Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

welfare fraud and who several months ago was sentenced in

Minnesota to fifteen years in prison for killing her husband of

one year while he was attempting to beat her to death.

Delivered at New York City chapter meeting of the National Organization

for Women, October 3 1 , 1974.

We are here tonight to talk about gynocide. Gynocide is the

systematic crippling, raping, and/or killing of women by men.

Gynocide is the word that designates the relentless violence

perpetrated by the gender class men against the gender class

women.

For instance, Chinese footbinding is an example of gynocide. For one thousand years in China all women were systematically crippled so that they would be passive, erotic objects for men; so that they were carnal property; so that they were entirely dependent on men for food, water, shelter, and

clothing; so that they could not walk, or walk away, or unite

against the sadism of their male oppressors.

Another example of gynocide is the systematic rape of the

women of Bangladesh. There, the rape of women was part of

the military strategy of the male invading armies. As many of

you know, it is estimated that between 200, 000 and 400, 000

women were raped by the invading soldiers and when the war

was over, those women were considered unclean by their husbands, brothers, and fathers, and were left to whore, starve, and die. The Bangladesh gynocide was perpetrated first by the

men who invaded Bangladesh, and then by those who lived

there— the husbands, brothers, and fathers: it was perpetrated

by the gender class men against the gender class women.

Tonight, on Halloween, we are here to remember another

gynocide, the mass slaughter of the nine million women who

were called witches. These women, our sisters, were killed

over a period of three hundred years in Germany, Spain, Italy,

France, Holland, Switzerland, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Amerika. They were killed in the name of God the Father and His only Son, Jesus Christ.

The organized persecution of the witches began officially on

December 9, 1484. Pope Innocent VIII named two Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, as Inquisitors and asked the good fathers to define witchcraft, to isolate the modus operandi of the witches, and to standardize trial

procedures and sentencing. Kramer and Sprenger wrote a text

called the Malleus Maleficarum. The Malleus Maleficarum

was high Catholic theology and working Catholic jurisprudence. It might be compared to the Amerikan Constitution. It was the law. Anyone who challenged it was guilty of heresy, a

capital crime. Anyone who refuted its authority or questioned

its credibility on any level was guilty of heresy, a capital crime.

Before I discuss the content of the Malleus Maleficarum, I

want to be clear about the statistical information that we do

have on the witches. The total figure of nine million is a moderate one. It is the figure most often used by scholars in the field. The ratio of women to men burned is variously estimated at 20 to 1 and 100 to 1.

Witchcraft was a woman’s crime, and much of the text of

the Malleus explains why. First, Jesus Christ was bom, suffered, and died to save men, not women; therefore, women were more vulnerable to Satan’s enticements. Second, a woman