Burn the Bitch Never Cross That Witch Again
By J. Inscoe
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"This witch doesn't burn down." On September 22, the now-infamous Harry Potter author Joanne One thousand. Rowling tweeted a link to the Wild Womyn Workshop's transphobic storefront. It certainly wasn't the first time I'd seen or heard "witch" used in feminist circles. Simply for Rowling, the "witch" served as a unique misogynistic symbol: every bit "Feminazi," equally "bitch," and as "TERF."
The specific application of "witch" to anti-trans activists in the UK—circulated by a transphobic author known for her wildly popular writings on witches and wizards—rings foreign to my ear. This usage shifts the term's gendered meanings from one of a patriarchal power dynamic to one of biological essentialism mobilized to persecute trans folk. It is a shift exemplified in Rowling'southward gender distinction between the "witch" (the magical cis-woman) and the "wizard" (the magical cis-man)—a binary that simply doesn't reverberate the history of persecution against witches of various gender and sexual identities.
For those apologists who see Rowling as the subject of her ain personal witch hunt, know that Rowling's rhetoric has consequences, and clearly she has become a contemporary voice in the minds of transphobic activists. Columnist Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Mail for case asserted "In that location has never been a meliorate time to read J.Yard. Rowling'south books." Despite backlash from the trans community, as evidenced in one Guardian article, "Troubled Blood has striking the No 1 spot in the UK'due south book charts, selling 64,633 copies in the 5 days to 19 September." Much of that stems from the popularity of TERF activism in the Great britain, just we can't ignore the immensity of Rowling'southward own platform.
I find the witch—and in general, the representations of the magical or demonic—rather queer. Take for instance the sea-witch Ursula (Pat Carroll) of Disney'due south The Little Mermaid (1989) who according to directing animator Rubin Acquine was modeled on drag queen Divine and acted equally, writer Laura Sells' argued, "a blended of and so many drag queens and camp icons—Joan Collins, Tallulah Bankhead, [and] Norman Desmond." See also the devilish HIM (Tom Kane) of Powerpuff Girls (1998–2005) fame, whose curled goatee, thigh-loftier boots, and wavering, high-pitched vocalization immediately indicate the villain every bit gender (and narrative) trouble. These representations have a long, queer history which have been co-opted or erased in modern-day essentalist feminist rhetoric.
"Witch," of grade, has long held gendered connotations, drawing from the oppression of women in various patriarchal, religious contexts. Readers may exist familiar with the phrase attributed to Tish Thawer'southward The Witches of BlackBrook (2015): "We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren't able to burn down." Justyna Sympruch called the witch a feminist "fantasmic Other." Kristen J. Sollée's Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sexual practice Positive (2017) is perhaps the most comprehensive modern piece of work linking feminism to the witch, finding between the two a history of gendered oppression at the hands of patriarchal order. One Guardian article on the text fifty-fifty asked, "Are witches the ultimate feminists?"
Yet reading work on the witch, one interprets them equally essentially female. On the de-gendered apply of "witch hunt," political scholar Erin Cassese sees in the 1950s a political turn away from the gendered "witch chase"—that is, Sen. Joseph McCarthy'south (R-WI) "witch hunt" against suspected communists during the 2d Crimson Scare. What Cassesse and others gloss over in the second Red Scare is its overlap with the Lavender Scare, persecution of suspected gay men in government positions. Co-ordinate to writer Matthew Mills, FBI Manager J. Edgar Hoover's Lavender Scare was severe plenty that rumors of cross-dressing circulated tardily in his career: in Mills' words, the "witch-hunter became the hunted." Filmmakers have often encoded the witch-hunt against queer practice equally an unspoken Otherness in their work. In tv series similar Bugged (1964–72), enacted by queer actors similar Agnes Robertson Moorehead (Endora) and Dick Sargent (Darrin Stephens), that sense of "something wrong" lingered in the representations of domestic space.
