Narrative, Enforcement, and the Long Memory of the Witch

We like to believe that history’s worst violence is behind us—that we are more enlightened now, more rational, less cruel. But power does not disappear; it changes form. And when new narrative tools emerge faster than our ethical frameworks, old patterns reassert themselves with frightening familiarity. I would argue at this moment in history we are sliding into barbarism faster than ice cream melting on a los angeles sidewalk.

One of the clearest examples of our imagined past barbarism is the European witch trials.

Beginning in the late 15th century and continuing into the 18th, tens of thousands of people—overwhelmingly women—were accused of witchcraft, tortured, and executed. The precise number is still debated. Some historians cite forty thousand deaths; others argue it was far higher, pointing out that records are incomplete, destroyed, or never kept at all. What is not disputed is that women’s bodies were the primary site of enforcement, spectacle, and terror.

Even today, scholars argue over the count. And that argument itself should unsettle us. When bodies are uncounted, when deaths are administratively invisible, violence becomes easier to deny—and easier to repeat.

Many of these women did not know how much danger they were in. They were not rebels or radicals. Often, they were compliant, devout, socially embedded. Some were widows. Some were healers. Some were simply inconvenient. In documented cases, accusations followed rejected advances, property disputes, or the need to erase evidence of male misconduct. Once named, a woman’s fate was rarely reversible.

This did not happen in a vacuum.

The witch trials coincided with massive social upheaval: famine, plague, religious fracture, and—critically—the arrival of a new technology. The printing press allowed texts like Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”) to be reproduced and distributed at unprecedented scale. A narrative that had once been local, inconsistent, and contested became standardized, portable, and authoritative.

Narrative hardened into doctrine. Doctrine became justification. Justification became violence.

That pattern should feel uncomfortably familiar.

Why Women Become Enforcers

One of the most misunderstood aspects of patriarchal systems is the role women play in enforcing them. This is often framed as betrayal or moral failure. Historically, that framing is wrong—and dangerously incomplete.

Women raised inside rigid hierarchies are trained, from childhood, to survive through compliance. Obedience is presented as safety. Enforcement is presented as virtue. Questioning authority is framed as sin, selfishness, or social collapse.

In Christian-dominated societies especially, women were taught that their worth lay in submission, purity, and self-erasure. They were warned—explicitly and implicitly—that deviation would bring punishment, isolation, or death. Under those conditions, enforcing rules was not cruelty. It was adaptation.

But adaptation to an unjust system does not make the system just.

Historically, women who acted as enforcers were not protected by that role. When conditions shifted—during moral panics, economic stress, or political consolidation—they were just as vulnerable to accusation and elimination. Compliance delayed harm; it did not prevent it.

This is not a story about bad women. It is a story about how coercive systems reproduce themselves by conscripting the vulnerable.

Technology, Narrative, and the Present Moment

We are living through another narrative revolution.

Social media, algorithmic amplification, and institutional messaging now shape reality at scale, often without accountability. Stories harden faster than facts. Accusations spread without due process. Targets are selected, framed, and disciplined in public view.

Once again, women’s bodies are a primary site of enforcement.

Once again, deaths are undercounted, dismissed, or reframed as inevitable, personal, or deserved.

Once again, people argue about numbers instead of systems.

And once again, many of those enforcing the rules believe—sincerely—that they are maintaining order, morality, or safety.

This is how it always works.

A Pause, Not an Indictment

This requires care.

If you were raised inside a system that taught you obedience before autonomy, compliance before safety, and enforcement before consent, what happened to you was not a choice. Indoctrination begins before language, before power, before meaningful alternatives exist.

That does not make you guilty.

But it does place you in danger.

Historically, women in this position rarely knew how close they were to the edge—until they crossed it. Many believed that following the rules would save them. It did not.

So this is not a condemnation. It is a warning.

When you are asked to shame another woman, report her, discipline her, silence her, or explain away harm done to her—pause.

Stop.

Ask who benefits.

Ask who is protected.

Ask what happens if you are next.

Compassion includes understanding why you were trained this way. But compassion also includes refusal.

You are allowed to stop enforcing rules that do not keep you safe.

You are allowed to see clearly.

You are allowed to step out of the machinery.

The Unfinished Count

We still argue about how many women were killed in the witch trials because counting was never the priority. Control was.

That should trouble us now, as women continue to die under systems that insist the problem is exaggerated, isolated, or unknowable. When bodies are not counted, when harm is individualized, when patterns are denied, history is already repeating itself.

The lesson of the witch trials is not superstition. It is administration.

It is narrative.

It is enforcement.

And it is the cost of mistaking compliance for safety.