Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell

Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, shortened W.I.T.C.H., was the name of several related but independent feminist groups active in the United States as part of the women's liberation movement during the late 1960s. The name W.I.T.C.H. was also sometimes expanded as "Women Inspired to Tell their Collective History," "Women Interested in Toppling Consumer Holidays," and many other variations.[1]

The first WITCH group was established in New York City in October 1968. Its founders were socialist feminists, or "politicos", who had formerly been members of the New York Radical Women group. They opposed the idea advocated by radical feminists that feminist women should campaign against "patriarchy" alone. Instead, WITCH argued that feminists should ally with a range of left-wing causes to bring about wider social change in the United States. Various scholars have suggested that in embracing the iconography of the witch, WITCH represented forerunners of various forms of feminist-oriented modern Paganism such as Dianic Wicca.

Founding

"The most significant aspect of WITCH was its choice of central symbol: the witch. By choosing this symbol, feminists were identifying themselves with everything women were taught not to be: ugly, aggressive, independent, and malicious. Feminists took this symbol and molded it - not into the fairy tale "good witch," but into a symbol of female power, knowledge, independence, and martyrdom."

Religious studies scholar Cynthia Eller, 1993[2]

Within the women's liberation movement of the United States during the 1960s, there was a division between the "politicos" and the "radical feminists". The politicos were socialist feminists and attributed the oppression of women to capitalism, seeking to ally with other leftist causes – such as the New Left, black liberation movement, student movement, and anti-war movement – in a wider socio-political movement to bring about revolutionary change. Conversely, the radical feminists did not view women's oppression as a symptom of capitalism and wanted women's liberation to remain independent of the wider leftist movement.[3]

WITCH was formed when the New York Radical Women (NYRW) split in 1969. Several politicos within the NYRW, most notable Robin Morgan and Florika, were inspired by the actions of the Youth International Party, or "Yippies", which had been founded in December 1967 and which sought to promote its message by shocking and offending mainstream American sensibilities.[4] Other NYRW members, such as Kathie Sarachild and Carol Hanisch disagreed, believing in the need to continue consciousness raising and disliking the idea of adopting deliberate shock tactics.[4]

A number of these NYRW politicos then established WITCH; among those involved were Morgan, Florika, Peggy Dobbins, Judy Duffett, Cynthia Funk, and Naomi Jaffe.[5] Unverified claims have been made that the establishment of WITCH was inspired by the decision of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to hold hearings investigating alleged communist involvement in a demonstration against the August 1968 Democratic Convention. The women who established WITCH were angry that while a number of male radicals were subpoenaed by HUAC, the female activists had not been.[6]

The group was established in New York on Halloween 1968,[7] at which point they adopted the name "Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell" and its acronym, WITCH.[7] The group changed their name to suit their purposes, albeit retaining the fixed letters of WITCH.[8] For instance, during a demonstration against the Bell Telephone company, the group used "Women Incensed at Telephone Company Harassment".[7] Other examples included "Women Infuriated at Taking Care of Hoodlums" and "Women Indentured to Traveler's Corporate Hell".[9]

Activism

"WITCH is an all-woman Everything. It's theater, revolution, magic, terror, joy, garlic flowers, spells. It's an awareness that witches and gypsies were the original guerrillas and resistance fighters against oppression – particularly the oppression of women – down through the ages. Witches have always been women who dared to be: groovy, courageous, aggressive, intelligent, nonconformist, explorative, curious, independent, sexually liberated, revolutionary. (This possibly explains why nine million of them have been burned.)"

