that again
when we look at the witchcraft video and then the handout. Not the witchcraft, the midwife video and the handout that goes with
that in a couple of weeks. Right. Okay, next slide.
So what's the deal with the accusers? First we'll look at people who made
accusations of possession and we what we find out is that the
people who made accusations of possession
were far more people who made accusations of
possession,  were most likely to be dudes. I mean most likely to be women. I'm sorry
as soon as i said dudes, I was like, "What?" No. They were most likely to be women and
they were far more likely... look where single and women come together see the
42? They were most likely to be single women
which is another way of saying young women and this makes sense. Young
women would be more likely to say. "I was possessed by a witch ,that woman's
a witch she possessed me." While the puritans
believe that witches possessed men we don't have very big numbers in the
man column and it's probably this and again the guys and if we were in the
room the guys could tell you if you're a dude the last thing you want
to do is go before your homies, your posse ,your bros
and worse the community authorities and say
yeah some bitch made me her, some witch made me her bitch.
Right. So even if you believe you've been possessed by a witch men were less
likely to make that accusation in open court
than young women. Young women could say, "I'd been possessed " because young women
didn't have any power to start with. Okay? Now i actually think that's part of
what makes the witchcraft stuff interesting. Here we
have young women accusing other women of witchcraft.
So this isn't just a matter of men doing bad things to women.
This is a matter of women helping men do bad things to women and that's
interesting to me and it should be interesting to you
because it complicates how we think about oppression.
All right so the thing we want to take away from this slide is that the
accusers who made claims of possession were most likely young women. Young women
made accusations of possession. Then there's non-possession.
So what are the big numbers there? Where are they? Look for them. Do you see them?
Yeah! Married men. Okay, so married men were more likely to
make non-possessed accusations. So righ? She ruined my crop
she ruined my cows indeed remember I told you that is by far the
the most common accusation. Hold on I think my husband's home.Ii'll be right back all right . I'm back sorry about that. Not that you had any
time thing, but when my husband my husband comes home all the dogs bark
and there's FOUR dogs and that's a lot of barking and then you
know you gotta say, "Hi nice to see you." Anyway etc etc
So where were we? Non-possessed accusers,.... So okay, again big numbers there at
married men. So again, that makes sense.
Men own the property, men would make the act  whether or not women and
men both worked farms the farm legally belonged to me. Men were more likely
to make accusations of possession and that makes sense. All right,  um so so with the thing we're
going to write down there is that the most likely accusers of
non-possession stuff were married men. Now let's stop for a second think about
this. If we think about what we know about
Puritans and coverture and patriarchy and the position of men and women. We
could have guessed that in terms of power,
married men were fairly high on the power--
if we thought of power as a thermometer right? With high
middle low, we'd imagine that married men were kind of high up.
I could wave my arms in the air right now, but you can't see me.
Um so there's that, but if we go back to the previous slide, which I don't want to do but if we did, and we looked at young women and  I
said, "where do you think they are in terms of power?"  We'd say well
they're probably pretty low because they're women and they're young
women, they're unmarried women, uh low. So now now we have something kind of interesting. Indeed I think more than kind of interesting. We have a powerful group,
married men and a not powerful group, young single women, cooperating together
to oppress some group of women we have not yet identified.
That's interesting because we often think about oppression as working
like one group does it to another group. But here we have two groups
in very different power positions, married men
young women, cooperating together ...well that's weird.... to possess a third to oppress
a third group. Interesting!  Now you can see why we're having this lecture.
Because if this is just this slide, look married men accused
women of being witches, yeah yeah that sucks, But I don't get out
of bed for that stuff. Oh look in the past men were mean to women.
Really? Oh thanks Peg. Thank god we have college.
Okay so not that. This other thing the powerful group, the not powerful
group, that's interesting. Good. Well, it's interesting to me. You're
gonna have to play along. Here's another one. This is a tiny bit
complicated. I always mean to rework this the wording on this slide so we
understand it better but I don't um because every time i rework it it
doesn't get any better. It's just a tiny bit complicated. So
Carol Karlson was trying to figure out how it was that some women ended up
being accused of witchcraft and how it was some women
ended up executed and some women did not. And she tried she plugged in a
ton of things was it were they married? Nope. Was it that they they were rich or
poor? Nope. Was it where they lived? Nope. Until she came along this... Were the women, these female
witches, again remembering they're not actually witches,
but these women who had been accused of being witches, did they have brothers and
sons or not? So a woman with brothers or sons is a
woman who has heirs. So if I have brothers or sons when
my husband or dad dies my brothers or sons will
inherit the stuff. Not me. Okay, but if I do not
have heirs, see that column with no heirs? If I do not have heirs
there are no brothers or sons then when my dad dies, or my husband dies,
I inherit the stuff. You see that? So women with no heirs means
no male heirs, means women who are going to inherit
and women with male heirs are women who are not going to inherit. 