I am not the showtime to problematize the feminist witch. Rhiannon Mechan of qcommunicate cites the peculiar use of the witch imagery to affirm a white feminism in the Westward—every bit in Tv series such as Netflix'due south The Spooky Adventures of Sabrina (2018–20)—at the same time people of color are accused of (and tortured, murdered for) witchcraft. Some modern Wiccan circles in the West nonetheless engage in gender essentialism, as in the controversy of the anti-transgender Pussy Church building of Modern Witchcraft (PCMW).
Yet when I think of the religious persecution of folk based on accusation of the supernatural, I call up about the detail ease with which the language of the witch fits the experiences of transgender, nonbinary, and other gender non-conforming individuals. The piece of work on "witch-as-feminist" today elides the history of the cantankerous-dressing witch with one of "natural-built-in" women resisting patriarchal stricture or utilizing masculine manner to mask (or masc) their "real," "natural" gender. It glosses the gender trouble of the witch as a "phallic woman." It evades the queer sounds of the witch's cackle and the possessed torso. Information technology ignores the work that transgender, non-binary, and gender non-befitting must practice to negotiate their abject status.
Conjuring Queer
The late-20th Century psychoanalytic arroyo to representation understood the witch as 1 instance of the phallic adult female. Equally Noa Azulai writes in her aptly named "Dicks in a Box: The Enduring Fright of Penis-Snatching Witches" (2019), "Cultural anxiety nearly maintaining traditional masculinity continues to identify 'penis-stealers,' only now they are non only witches but sexual-assault survivors, transgender activists, or only a society that is 'feminizing' and 'weakening' America'due south men." The castration anxiety seems oddly familiar to the gender essentialist's fear of modern-day "phallic women" who appropriate femininity in transgressive, murderous fashion. Stories of skin-stealing, cantankerous-dressing, cis-women-murdering, trans-esque serial killers abound—in fact, one can look to Rowling'due south new book, Troubled Blood (2020), as a modern example of this trope. Except the crossdresser encodes an alternate fear (on the role of cis-female TERFs), one of "masculinizing" UK women.
Azulai of grade refers to the Malleus Maleficarum, the seminal text on the witch's transgressions, though I find in this magical castration something peculiarly trans-feminine. According to the Malleus Maleficarum, the witch might invoke the devil to impose on presumably cis-gendered male person individuals a "smoothly fashioned body... with its surface interrupted by no genital organ" (See Part I, Question IX). The text frames this feminization of man—again, juxtaposed against afab crossdressing—as transgression, just as feminist writers revel in this feminization as a symbol of feminine power. It escapes the imagination to think those assigned male at birth could perhaps want that fate.
If nosotros are to talk nearly the "monstrous-feminine," to use horror scholar Barbara Creed's terms, we should also talk about the "monstrous-trans," the ways in which monsters have acted equally contested allegories for trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming folk. According to scholar Anson Koch-Rein's (2019), the monster acts as an apt trans metaphor: the "wrong-torso" of Frankenstein's monster, the skin-suits of The Skin I Alive In and The Silence of the Lambs. The trans feminine monster is the abject Other of work like Psycho (1960) or Sleepaway Camp (1983–2008), whose horror relies on the violence of gender. Hear Buffalo Bill's baritone ("Would you fuck me? I'd fuck me.") and the bestial hiss and snarl emanating from Angela Baker's face—a mask replica of actress Felicia Rose's confront—imposed on the nude masculine body.
As a student of language and voice—and every bit a production of a Christian, Southern United States family—I am fascinated past the intersections between linguistics, gender, sexuality, and organized religion/the supernatural. In his 2013 The Devil Within, Brian Levack details the reported furnishings of demonic possession on the "demoniac'due south" voice, including an amending of the speakers' vocal aesthetics. The possessed feminine torso emanated a masculine voice, "deeper and gruffer than the normal vocalisation… [spoken] from their bellies or from very deep in their throats." (Information technology reminds me of discourses on transgender identity as possession or gender dysphoria as psychic epidemic: the abject queer.)
