In Defense of Witches

This is a feminist text that argues the witch burnings of Europe and the US were primarily about keeping women subservient and maintaining the patriarchy. The author then draws a direct line from the barbarity of that era to the misogyny and sexism women still face in the modern era, including but not limited to: reproductive rights, unrealistic beauty standards, double-standards with regards to aging men vs women, societal pressure regarding marriage and motherhood, women being unknowingly used as science experiments while under anesthesia by medical school students, etc.

The theory about why the witch burnings occurred do make a lot of sense to me:

“Talking back to a neighbor, speaking loudly, having a strong character or showing a bit too much awareness of your own sexual appeal: being a nuisance of any kind would put you in danger. [...] every behavior and its opposite could be used against you: it was suspicious to miss Sunday Mass too frequently, but it was also suspicious never to miss it; it was suspicious to gather regularly with friends, but also to have too solitary a lifestyle.”
The witch-hunts were a reactionary response to women striving for equality in a highly puritanical and patriarchal society. They were not just crazy Christians going nuts. Though they were definitely that too.

She argues that as modern medicine began taking shape, its pioneers (white men) used the specter of witchcraft to push out the healers, medicine women, and midwives to be replaced by an arguably barbaric early form of obstetrics and other highly dogmatic medical fields, all if which ignored centuries of evidence-based practice from said healers & “witches” to instead use old classics like leaches: “Despite their parallel activity as sorceresses, about which we may be skeptical, and much more than the era's official doctors, the female healers targeted by the witch-hunts were already working within the parameters of the rational; indeed, they are characterized by Ehrenreich and English as ‘safer and more effective' than the ‘regular' doctors. These doctors had studied Plato, Aristotle and theology; prominent among their repertoire were bloodletting and the application of leeches.”

It's written from a first-world perspective and makes zero mention of trans people.
Other than that, I thought it was pretty good and an excellent choice this spooky season.