And if we look at that Witches with no heirs
column you can see that women were slightly,
women with no heirs who stood to inherit property
usually a farm but not always, were 61 percent more likely to be accused of
witchcraft. 64 percent more likely to be tried for
witchcraft. 76 times more, so three quarters of
convicted women. were women who were going to inherit
property and oh my god look at the executed line! 90%
 9 out of 10 dead witches were women who had inherited or were
going to inherit property. Oh that's super interesting.
So if we went back to that slide about how some women were executed and some
were not, we could look and find out and indeed
she did and we could find out that the women who were allowed to live
fell in that "with heirs" category. That is they were women who had male heirs who
weren't going to inherit anything. But women who were going to inherit
things were way more likely to be accused of witchcraft,
way more likely to go through the process found guilty and be executed.
Then let me ask you this--  so say I'm a witch I have no brothers or sons I
inherit my husband's farm. It's mine. I got no brothers or
sons uh my community accuses me of witchcraft,
finds me guilty and executes me. What happens to my farm?
Ya got it. Yeah. The state gets it. Or the government gets
it, but remember this is a theocracy where the church is the government and
the church elders are the ones deciding whether or not I'm
guilty. So the church elders, knowing I and the sole heir, there's no heirs
from my farm execute me and then the church,
headed up by the church elders gets the farm.
OOOOOh. That's super interesting Huh, so now we're not talking just about
religious dysfunction or at least we're talking about
sort of maybe a classic religious dysfunction which is
religion used to enrich some people and to control people. Right? So you get rid
of some troublesome woman and you get her stuff. That's a win-win.
We take these women who are potential inheritors or maybe they already have
inherited. They've got a little bit of community
power because they're now ... they are see remember if their
inheritors and their husband or father are dead now they
are "femme sole" they own a farm, they have a little bit
of power, what does the church do? They say, "oh you must be a witch" and they
execute them. You get rid of the powerful woman
and you score her property!  YEAAA!!! (Clapping) Okay one more Slide. The last one is the only one without the
sort of the witchcraft. Instead you have over there look at the column under time
period. It says, there's the 1630s and 40s the 1650s and
60s the 70s the 80s and the 1690s. So we have
here the colony getting going from being the
1630s to being said. We have a colony covering a century of time.Right? So the
colony chronologically maturing and and it
turns out when men wrote their wills when men wrote their wills there were
two ways they could write their wills. They could leave their wife ownership of
the farm. "Im a man, I own a farm, I'm writing my will , I could say when I
die my wife gets the farm. When she dies we'll give it to my sons
or you could say my wife gets "Use Value".
That is, I'm going to leave my farm to my son
but my wife gets to live on the farm until she dies. And and if you're thinking well there's really no difference there is.
Owning things gives you power. So they're in the 1630s and 40s in the
very beginning years of the colony, men were about 50 percent as likely, about half
of men respected their wives enough to leave their wives their property. And
the other half of men were like no I'm gonna
I'm gonna pass her up, because she's just a woman
and give the stuff to my so. And what happens as you go down that thing, is you
find out that about half the men leaving the property
to jump down to the bottom of that
ownership column where it says 25. About only a quarter of men respecting
their wives enough to leave them property.
So what that chart tells us is that women in Puritan society were
losing power over time and I like that chart because it
tells us something opposite from the way we understand
American history. That is we understand American history generally to be:
Every decade we get better, everybody gets more power, every decade
things get better for women, brown people
everybody. And it turns out (and you probably know
this),  it turns out not to be true. And indeed what we see here with this
chart very clearly is that over time women in Puritan
society are losing power. Okay?
So it's true that if things are getting better in Puritan society and they may
very well be, they're getting better for somebody, but
not for women. Who are they getting better for? You're
right.... MEN. So yeah depends on who you ask
the question about. You can also guess outside of this whole
thing that things are not getting better for the Indigenous people
and that things are not getting better for the people they import from Africa.
So the ONLY group of people things are getting better for in this society is men. And particularly property owning men.