WITCH Manifesto[10]

WITCH were devoted to overthrowing the patriarchal dominance of society,[9] and according to the scholar Cynthia Eller, they chose to do so in "witty, flamboyant, and theatrical ways" by carrying out witch-themed political stunts.[9] The group's inaugural action took place on Halloween 1968, as WITCH members dressed as witches and marched down Wall Street in order to place a "hex" on New York's financial district.[11] Morgan stated that the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined sharply the next day.[1] She also noted that this action emphasized the working-class struggle against capitalism more than the feminist struggle.[11]

Subsequent acts of protest conducted by WITCH placed a greater focus on women's issues.[11] In one instance, the group's members entered a popular restaurant, Max's Kansas City, where they distributed garlic cloves and cards on which were written the motto: "We Are Witch We Are Women We Are Liberation We Are We."[9] At the same time they chanted "Nine Million Women, Burned as Witches" and questioned the women diners on why they were willing to have a man buy them dinner.[9]

In January 1969, a Counter-Inaugural Protest was organized by various feminist groups, taking place in Washington D.C. to demonstrate against the inauguration of Richard Nixon as President of the United States. WITCH arrived from New York, appropriating some of the New York Radical Feminists's banners – which were emblazoned with the declaration of "Feminism Lives" – and replacing it with their own word, "WITCH", in crayon.[12] Rumors circulated at the protest that WITCH had planned to pull the radical feminist speaker Shulamith Firestone down from the podium when she had been planned to speak; they disagreed with her vocal criticism of those men who were involved in the leftist movement.[12] After the protest, WITCH subsequently sent a letter to The Guardian repudiating Firestone's calls for women's liberation groups to divorce themselves from the wider left-leaning social movement in U.S. society.[13] In this letter, it described women's liberation as "part of a general struggle; we are as essential to the movement as it is to us".[13] It further reprimanded Firestone for her vocal attacks of men who were part of the movement, stating that "directing ourselves against men... only reinforces the oppressive pattern of women defining themselves through men".[13]

In February 1969, WITCH held a protest at a "Bridal Fair" at Madison Square Garden. Wearing black veils, they chanted "here comes the slaves/off to their graves", and posted stickers around the area emblazoned with the statement "Confront the Whoremakers", a pun on the common leftist slogan "Confront the Warmakers".[14] The protests also involved turning loose several white mice at the event, which Fair attendees began scooping up off the ground.[14] Radical feminists criticised WITCH for reinforcing the sexist stereotype that the assembled women would be scared of mice.[15] They also condemned what they understood as WITCH's approach of promoting a message of "we're liberated and you're not" to other women, believing that in doing so they were distancing and alienating themselves from feminism's base constituency.[15] Later historian Alice Echols expressed criticism over what she saw as WITCH's "contempt" for those women who were not involved in leftist activism.[11] The event resulted in negative media coverage for WITCH, and some dissention among members over goals and tactics.[16] After the incident, WITCH moved away from the shock tactics that they had previously employed and instead focused their attention on consciousness raising.[15]

Spin-off "covens" were founded in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, D.C.,[1] and W.I.T.C.H. zaps continued until roughly the beginning of 1970. In 1969, a Chicago "coven" gathered in an action outside the Chicago Transit Authority headquarters to "hex" the CTA over a proposed transit hike, dancing and chanting.[17] In another instance, WITCH protested the firing of a radical feminist professor by entering the sociology department of the University of Chicago and leaving hair and nail clippings all over the building.[9] In February 1970, the Washington coven held a protest during a Senate hearing on population control. They interrupted Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough's testimony by chanting and throwing pills at panel members and people in the audience galleries.[16] In 2015 the Chicago chapter was re-established by three women. The first action took place in November 2015. Following actions targeted the lack of affordable housing, abortion rights and the Trump administration's condonation of racism and sexism.[18]

Understanding of witchcraft

In their leaflets, WITCH adopted the witch-cult hypothesis by claiming that those persecuted as alleged witches in European history had been members of a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion which the Christian authorities then sought to suppress.[19] In their manifesto, WITCH propagated the erroneous claim that nine million women had been burned to death during the witch trials in the early modern period.[20] This claim had originated with the first-wave feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage.[20]

WITCH declared that any woman could become a witch by declaring herself to be one, and that moreover any group of women could form a witches' coven.[21] In one of their leaflets, it is stated that:

