Gender Workshop, as ever, is brought to you by your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke.
There’s been much talk over the last few years about witch hunts. Targeting Dawkins. Targeting Shermer. Targeting Hunt. Targeting anyone who happens to sit near Adria Richards. And though I think it is far from a witch hunt to be criticized by a lot of people, even by a lot of people at once, because your comments or behaviors merited criticism, for a long time I merely rolled my eyes at the inevitable, defensive backlash: “Witch hunt!”
It’s been who-knows-how-many years since I used witch hunt in seriousness to describe a public outcry against some sinner. But I was okay with others’ use.
You’re just looking to be offended! It’s a witch hunt! was said of criticisms of Dawkins.
That’s not a witch hunt, I said, all about the evidence. But I was okay with the use of witch hunt.
It was a joke! Dongles are real! You went about reporting it the wrong way! It’s a witch hunt! was said to Adria Richards.
That’s not a witch hunt, I said, all about the evidence. But I was okay with the use of witch hunt.
Anonymous accusations? It’s a witch hunt! was said when the grenade exploded.
That’s not a witch hunt, I said, all about the evidence. But I was okay with the use of witch hunt.
Bendan O’Neill coded his claim: Hunt’s critics were “an Inquisition” – the mere authors of the book on hunting witches, not witch hunters themselves. But the uncoded phrase wasn’t far behind: A witch hunt by bored feminists, says Mike Auck in comments to the Daily Mail.
That’s not a witch hunt, we said.
But I am no longer okay with that use of witch hunt.
The most condemnable remnant of the European obsession with killing the different for being different isn’t twitter criticism of those who like to joke about sexist apartheid because, hey, it really would be kinda good in some ways, wouldn’t it? No, the most condemnable remnant of our witch hunts are thousands of actual witch hunts.
And make no mistake: however much local superstitions may play a part, the superstitions of the US and of Europe’s colonial powers give force to these hunts. It is despite white colonialism, not because of it, that Tanzania tries so many of these murderers.
It is no longer possible for me to maintain sangfroid in the face of a trend of trivial invocation of witch hunting and witch hunters, such as Brendan O’Neill’s equation of Tim Hunt’s critics with the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum. Adding more fire to my blood is the fact that these uses are so frequently deployed against women and in defense of men.
Men died in the European witch hunts of 1450 to 1750 and still die today in India, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere. But witch hunts then and now are heavily gendered. While we can’t know anything in aggregate about the targeting of trans* folk and intersex people, we do know that women made up the vast majority of Europe’s victims, perhaps 80%, and that sexism played a huge role in this at least by making women more vulnerable to authority. That dynamic is still active in today’s witch hunts which disproportionately target women, people with albinism, and possibly (though it is disputed) queer folk.
To then use witch hunt! as a cry to silence feminist critique is particularly vile. I will not scrawl my own Dear Muslima. If you believe criticism of sexism must end I’m not asking you to shut up because real witch hunts exist. And if you want to criticize actual witch hunts, there’s no reason not to use the term. But using the cry of witch hunt! to deflect blame from sexist actions while sexist witch hunts kill thousands a year will earn you my deepest, most searing contempt.
For more on witch hunts, their horrid effects, their relentless sexism, and the people who persist in just not getting it even when they think they’re trying to help, see the incomparable Leo Igwe. This piece is a good start. FtB’s own Ophelia Benson regularly covers Igwe’s work, and Igwe has made guest posts on Butterflies and Wheels, but there is far more to read.
I alway had the feeling that the current use of ‘witch hunt’ was more of a reference to this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
But I’m probably wrong.
It’s not a witch hunt it’s a Malleus Maleficarum!!1!
“Witch” is in itself a deeply gendered word. Whatever the actual percentage of men was, the mental concept of “witch” is female.
Not only is it contemptible to use the term for all the reasons Crip Dyke gives, it isn’t even close to apt. An actual witch hunt entails kicking in the doors of someone who is just minding their own business and then dragging them out to be exposed to the village. If like Tim Hunt you stand on a soapbox and broadcast your contemptible views to the world, you are literally asking the world to criticize you. So Dawkins by using that term is not only being a sexist jerk, he is being doubly a jerk by intentionally using a term that doesn’t even come close to representing what he is trying to describe.