Okay.  So that's a very different thing. So again, the the last point we want here
is that Puritan women were losing power over time
and here's the other thing we can know about that ...if
if you belong to a group that's losing power.
like say Hispanic Americans in the Trump era,
if you you're in that group you not only you know you're in that group,
you know that your group is losing power at that moment and you don't like it.
When when your group is losing power you know it and you don't like it. No group
likes to lose power. Easy. peasy, so we can also guess that
women knew that they were losing power over
time. They weren't stupid. They're just as
smart as you and me. Okay. All right so here here's our big sum up: i'm gonna i'm gonna read through it
briefly but you feel free to pause it and this is where you need to catch up
on your notes, okay? But anyway, first thing most witches were
women. Yeah. Second thing: there were some man
witches. They were considered dangerous because
they were leaders. Yeah. Three, older women were more vulnerable
to witchcraft accusations and executions. And remember i said it's because the
society didn't need him as much. Four: possessed accusers were most likely
young women. A not powerful Puritan group.
Five: non-possessed accusers were likely to be adult men, that is a
powerful Puritan group. Oh remember how we have the cooperation stuff. Two groups
cooperating together to possess a third group opress a third group.
Six: women inheritors were way more likely to be executed.
That is nine out of ten dead witches were women inheritors.
There's the big one. That's my favorite statistic. And seven:
Puritan women were losing power over time.
Right? Okay, so what does that mean? Oh Peg, I'm exhausted,
I'm 41 minutes into this lecture and I'm just exhausted.
What's it mean Peg why are you telling me this stuff?
Okay well before I go on to the last couple of slides let me tell you this--
You may not remember it but I promised you the first night or the second night
that I would never ever lecture you about stuff just for the fun
of it. That every lecture would be, I would connect it to something in your life that it would be there would be a point
about how you understand the world you live in. And so is the case with this
this business about power and witchcraft and I'm particularly interested in
why did women collaborate with men to oppress women.
I'm not particularly interested in why did men oppress women?
In patriarchy men oppress women Not all men.
Dudes don't get defensive and upset. I don't think any of you did it,
but men as a group oppressed women that's the nature of patriarchy.
Okay? So I don't find that interesting. Upsetting,
yes, but not particularly interesting. Where this gets interesting is when
women collaborate with us and in that we can learn some lessons
for our life. So before we go on to that let's let's sum up what all this
previous witchcraft. Puritan witchcraft cases were moments of
patriarchal control of powerful or potentially powerful
women, the inheritors right? And and killing women and getting
them out of the way as a way of controlling them. Okay so here's where we get to the
nitty-gritty of why you should care about witchcraft cases in colonial
America-- so something that happened two, three,
four hundred years ago. Ah yeah, why Peg, why? Well it has to do
with class status anxiety and stockholm syndrome so we're going to talk about
these two things now. And Idon't have a lot of words there
except the two things because there are too many words to say
so. Class status anxiety is that thing that we all have whether you know
it or not, that is we have anxiety anxiety
anxiety (aaaahhhh)  about our class status. So we all are anxious about where we are
in the class ladder or am I in my upper middle class, am I
middle class and my lower middle class and my upper working class, am I
am I the working poor? Am i rich? We're all anxious about that but the
thing that we're really anxious about is about shifting positions in that
class status ladder. And it turns out the thing that really makes us anxious isn't
what you'd think. That is we talk a lot about moving up
the class status ladder. That is why i assume that you're in
college, because you want to get some kind of degree so that you can get some
kind of better job so that you can paid more so that you
can buy more [ __ ] you don't need. Or you know food. Um anyway, but it turns
out that's not what keeps us up at night succeeding and moving up the ladder
doesn't make us nearly as anxious as our worries about failing and sliding
down the ladder. So it's class status anxiety is a thing
that sociologists and historians both talk about.
That it is about this or fear of sliding down the ladder and
then it turns out what we do as human beings and certainly as
Americans is in our anxiety about sliding down the
class status ladder we project that anxiety
on the group below us that we fear joining.
This explains for example why so many poor whites
hate poor brown people. Because poor whites, in a
in a white supremacist society and that's what we live in whether you want
to admit it or not, um the only thing poor whites have to
feel superior to with poor blacks or poor hispanics or
poor asians is at least they're white. But there's all
this anxiety about slipping down now poor whites don't wake up and think oh
tomorrow I might be black but that I might become um that I that I
feel anxious about that I may become even
a more even despised member of a society because in the capital society
we did we tend and it's not fair we tend to despise people lower on the ladder.
