Redeeming the witch: sexuality and history. (Reflections).

Sexuality is more than just sexual activity. Foucault, the French philosopher who made significant contributions to the analysis of power, clearly summarizes the relationship between sex and sexuality by emphasizing the need to perceive sex as historically dependent on sexuality. He was interested in what could be called the micro-physics of power, that is, the ideas of circulation and movement that enable us to understand how power is generated and reproduced, through the interpretation of bodies, discourses, knowledge ... (1)

Foucault felt that nature is historically dependent on culture. This immediately leads us to the political and philosophical conflict between essence and history, between the specific and the universal, that arises in discourses on sex and sexuality.

There are risks and pitfalls in both extremes: exacerbated biological determinism that ignores both time and circumstance versus radical relativism in which we lose our overall sense of humanity since everything is seen as constructed, as having a specific point in time, limit and location. Sexuality--a cultural, social and historical construction that penetrates diverse spheres of society and of our existential experience--is not written upon a blank page. It is part of pulsating bodies that have desires and instincts. Yet these bodies are inserted in contexts; they are steeped in culture and bound by structural relationships within society.

From this perspective, we can view sexuality as an area impregnated by culture that expresses and translates prevailing social class, gender, race and ethnic relations. And since these are unequal relations, sexuality also expresses relations of power. Thus, the concept of sexuality is broad and includes biological facts about our anatomical sexual differences, physiological aspects of how genitalia and the reproductive tracts function, psychological conditions that express our subconscious, and the performance of socially-defined sex roles. All these aspects are translated in cultural discourse. (2)

The complexity of this concept allows us to understand the importance of social expectations of gender roles in sexual relations and and reveals how these expectations influence the formulation of the concepts of sexual and reproductive pleasure and health.

A Historical Perspective

Jurandir Freire Costa (1999) points out that the concept of sexuality, as we know it today, is relatively recent. In ancient Greece, for example, a clear distinction was made between the realm of pleasure (Aphrodisiac) and the realm of love (Eros).The first covered pleasures such as eating, drinking, exercising, etc. The second included various types of relationships: men and gods, men and men, women and men, women and gods, men and animals, etc. For Jurandir, this diversity of pleasures and loves was, over time, channeled into another type of image, one based on the idea of polar opposite sexes that characterizes our concept of sexuality today. (3)

However, until the 17th century, this polarity was not incorporated into the way in which medicine treated sexuality and human reproduction.

The Aristotelian concept that men are superior to women and have more vital heat was confirmed under Saint Agustine who asserted that the soul forms later in women than in men.

In fact, in several cultures, from the Greek Pandora who opened the box containing all of humanity's evils to the Jewish Eve who tries the forbidden fruit and convinces man to do the same, women have been associated with the origin of evil, inspiring fears in men.

   "You must always go in mourning,
   covered with rags. You must wound
   yourself in penitence in order to correct
   the error of having caused
   humanity's fall from grace ... Woman,
   you are the door to the devil." (4)

The Catholic religion plays a significant role in affirming the idea of the incompleteness, imperfection and inferiority of women's character, as well as women's responsibility for original sin.

This concept was incorporated into medicine, which established itself as the official knowledge and practice in European courts in the 15th century. Famous doctors such as Ambroise Parre, who was considered one of the best doctors in 15th century France, saw the female body as imperfect in relation to the male.

   ".... the hottest and driest seed
   begets the male and the coldest and
   wettest seed the female ... As humidity
   is less efficient than dryness, the
   female is formed later than the
   male ... [and] if feminine sexual organs
   are internal, it is due to the idiocy
   of her nature which has not
   managed to externalize them, failing
   to place those parts outside as
   with men." (5)

For centuries, the idea of woman's physical inferiority prevailed. This included her role in conception and the weakness of her character. A hierarchical model, based on the concept of male superiority, is superimposed upon the original, unclear and polymorphic ancient Greek concept. Man is the unique sex from which woman is constructed imperfectly and incomplete.

From the 14th to the 17th centuries, the Inquisition reigned in many areas of Europe, even reaching the Americas. The image of the witch was associated with evil. Because of her supernatural powers, she shifted from the sacred to the profane, and her uncontrolled sexuality made her capable of having sex even with the devil. I believe that this image played a fundamental role in re-affirming the concept of danger associated with women.