Thanks for the informative post, Crip Dyke! I think it’s an excellent summary of why using the term ‘witch hunt’ for someone being criticized publicly is wrong.
I think I have a similar but slightly different issue with using the word ‘lynching’ in this way.
I’m mentally filing “witch hunt” as an instance of a of Godwin’s Law violation, for the same reasons.
“Witch hunt” = equating criticism of mostly privileged white men with mass femicide by religious authorities
“Lynching” = equating criticism of mostly privileged white men with terrorism and racist murder of black people by mobs and terrorist groups
“Inquisition” = equating criticism of mostly privileged white men with systematic torture, execution, and expropriation of property of religious minorities by church and state officials
Well-said in the OP, Seedy Lady. :)
@backupbob:
Well said, backupbob. And I agree, as far as it goes.
And if there weren’t ongoing witch-murders today I’d let it slide – as I did in the past when I was more ignorant of the current extent of witch-murder.
yes, and that’s the part that’s nor merely ignorant of the current reality of witch hunting, it’s completely at odds with any form witch hunting has ever taken. “Gosh a lot of people are cracking jokes at my expense the last week or so, thank goodness I have a $5m house to which I can retreat,” is a vastly different experience than an illiterate woman being hauled before a court with a 50% chance of being burned alive.
Due process or not.
Reminds me a bit of calling people “Nazis” – both terms are far two easy to use – and it’s always asshole peoples first recourse – to insult someone in order to put them on the defensive. As PZ said, there are real dangers and consequences, first and foremost it cheapens the original incident – the terms end up having no meaning. Also it should not matter if it happens in the past – people should not forget these horrendous incidents.
There’s a big difference between historic witch hunts in Europe and modern ones in many parts of the world today. The former were carried out by the authorities and often attacked whole communities (who offered up their least wanted women as preferred victims). In much of the world today, witch hunts are initiated by people who know the woman and who rely on local, petty authorities for justification.
All of which is different from the grassroots force of vast numbers of individuals saying what they think, their ability to contact almost any institution with their thoughts, and the power of the internet to let people organize and join campaigns almost instantaneously. It’s a completely new phenomenon which deserves a new name.
BTW, it’s worth remembering that it’s not a phenomenon tied to any particular cause. It can be, but isn’t necessarily a force for good. You could have picked the attacks on Anita Sarkeesian as an example and it might have been fairer to include one where the readers of the post could be expected to disapprove of the cause.
So, anyway, what should we call this phenomenon?
@Pen
A bunch of people criticising or ridiculing what you said in public is not the same as an organised campaign of hatred, death threats, and harassment. Don’t equate the two.
The odd thing about the original “witch hunts” is that they only seem horrifying from a post-enlightenment perspective. Now, I am speaking generally here–certainly some of the witch hunts, such as the Salem witch trials, were so over the top as to be criticized even at the time. But even in the Salem trials, and certainly most of the European witch burnings, the people hunting witches really believed in witches. Think about that for a moment–in a world where the Devil was quite real, people who made deals with the devil were traitors and threats to all humanity. Killing them was for the good of everyone.
Of course, being an atheist who dabbled in paganism, I am quite happy that this mindset is not allowed the sanction of law in the United States. But it is important, I think, to recognize that the witch-hunters in Africa, for example, truly believe that they are saving their people from dark forces. Outsiders condemning them without understanding the very real concerns these people have will simply be dismissed as ignorant, if not evil. What is needed is education–education about science, about history, about social forces that drive witchcraft fears–coupled with rebuke (‘you really shouldn’t be killing albinos for magical spells…”) Of course, this detachment is difficult to maintain in the face of people getting chopped up because they happen to have no skin pigment, but understanding the problem, and recognizing the common humanity of the people involved, is a major step in successfully addressing the problem.
A little off-topic, I realize, and I apologize, but the issue of witches and witch hunting has often struck me as more complicated than it may seem to people born after the Enlightenment. I do agree that the term “witch hunt” really shouldn’t be used except in its original context.