Which is one of the reasons we fear falling down. There are a lot of reasons.
Simple inability to take care of your family or yourself would be
probably the biggest reason right. So class status anxiety
is about how we fear moving down the ladder of
class status and then project those fears
and anxiety which is closely related to hate
onto the groups below us. So this helps us explain for example in
way back in the witchcraft cases we were just talking about,
why young women were so eager to point the finger at
older women. That is, why women were willing
to help men oppress other women. Class status anxiety. These young women
belong to a group that was losing power over time remember the previous slide
yeah they didn't like it. Of course they knew
it if anyone who's in a group that's losing
power knows it. It's one of the reasons the conservative right and white supremacist
uh identifying people are so anxious and worked up right now
and so hysterical and so willing to believe the very worst things
about the left because they understand at the base of it peeps and
this is important to know they understand they're losing power in
America. Snd this freaks them out. Nobody wants to
be in a group that's losing power. Same thing with these young women way
back in the witchcraft uh trials. Also uh it explains why women
in general are as inclined as men to oppress women.
That is, remember the very first lecture i said anyone can be a feminist, men or
women. Anyone can be as sexist, men or women. It
is not so simple as men are sexist and women are not. Women
are feminists. No. Feminists come in both genders. Sexist
come in both genders and I would argue that a
female sexist is actually worse than a male sexist.
Male sexist I understand because there's something
in it for yo. The female sexist you're just screwing with your own group.
i guess they do it because there is something with it. The thing about class
status anxiety is well actually, we'll get to Stockholm
Syndrome, but by identifying with a more powerful group,
men, women think they can gain power so they curry favor with a more powerful
group by oppressing other women. Class status anxiety. Do you get that?
It's really it's it is i'm talking about about a whole
bunch of things all at once, but sort of essentially, fundamentally, that
thing where where groups will hate groups below them.
Why is that? Rich whites aren't particularly worked up about black
people. And and trust me not for a second is our
president either. He does it because there's power in
whipping up the people who are anxious about that
that's all it's. I'm not saying the guy's not a racist, because if you use that
stuff to gain your own power that makes you a
racist, but Idon't think I  don't think the current president has any strong
feelings about anyone besides himself. Because he's got a
psychological problem. Nonetheless, Stockholm syndrome is really
interesting if we were in class I'd say okay who knows this?
And a couple of you would raise your hands and i say okay somebody explain it/
But Stockholm Syndrome was first noticed back in the 60s
by some psychologist in Stockholm there was a bank robbery, the bank robbers took captives took uh
prisoners took uh what do you call that hostages hostages!
And very quickly the hostages, by the end of the day, 
They were negotiating with the police on behalf of the bank robbers
who they have sympathy for. These poor bank robbers they're misunderstood.
You should let them go, it's not their fault. 
That is Stockholm Syndrome and it's Stockholm Syndrome is
is for example another way we think about  Battered
Wife Syndrome-- that is uh women who are abused by their
husbands are very likely to also defend their
husbands and their husbands actions. This is probably true really for all
spouses, but and I recognize that there are in some relationships men who
are battered, but I will tell you I live in a
country where we only recently decided to care about
abusive spouses when we found out some very small number of men were abused. But when it we thought it was just women nobody cared. So
I'm still pissed about that. Uh anyway, so Battered Wife Syndrome is sort of
that allying yourself with your abuser um
children do this with their parents but they have to because children are so
dependent. I would argue that wives in many cases are dependent
too which is one of the reasons ladies you
should get your own job, buy your own stuff, buy your own shiny
stuff , and be able to take care of yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't
get married. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a spouse,
but you shouldn't be dependent. Dependency is dangerous.
It relies on the absolute goodness of the person you're depending on and it
turns out there's not a ton of absolutely good people out there.
And i don't mean absolutely good men i mean absolutely good people
because you could be relying on another woman if you're not heterosexual.
Right? Anyway so Stockholm syndrome is is is about this thing where we don't
like powerlessness so if Im taken hostage in a bank robbery
I am at that moment powerless and I don't like that. That my very
human nature rebels against the powerlessness of that.
And so what i will do is I will search the area
for someone powerful to ally myself with. iI i've been taken hostage
by guys with guns, then is the guys with guns
with power and i will align myself with them so as to lend
myself some power to escape the powerlessness which
which is extremely upsetting to me or to anyone.