If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a Witch. You make your own rules. You are free and beautiful. You can be invisible or evident in how you choose to make your witch-self known. You can form your own Coven of sister Witches (thirteen is a cozy number for a group) and do your own actions... You are a Witch by saying aloud, "I am a Witch" three times, and thinking about that. You are a Witch by being female, untamed, angry, joyous, and immortal.[19]

Members

Members of W.I.T.C.H. included Robin Morgan, a child television star in the 1950s and a member of the Youth International Party in the late 1960s, who became an important feminist. Some W.I.T.C.H. documents were included in the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.[22]

Peggy Dobbins and Naomi Jaffe who went on to join the Weather Underground Organization.[1] Soon after the breakup of W.I.T.C.H., Robin Morgan repudiated her New Left-aligned politics, and embraced a kind of radical feminism that was strongly opposed to "the male left".[23] She later dismissed WITCH as a form of "clownish proto-anarchism" which had not "raised our own consciousness very far out of our own combat boots".[11]

Legacy

Writing in 2006, the journalist Margot Adler expressed the view that while WITCH was considered to be "a fringe phenomenon" in the women's movement at the time of its existence, by the early twenty-first century its sentiments would be embraced by a larger proportion of feminists, if still a minority within the feminist community.[24]

W.I.T.C.H. were a political rather than a religious or spiritual group, however several scholars of Pagan studies have considered them to be partial precursors to the Dianic Wiccans, members of a feminist-oriented form of Modern Paganism which developed in the United States during the 1970s.[25] According to Adler, WITCH's key assumptions about the nature of witchcraft and its connection to women's liberation continued as the "wellspring" of Dianic Wicca and other forms of feminist-oriented Paganism.[19]

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Brownmiller, Susan (1999). In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. p. 49. ISBN 0-385-31486-8.
  2. ↑ Eller 1993, p. 55.
  3. ↑ Echols 1989, pp. 3, 299.
  4. 1 2 Echols 1989, p. 76.
  5. ↑ Echols 1989, p. 96.
  6. ↑ Echols 1989, pp. 96–l97.
  7. 1 2 3 Eller 1993, p. 53; Adler 2006, p. 181.
  8. ↑ Adler 2006, p. 181.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Eller 1993, p. 53.
  10. ↑ Eller 1993, pp. 53–54; Adler 2006, p. 181.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Echols 1989, p. 97.
  12. 1 2 Echols 1989, p. 116.
  13. 1 2 3 Echols 1989, p. 119.
  14. 1 2 Echols 1989, pp. 97–98.
  15. 1 2 3 Echols 1989, p. 98.
  16. 1 2 Bradley, Patricia (2003). Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 63–64. ISBN 9781578066131.
  17. ↑ Freeman, Jo. "W.I.T.C.H. - The Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell". Retrieved Dec 4, 2015.
  18. ↑ Greene, Heather. "WITCH stages ritual to protest housing inequalities in Chicago". Wild Hunt.
  19. 1 2 3 Adler 2006, p. 208.
  20. 1 2 Clifton 2006, p. 120.
  21. ↑ Adler 2006, p. 207.
  22. ↑ "Sisterhood is powerful : an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement (Book, 1970)". [WorldCat.org]. Retrieved 2015-05-08.
  23. ↑ Echols, Alice (1989). Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-1787-2.
  24. ↑ Adler 2006, p. 182.
  25. ↑ Eller 1993, p. 54; Adler 2006, p. 181; Clifton 2006, p. 120; Doyle White 2016, p. 58.

Bibliography

Adler, Margot (2006) [1979]. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshipers and Other Pagans in America (Revised ed.). London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-303819-1. 
Clifton, Chas S. (2006). Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Oxford and Lanham: AltaMira. ISBN 978-0-7591-0202-6. 
Doyle White, Ethan (2016). Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Brighton, Chicago, and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-84519-754-4. 
Echols, Alice (1989). Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816617872. 
Eller, Cynthia (1993). Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America. Boston: Beacon. 
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