@ Nepos:
I feel like what you are saying is basically that witch hunts are more often motivated by confident ignorance than conscious malice, but really that can be applied to all hate crimes*. When they kill gay people they are likely following an honest belief that gay people are corrupting the youth and destroying families, and when they kill atheists they likely believe atheists are amoral monsters waiting for their chance to go on a killing spree or something. The fact that people and their societies really believed it doesn’t decrease the over all horror any more than it does when an individual with a knife honestly believes their neighbors are alien impersonators; it just means that the problem is more about evil ideas than evil people.
* Though I do feel like it tends to err on the side of charity some. Real belief is not mutually exclusive with ulterior motives, personal vendettas, and a habit of targeting the vulnerable.
I pretty much agree, with actual witch-hunts going on in the world it does seem a little odd to use the term lightly. But I have two issues with this:
1) actual usage: most people using “witch hunt” on twitter or social media do actually mean an unofficial mob of critics going after someone. There are actual, violent, pirates even today, yet we don’t seem to have a problem with “software piracy” as a term and there are plenty of other “mediaeval” words with modern metaphoric usages (pillory, demonize, duel, sacrifice, cannibalize) where you could find some place in the world these things are still going on.
2) I’ve often seen the hounding (actual dogs chase animals?) of feminists by MRAs/misogynists referred to as witch-hunts without the same criticism of the term. Isn’t the public harassment with abuse and threats of death or violence of a woman for standing out against the status quo a pretty good fit for a witch-hunt? Weren’t there pretty much witch-hunts against Anita, Zoe, Rebecca, etc. etc…?
EveryZig @ 15 (nice nick by the way), I wouldn’t try to argue that the witch hunts going on in Africa are somehow less horrifying because they are founded in ignorance. I was just pointing out that it is much harder to address violence against certain groups when that violence is integrated into the very culture. The position that so called witches have in certain African countries, and which “witches” had in Europe during the witch burnings, is basically analogous to the position that black people have in the United States today. Which makes it impossible to change without revamping the entire society.
=8)-DX @ 16, since a lot of the hounding of feminists by MRAs has involved threats of violence, I’d say that “witch hunt” is entirely applicable. The problem that I see with the term is when people use it to describe simple criticism (as Ibis says in 13).
On the subject of whether ‘our side’ stop at criticizing and ridiculing, whereas ‘their side’ happily go all the way to death threats, rape threats, etc… Well the targets of these activities say ‘our side’ do it too. So does the media on occasion, and the blogs on FTB have occasionally reported and deplored such things when they’re judged to have gone ‘too far’. It might not be a good idea for anyone to assume virtue just because they know their personal limits are good.
I don’t think you’ve made the case of why the metaphors based on atrocities is inherently bad rather than inapt in this particular context. English is replete with words and phrases with a violent source. Landmines kill and maim tens of thousands of people a year, but are a common metaphor for an unseen problem that could cause great damage at a later date. Bikinis are named after a nuclear weapons test that required the forcible relocation of the indigenous population and sickened tens of thousands with radiation, but people continue to use the term without hesitation. When someone uses a metaphor, they are not literally making the claim that A is B. (e.g. “It’s not like we think we’re actually in a control tower trying to reach outer space aliens”)
*the use of metaphors based on atrocities
At the same scale, amount, and continuing of the harassment? Evidence needed to show this is the case, or just hyperbole on their part.
Pen @ 18, Pardon my French if you are a religious man, but bullshit. MRAs aren’t being SWATed, threatened into leaving their homes, receiving thousands and thousands of emails of death threats and rape threats…
Even a cursory comparison of, say, FTB (supposedly a central location for extremist SJW activity) to 8chan or AVfM immediately reveals that the MRAs are far, far more vicious in their language than anyone on the SJW side.
Not to accuse you of trolling, but I feel that you should know that “false equivalence” (both sides do bad things so neither is better) is a very common MRA troll tactic. If you don’t want to be mistaken for a troll, I’d avoid that, and pursue a different line of argument than “you SJW’s are just as bad”.
@ Nepos #22 –
I’m an atheist gender neutral person who usually gets identified as a woman and I am French amongst other nationalities. Didn’t hear you using any French though.