So class status anxiety is where people are often
people with with little power are often likely to ally themselves with
people with power in part to make themselves feel more
powerful in part in the hopes that perhaps the
powerful will lend them some power. This is generally a false hope,
but nonetheless. Stockholm Syndrome then begins to help us understand why for
example some poor brown people nonetheless
describe themselves as Republicans and if there are any
Republicans listening, I do not mean to insult you though I understand I just
did but the truth is you can say what you
will the truth is the Republican party is not interested in helping poor people
or women, so when women or poor people align themselves with the party that is
fundamentally only interested in helping the rich
they're engaged in Stockholm Syndrome. They're engaged in allying themselves
with someone who is abusing them and not going to help them
but doing it because it appears like that's where the power is
and that's that's maybe they will lend me some. This for me,
for me this explains say the rallies of the Predator In Chief--
those aren't powerful people who show up at those and go freaking bug nuts for
that guy. So Stockholm Syndrome also helps us
understand why women will ally themselves with men
against other women, both in the witchcraft cases,
and in any time in American history including right now. That is if if
the women and men listening to this don't know some woman
who hasn't stabbed an individual woman or
women in general in the back in some way.... My mother and I love her is a
conservative woman who will not vote for women because she doesn't think
they should have power. That is a woman who is stabbing women in the back
she is saying women aren't fully human um that that is in part about
not really stockholm but something like stockholm syndrome
where we align ourselves with a powerful group that does not have our best
interests in mind whether it's conservative white dudes
if you're a woman or a brown person or um
um witchcraft accusers if you're a young woman
in Puritan New England. It also helps us understand
why women in America and if this is something we're talking about race a lot
right now and i that I think that's cool iIm a tiny bit
frustrated that America is incapable of talking about sexism at the
same time because we're also a really sexist nation.
The Karen stuff is a super good proof of that. Yeah i get there's some privileged
white women who are obnoxious, but the ways in which the society was
really really excited, including women, to jump on demonizing women who were
while maybe being dickish, but also like for a while there if you were assertive
and white you could call the Karen, like i wasn't allowed to be
assertive at all anywhere and so it was it was the Karen stuff is a way of
keeping women down it is a thing used by other
women to keep women down. The stockholm syndrome and class
status anxiety help us understand and the witchcraft cases why women
oppress women, because that's perplexing
and depressing because the reality is people the women make up
51 to 52 of every single population in the world and we always have
because we are constitutionally stronger than men so few of us die at birth
and we outlive men and we don't outlive men because we don't work as hard and we
get to take more naps. We are constitutionally stronger, nature built us that way because we have
babies and raise them. So constitutionally strong we're not
physically stronger. I can't pick up a 50 pound
sack of flour , but um I can withstand a headache better than my
husband can. Man you have no idea! Anyway so um
these are the these are you're wondering like why, Peg why?
Well with the witchcraft lectures because it's part of Colonial American,
because it's interesting, why are you still talking about this
stuff. Because I think it's super helpful to try and figure out why women remain a
second class population in America and why
we still don't have women in most positions of power.
it's not just men. It's women keeping us down too because we
make up a majority. If tomorrow morning all American women
stood up and said it ends today sexism, sexual abuse,
keeping women out of positions of power it all ends today it would end today.
Because ladies we outnumber the men.
Trust me they know that um but but it's not that's not going To happen,
it's never going to happen because we are divided by so many things there is
no group called women that meets on Tuesdays to
decide to end sexism sadlY. And we are divided by
race, class ,gender, sexuality, all that stuff,
religion ,but we're also divided by issues of Class Status Anxiety and
Stockholm Syndrome and I think that's helpful because if we
can't explain why women   why even though we're a majority we're
still oppressed then we're left with only two things:
either one women really are inferior and that's why we have a second class status
still today in America or there's some other really complicated stuff going on.
To explain it. And I will tell you this for sure,
the complicated answer is almost always the correct answer. IF someone
comes to you with a simple clear easy answer to a
hard question, why is there racism? why is there sexism? iIf the answer is
something simple and clear something that might be offered to you
by say an orange man at a rally it's probably the wrong answer because
complicated issues require complicated answers. And it's why
you have to you have to think you don't have to go to college
but you have to think to be a real American it requires you this is a
complicated country with complicated problems.
and you have to think you have to you have to think. You can't just play
with your phone and watch netflix movies you have to
think you have to think for yourself which is hard. Anyway
Ihave spoken. Next slide

Transcript for:Exploring Witchcraft in Puritan Society

Transcript for:
Exploring Witchcraft in Puritan Society