The Fear of Female Sexuality
any images of women have been created by men throughout history, some of which have expressed male fears of female sexuality and helped to keep women subjugated. The woman as whore, temptress, shrew, simple-minded, virtuous, and image of perfection—all have prevented men from seeing women as simply the other half of the human species. But perhaps none has been so dangerous to women’s lives as the image of the witch.
Though the idea of witchcraft has been around at least since the Bible (which mandates killing witches), the Catholic Church did not take witches seriously until the 13th century, when Aquinas suggested they still existed. Witch hunting became an obsession in Europe when Pope Innocent VIII decreed in 1486 that witches should be wiped out. A pamphlet released in that year (which went through 13 editions) claimed witches were more likely to be female because women were the source of all evil, had defective intelligence, tried to dominate men, and "[knew] no moderation whether in goodness or vice" (V. L. Bullough, 1973).
From the 1500s through the 1700s in Germany over
100,0 people (mostly women) were executed for witchcraft (Roach, 2004). One visitor wrote of his trip to Cologne: "A horrible spectacle met our eyes. Outside of the walls of many towns and villages, we saw numerous stakes to which poor, wretched women were bound and burned as witches"
(quoted in V. L. Bullough, 1973, p. 224). In England, where most of the women accused were married, executions for witchcraft continued until 1712.
Witchcraft trials seemed to happen at times of social disruption, religious change, or economic troubles. At such times, it is easier to blame evil forces, and women, than to look to causes in the greater society. Such was the case in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, where three young girls began acting strangely, running around, falling to the ground in convulsions, and barking like dogs. Soon the other girls of Salem began to follow suit, and the doctors decided that the girls had been bewitched. Forced to identify the witches that had put spells on them, the girls began to name the adults they did not particularly like and went on to name names from every corner of the village. Not one suspect dragged before the courts was acquitted, and 22 women were executed or died in prison. When the tide finally turned, 150 people were in prison awaiting trial, and another 200 stood accused. All were finally released (K. Erikson, 1986).
Accusations of witchcraft were often used as a way to punish women who did not conform to the social expectation of appropriate female behavior. It was also a means to reaffirm men’s dominance over women. Even in many contemporary tribal cultures in which witchcraft is very much a part of the cultural beliefs, women are seen as potentially more malevolent and evil creatures than men (Janeway, 1971).
But, as seems to happen so often in history when women make modest gains, there was a backlash. By the 17 th century, witchcraft trials appeared once again in Europe and in the New World, symbols of the fears that men still held of women’s sexuality. Thousands of women were killed, and the image of the evil witch became the symbol of man’s fear of women for centuries to come (see the accompanying Human Sexuality in a Diverse World: The Fear of Female Sexuality for more information about witch hunts).
The Reformation: The Protestant Marital Partnership
In the early 16th century, Martin Luther challenged papal power and founded a movement known as Protestantism. Instead of valuing celibacy, Luther saw in the Bible the obligation to reproduce, saw marital love as blessed, and considered sexuality a natural function. John Calvin, the other great Protestant reformer, suggested that women were not just reproductive vessels but men’s partners in all things.
To Luther, marriage was a state blessed by God, and sexual contact was sinful primarily when it was done out of wedlock, just as any indulgence was sinful. Marriage was inherent in human nature, had been instituted in paradise, and was confirmed in the fifth commandment and safeguarded by the seventh (V. L. Bullough, 1973). Because marriage was so important, a bad marriage should not continue, and so Luther broke away from the belief of the Catholic Church and allowed divorce.
Sexuality was permissible only in the marital union, but it had other justifications besides reproduction, such as to reduce stress, avoid cheating, and increase intimacy—a very different perspective on sex than was preached by the Catholic Church. Calvin, in fact, saw the marital union as primarily a social and sexual relationship. Though procreation was important, companionship was the main goal of marriage.
Luther did accept the general subjugation of women to men in household affairs and felt that women were weaker than men and should humble themselves before their fathers and husbands. He excluded women from the clergy because of standards of “decency” and because of women’s inferior aptitudes for ministry. Though Calvin and Luther tried to remove from Protestantism the overt disdain of women they found in some older Christian theologians, they did not firmly establish women’s equal place with men.