The Inquisition was legitimized as a system of persecution through manuals on demonology, which, with the development of the printing press, were reproduced throughout Europe. Among these, the Malleus Maleficarum was one of the most important. Written by the Dominican priests Institor and Sprenger, this book was one of the principle manuals for persecuting witches. In the Malleus Maleficarum, the authors assert that:

   "... if today we burn women, it is because
   of their sex ... There is a defect
   in how the first woman was
   formed given that she was made out
   of a crooked rib, the opposite of
   man, which makes her an imperfect
   being who is always cheating." (6)

In an earlier text, I wrote that the social devaluation of women--as expressed in lay and religious discourses, in legal doctrine and in social behavior and attitudes--can be seen as part of the cultural domain. In contrast, the discourses on demons and the Devil--which correspond to this cultural devaluation and the construction of a political category of accusation through the image of the woman-witch--can be seen as part of the ideological domain.

The Inquisition punished an evil that was viewed as originating in women's very nature. The Inquisitor investigated, and the stake punished this evil. Together, they worked as a corrective mechanism that, by establishing the witch as a concrete social category, also produced the truth. It is important to highlight that the medical discourse which emerged alongside that of the Inquisition also established the witch as a certain type of woman, particularly the healer, the mid-wife, the sage-femme who, for centuries, was in charge of the population's health. This traditional healing role was displaced with the advance of medicine that aimed to take over the practice of healing.

Medicine from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries not only polarized and contrasted men's and women's bodies as perfect versus imperfect, but also worked together with the inquisitors. Doctors were frequently responsible for determining if certain women were or not witches, searching the suspects' bodies for the so-called "signs of the devil," markings indicating contact with the devil. Even areas that did not feel pain, found through the use of needles, indicated a pact with the Devil. (7)

This metaphorical image of the witch symbolized disorder, danger and evil, a category that contaminated others, invaded spaces and existed somewhere between the sacred and the profane. This image led to the powerful creation of the social perception of female sexuality as dangerous, which has lasted throughout the centuries and left traces still present in our societies.

This image of the witch contrasts metaphorically with that of the Virgin Mary, which embodies the ideal of female purity and perfection. These two metaphors are fundamental to the establishment of the standards of purity/impurity, chastity/shamelessness and order/chaos, which continue to symbolically frame the paradigms of female sexuality, the object of discourses, controls, prohibitions and silences up to this day.

By affirming that sex is political and seeking to understand male and female sexuality within a framework of power, of history, of social and cultural relations, feminism has advanced in the study of this topic. It has managed, above all, to promote ongoing cultural change which significantly transforms social perceptions of female and male as different but not unequal nor hierarchical.

This cultural change in the framework of profound transformations in gender relations has concrete repercussions in our relationship with our bodies, our affection, our pleasure, our sexual life and reproduction.

Finally, it is important to point out the huge paradigm shift in the 1990s with the international conferences organized by the United Nations, especially the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994. It was here that the dimensions of sexual and reproductive health were first recognized as human rights. Sexuality, reproductive and sexual health, reproductive and sexual rights are therefore historical concepts that reflect a long road towards gender equality.

Notes

(1.) Foucault, Michel (1990). Microfisica do Poder. Rio de Janeiro: Graal.

(2.) For a definition of the concept of sexuality, see Espelho de Venus, Identidade Social e Sexual da Mulher (1981). Grupo CERES, Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Brasiliense.

(3.) Costa, Jurandir Freire (1999). "A Medicina como Projeto Social, O controle do corpo." In Cadernos CEPIA, no. 4, Rio de Janeiro.

(4.) Tertuliano, quoted by Jean Delimaux, in La Peur en Occident, (1978). Paris: Ed. Faillard, p. 311 (author's translation).

(5.) Ibid., p. 328, 329.

(6.) Institor, H. and J. Sprenger (1971). Malleus Maleficarum. New York: Dover Inc. Publications, p. 44.

(7.) Pitanguy, Jacqueline (1985). "El Sexo Brujo." In Religiao e Sociedade. Rio de Janeiro: ISER, Editora Campus, p. 23-37.

The author is a Brazilian sociologist and the Director of CEPIA-Cidadania, Estudos, Pesquisa, Informacao, Acao (Citizenship, Studies, Research, Information, Action). She sits on the board of directors of UNESCO's Institute for Education and the Comision Ciudadania y Reproduccion (Commission on Citizenship and Reproduction). She is also a member of the Editorial Committee for the magazine Health and Human Rights of Harvard University's School of Public Health.