jenny (phire)
@phirephoenix.com
2.1K followers 718 following 1.7K posts
I write code for a living and words for my sins. occasional blog posts at phirephoenix.com, weekly newsletter for organizing/activism in Toronto at @showuptoronto.ca.
I write code for a living and words for my sins. occasional blog posts at phirephoenix.com, weekly newsletter for organizing/activism in Toronto at @showuptoronto.ca.
![From Sylvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch (2004), emphasis and notes mine:
That this propaganda successfully divided women from men is suggested by the fact that, despite individual attempts by sons, husbands, or fathers to save their female relatives from the stake, with ONE EXCEPTION, we have no record of any male organizations opposing the persecution. The exception is the case of the fishermen of the Basque region where the French Inquisitor Pierre Lancre was conducting mass trials that led to the burning of perhaps as many as six hundred women. Mark Kurlansky reports that the fishermen had been been absent, engaged in the annual cod season. But,
[when the men] of the St.-Jean-de-Luz cod fleet, one of the largest [from Basque country] heard rumors of their wives, mothers, and daughters [being] stripped, stabbed, and many already executed, the 1609 cod campaign was ended two months early. The fishermen returned, clubs in hands, and liberated a convoy of witches being taken to the burning place. This one popular resistance was all it took to stop the trials... (Kurlansky 2001: 102)
(handwritten note: #notallmen)
The intervention of the Basque fishermen against the persecution of their female relatives was a unique event. NO OTHER GROUP OR ORGANIZATION rose up in defense of the witches. We know, instead, that some men made a business of denouncing women...](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vx7kjgaxre7bro3fa3zcfvil/bafkreigfxq3dhjs7fnmmcjkjutqyklekw6cfu47at4xqmhjugrvyvznxb4)
