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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   26856 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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Do you have a source for that? I thought only around 20% of people accused of witchcraft were men, e.g. https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/witchcraft-work-women

This link blurs the distinction between "tertiary source" and "game of telephone", but while https://digpodcast.org/2020/09/13/male-witches/ agrees that, for witchcraft accusations in total, 20-25% were men, it claims there was a huge variation from period to period (as in @Corvos' reply's suggestion) and especially from place to place, going up as far as 75-80% men in Russia and 90% men in Iceland.

An academic work and various articles I read 10 years ago when I was trying to write a novel on witchcraft. I'm afraid I don't recall the name but it was regarded as being the top work at the time.

My understanding was that the consensus had settled (note weasel words!) on 'most victims of witchcraft accusations were men, witch-burnings were much rarer than lyncings, witchcraft accusations are best thought of as spontaneous riots rather than having much to do with religion or politics'. But that's all I've got to back it.

The only thing I note about the article you linked is the first paragraph:

While both men and women have historically been accused of the malicious use of magic, only around 10–30% of suspected witches were men by the 16th and 17th centuries. (Emphasis mine)

Perhaps we are discussing different periods? Doesn't seem likely though. At the risk of going ad-hominem, I'll admit I have limited trust in a blog post by the University of Cambridge from 2023, whose main citation is an article in Gender & History. For myself I’m going to say that this is epistemically undetermined for now :)

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