Of Witches and Women
The Never Ending Hunt
by Natalie Lüning
“Penitence for your crime! Penitence for your life!”
Legend has it that witches were the root of all misfortunes. A town ravaged by a plague, darkening of the skies, deaths of the animals, and sickening of the people. Should anything out of the ordinary occur, witches served as the perfect scapegoat. It was the only possible explanation accepted by people, nothing more and nothing less.
With witches out in the open, surely there were hunters. Hunters in the search for a mighty bounty in exchange for a witch: dead or alive. No other pleasure could satisfy a man bestowed upon the honor of successfully putting a sorceress under a trial, with the crowd rejoicing. After all, slaying a woman in contact with the devil means respect and power over the people.
According to the story, once the witches were caught, there was no escape. The town would light its biggest and hottest fires, sharpen their pitchforks, and bring out their guns. The witches were immediately burned at the stake for everyone to see. With the deafening screams and pleading of the captured in the background, the town rejoiced.
And legend has it that witch-hunting never stopped… The hunters are still out there — watching, lurking, waiting for the next victim.
Demonized & Chained
The story began in a small community in the early days of Philippine civilization when women were once known to be one of the most powerful and influential community members, for they were gifted with special abilities no man ever held.
As spiritual leaders, they were in charge of guiding the townsfolk with its agriculture, culture, religion, and medicine. Their social and cultural leadership reflected the traditional role of women during this period, and the people admired them, their magic, and their intelligence.
The first of the witch hunters came when foreign faces invaded the town, equipped with the tools and strategies they needed to eradicate the traditional community and to replace it with their system. Religious indoctrination, the patriarchal and macho-feudal Church, and capitalist commodification paid no respect to strong Filipino women when colonial endeavors set forth their goal.
Anyone who stepped out of the roles expected of women were punished and rectified. A woman too loud, too dominant, too dominating — witches. By linking their abilities to that of the devil’s and labeling it as black magic, women were stripped off their legitimacy and leadership — demonizing and chaining them instead to the traditional prescribed norms of subservience.
Caged & Beaten
And so the legend continued, passed on from generation to the next…
While efforts had been made to eradicate the practice of enslaving witches and women, hunters remained cunning — they developed ways of maintaining the system that entrenched them in power. Terrified of witches regaining their power that could one day topple the shackles of their chains, the hunting became more rampant.
Penetrating every corner of the community, the hunters no longer bore the faces of foreign colonizers and slavemasters. They were haunted instead by the very faces of their neighbors, colleagues, and husbands at their own homes.
Domestic abuse and violence against women and their children (VAWC) remained a blatant reality faced by women in a highly patriarchal society, fixated on the concept of seeing women as easy preys. Far more than the abuses of their perpetrators, women are socially, politically, and economically displaced — lack of job security, opportunity, and unequal pay for women across different professions.
Worsened even more by a pandemic, women are subjected to more oppression through joblessness in a highly militarized setting. Most are left distressed with the only option of selling their bodies to desperate customers, most of whom are police officers and military men hungry to cage and beat women at their expense.
Burned at Stake
Now, centuries after its first occurrence, witch-hunting has become more prevalent than ever. With the most belligerent and misogynistic hunter leading the hunt, women are now in danger more than ever.
The pervasive violence and abuse led to the rise of women organizations, such as the GABRIELA National Alliance of Women, in unity against gender-based discrimination and lead the fight for progressive change. Despite the initiatives and numerous legislative measures to protect women’s rights, state institutions that promote the culture of sexism render these ineffective.
With male-dominated state institutions making up the rules, any woman who dares to come forward is silenced by the very justice system who failed to protect them. Such injustice rings true as that of the case of peasant women organizer Amanda Echanis, human rights defender Zara Alvarez, and journalist Lady Ann Salem.
With the directives coming straight from the mouth of a misogynist President, a nationwide hunt unleashed its bloodthirsty military hounds to inflict fear and violence over an already subjugated population. Leaving no room for mercy, women are deemed guilty over crimes conjured up by the very men who claim to be their protectors.
Through the culture of fascism and violent red-tagging led by the state, women’s rights defenders are robbed of the justice they so rightly deserved. Instead, women are hunted down and burned at the stake, leaving no chance to prove their innocence.
You see, the practice of witch-hunting never really ceased to exist.
Modern society proves to be reminiscent of its barbaric and medieval predecessors who are so keen on preserving the status quo, deeming women as the inferior gender.
Guilty are those who stoked the very fires of patriarchy, tyranny, and oppression. Guilty even more are those who watched the witches burn at the stake and remained silent, leaving the innocent to fend for themselves.
Witch-hunting is a narrative the modern society is hell-bent on eliminating, and yet it perseveres — dangerous, destructive, and deadly. In a system valuing repentance over the truth, patriarchy over equality, women are bound to be persecuted and enslaved before ever reaching genuine freedom and justice.
And so, witches, stoke not the fires of the hunters, but the fires of all women ready to finally be liberated. The time has come for the system of patriarchy and macho-fascism to be burned at the stake.
This article was first published in The Manila Collegian Vol. 33 Issue №3, March 31, 2021.
