The Penis-Stealing Witch
In the early-modern witch-hunts, one of the more imaginative accusations brought against women was that they used witchcraft to steal men’s penises (Federici, 2004, p. 207). This act of castration by which men were emasculated was—as you can imagine—a great humiliation and was the legal case by which many women were prosecuted—literally accused and tried in a court of law, for the crime of robbing a man’s penis, by magic. One such powerful “witch” was said to have stolen dozens of penises, whom she kept as pets, hidden in a bird’s nest high in a tree (ibid, p. 315). But what did the penises eat, you might ask? Grain and oats. While we may find these images amusing now, for the women of early-modern Europe and colonies it was no laughing matter; they were burned at the stake by the tens of thousands, for stealing penises, cavorting with the devil and other salacious crimes. No woman was safe from this persecution and very few men organized to protect them. The four-hundred-plus year terror-campaign that inaugurated modernity was a literal hell-on-earth for the entire female population and all cheerfully done, by men, in the name of Christ. And yet, we may now look back upon this paroxysm of femicide and see in negative a shape that remains profound; man’s fear of castration is indexical to an actual power. In other words—and allow me to state the obvious—a woman’s power remains threatening to man precisely because she does not have a penis.
Federici, S. (2004) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Vintage Books
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