I understand that FTB may be the center of your activist universe, but it isn’t the SJW center of the universe, or even the Internet. For example, in the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy, we are dealing with the fallout from Requires Hate, while trying to fend off Vox Day.
We’ve been having a talk about being patronising in one of the other threads and that’s what you’re being. Also, you’re doing it from an unsound position. You should know that you don’t have any figures for who is doing what to whom, just as I don’t. All that either side has is anecdotes and very biased observation. So not to accuse you of arguing in bad faith, you’re simply not entitled to the certainty you’re claiming.
@qwints, #19:
And I didn’t intend to make the case that those metaphors are “inherently” bad. But “witch hunt” is more than inapt.
This is the key bit:
In this context, in invoking “witch hunts” one is portraying a witch hunt as a bad thing while preserving that which makes actual witch hunts both possible and so terrifyingly lethal.
It is to say, “shame on you for behaving in a way that I will call “witch hunting” which, if left unchecked, could actually undermine the power of witch hunts! I don’t want that! I want the power of my metaphor more than I want the survival of women accused of witchcraft!”
It is not that all metaphors arising from violent imagery are inherently bad – that’s a far cry from what I’m arguing.
Nonetheless, this use of witch hunt is contemptuous in the extreme.
Pen @23, “Pardon my French if you’re a religious man” is an old saying to refer to swearing (French = cusswords, in certain American dialects).
I wasn’t being condescending, I was being polite in assuming that you really didn’t know what false equivalence was. Since you do know, I wonder why you are trying to use it here.
Let me explain why what you are saying is false equivalence:
1) requires hate was exposed as a very disturbed person who has been thoroughly disavowed by the Left. Citing Requires Hate as somehow representative of the social justice or feminist movements is extremely dishonest, as it has been repudiated by virtually everyone.
2) FTB is frequently referred to as one of the more “radical” SJW sites by the MRAs and their allies themselves. I point you to all of the male atheists who lambast PZ and co. for being “divisive.”
3) Again, anyone who wants proof of how vile the MRA movement is need merely visit We Hunted the Mammoth (www.wehuntedthemammoth.com) for extensive quotes from MRA sites.
4) Or you could visit File770, which has been documenting the nasty stuff said by Vox Day and his crowd. Or Scalzi’s Whatever blog. Or, yknow, look at what Anita Sarkeesian and Rebecca Watson, et al, have written about the attacks against them.
There is plenty more evidence of just how vile the MRAs and other “anti-social justice” groups are, but I’ve given you some light reading to start with. What do you have as proof that the SJW are just as bad, besides Requires Hate, which was repudiated a long time ago?
If your thesis that “both sides are as bad” is correct, I expect citations of websites that are just as detailed and damning as the ones I listed above. No slymepit please.
As far as you being atheist gender neutral, you might find it enlightening to read what A Voice for Men, the Return of Kings, and 8chan think about people who don’t conform with normal gender roles, and then consider which side you should be on.
@CripDyke #24,
I get that 1) reducing/eliminating sexism is a good goal; 2) calling out sexist statements contributes to the fight against sexism; and 3) providing cover for people criticized for sexism helps reinforce sexism. So, I agree that attacking people for criticizing sexism is a bad thing. I just don’t follow the claim that doing so by calling it a ‘witch hunt’ instead of something like ‘political correctness run amuk’ is so much worse.
It’s really hard for me to believe that someone using the phrase ‘witch hunt’ wants witch hunts to continue or doesn’t want the survival of woman accused of witchcraft. In fact, to the extent it has any effect, the use of the metaphor reinforces witch hunts as a bad thing. Calling something a witch hunt is calling it a dangerous and unjust thing that should cease, right?
Says the individual calling for less condescension.
Quints,
How do you feel about white people claiming they are attacked by lynch mobs? I’m just checking for consistency.
Fair point. I certainly thought the Baltimore police union’s use of the term was awful. On the other hand, I can find uses that don’t seem offensive. (Referring to vilification of Bowe Bergdahl and reddit’s false accusation of someone for the Boston marathon bombing.)
quints @ 29
Thanks for answering.