I discover this aforementioned in-between-ness, this apple-polishing and unnatural vocalization, in what singers may recognize equally the voce di strega, or the "witch'southward vocalization." The voce di strega refers to, in Anthony Frisell'southward words, "[o]ne of the unusual, transitory phases which the falsetto voice goes through, on its style to condign the mixed voice… so named because of its harsh, strident, unmusical sounds," otherwise known as a "witch'due south cackle." On its style to the soprano vocalization, the "raw sounds [of the witch's voice] gradually mellow and become totally transformed from 'ugly and undesirable,' into tones of superior quality and beauty." To butcher the specific vocal range of the voce di strega, that linguistic in-betwixt-ness rings familiar for those of united states fighting the acoustic limits of our bodies.
We are the witch's cackle. We are the "phallic adult female," the enchanted "man." We are the gender monsters. To folk like Rowling and the broader community of trans-exclusive radical feminists, gender is inextricably linked to an immutable, natural sex. But if gender is inherently natural, inherently normal, then queer-folk similar u.s.a.? Nosotros're paranormal. Supernatural.
Trans/figuration
"Witch" doesn't just symbolize feminine resistance to patriarchal structures, simply rather signifies a variety of meanings salient to those discomforted by their assigned gender: transformation, sexual liberty, and the mere possibility of a magical (monstrous) life. "Witch" represents, every bit Spectrum Due south'due south Kelly M. Marshall asserted, "a reclamation of ability" for marginalized gender various peoples. As writer Lewis Wallace noted in 2017, the by decade has witnessed an increasing identification of trans, nonbinary, and intersex individuals with witch subculture and neo-paganism, peculiarly in the South. Williams writes, "queer and trans people are often pushed out of our communities of origin, and fifty-fifty the more than progressive wings of Christianity are only barely starting to engage with trans issues. Magic and witchery are like shooting fish in a barrel to claim, and they are also associated with a resistance to Christian hegemony." Especially for those of us in the South, the symbol of the witch offers a chance to break from deeply entrenched cultural restraints. In the words of announcer Moira Donovan: "What is existence a witch if not owning the correct to be yourself?"
As a trans person, I feel that I, to use the championship of Sonny Nordmarken'due south (2013) autoethnography, am "Condign Ever More Monstrous." I see it as my trunk shifts in ways affirming and conflicting; I hear information technology as I transfigure this raw phonation into magical exercise. Increasingly, trans folk reclaim the monster metaphor, with gender diverse individuals expanding the vocabulary of the monster equally a powerful, abject figure resonant with their identities. (Shoutout to those concubi—a neologism for a vers or gender-nonconforming succubi/incubi significant "to prevarication with"—who helped inspire my writing here.)
For queer folk haunting the boundaries of gender today, it'south the flavor of the witch. See, for case, Ru Paul'due south Drag Race'south "Monster Ball." (This writer is personally still possessed by the chilling Yvie Oddly). In literature, particularly the graphic novel, run into Molly Ostertag's The Witch Boy (2017), Ariel Slamet Ries' Witchy (2014), Joamette Gil's anthology series Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology (2016), as well every bit Niki Smith'southward The Deep & Night Blue (2020).
For those of us who run into in gender trouble a spectre of the monstrous—some, as jaded childhood Harry Potter fans—She-Who-Volition-Be-Named's transphobic views and gender-essentialist notions of the witch are securely troubling. Because of the essentialist usage of "witch," the human activity of "burning the witch" becomes deeply linked with the contempo outcries against a cancel culture. Rowling certainly subscribes to information technology, as evidenced by her signature on the Harper's letter this July. Only of course, any trans, nonbinary, or gender non-conforming person can tell you that the "open up debate" on our rights is moreso open season.
J/J./Jae Inscoe (they/them/theirs) is a PhD candidate in UMBC's Language, Literacy, & Culture program. They are currently completing a dissertation on legendary radio broadcaster Paul Harvey to examine the white male conservative radio broadcaster voice in the 20th Century United States. When they aren't working toward their transition goals (Eris Morning and Emrakul) they care for their ii feline familiars, Naga and Cuga.
Source: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/transfiguring-witch-jk-rowling-and-terf-mystique
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