Were the Salem witch-trials really targeting feminists?
No. Of the twenty people executed at Salem, six were men. Even a former minister of Salem was hanged as the witches ringleader, and he was most unlikely to have been a feminist. If the trials were attempting to target feminists, they weren’t very efficient. And it is most unlikely that any of the victims of the Salem trials were suffering from diseases of the kind suggested in an answer above. Most of the people targeted appear to have been perfectly sane and rational. Similar witch trials occured all over Europe in different regions and at different times, and it seems unlikely in the extreme that all the accused were suffering from some sort of disease. The witch trials at Salem occured because of various factors, including the unstable political situation, the war, epidemics of disease, the encouragement of Increase and Cotton Mather, and the sermons of Samuel Parris, which stirred up people’s anxieties about witchcraft.
One theory is that there was mass hysteria due to the ingestion of ergot, a fungus that grew on rye and produces some hallucinatory symptoms. Those targeted were probably just unlucky, and the idea that it is a good thing to kill people because of their ideological beliefs is a particularly nasty example of the totalitarian principle – whether or not you like feminists is hardly the point – encouraging people to kill those they disagree with is hardly the act of a decent human being.
