Ep. 11: Witch Hunts pt 2- Salem, hysteria, eugenics, oh my!

In Part 2 of our series on witch hunts and patriarchy, we pick up at the decline of the European witch trials..starting with the end of the English (Anglican) prosecutions and moving through the infamous hysteria in Salem. From there, we explore how the so-called Enlightenment ushered in new systems of control under the guise of reason and progress.

If this era was truly "enlightened," why did the transatlantic slave trade not only continue, but expand? This episode asks what we choose to see as civilized—and what, or who, we are willing to sacrifice to maintain that image.

We then trace the enduring legacy of accusation, punishment, and control into colonial Africa, where European powers exported witchcraft panic as part of their imperial toolkit. From there, we transition into the rise of modern medicine and the medicalization of women’s bodies...where midwives and healers were replaced by male-dominated institutions, and into the development of eugenics as a tool to justify social hierarchies and racial "purity."

We end with the Nazi regime’s calculated use of ableism, psuedoscience and gendered violence to define who was worthy of life, & who was not.

This episode connects centuries of persecution, "progress," and power, revealing how patriarchal systems evolve, but never disappear. In part 3 (and quite possibly part 4), we will be starting with the McCarthy era, including the Lavender Scare, up through the "crack-baby" myth and the Welfare Queen trope, to the current status of the DEI pushback...worldwide, not just in the United States.

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Equal Justice Initiative: https://eji.org/

https://www.dw.com/en/women-as-spoils-of-war-at-the-end-of-world-war-ii/video-69022168

https://eji.org/report/transatlantic-slave-trade/

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/17/603163394/-father-of-gynecology-who-experimented-on-slaves-no-longer-on-pedestal-in-nyc

https://www.researchwithrutgers.com/en/publications/reassessing-eugenic-sterilization-the-case-of-north-carolina

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13700490

https://www.britannica.com/search?query=eugenics

https://practitioners.exeter.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Eastanglianwitchtrialappendix2.pdf

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/rosemary-kennedy

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-man-who-found-that-genes-hold-culture-on-a-leash

https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/d1e304.html

https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-441?p=emailAeg10H8z/RsN6&d=/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-441

https://19thnews.org/2022/02/forced-sterilization-guardianship-reproductive-justice/

Lombardo, Paul, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell, (2008)