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Trigger warning: this piece mentions violence against women, rape (including corrective rape), and child sexual abuse

There’s a long history of women, especially lesbians, falling victim to a given society’s views regarding what is seen as acceptable or normal. From witch hunts to Satanic panic, lesbians have been accused and even killed, simply because they don’t fit their society’s very narrow idea of what a woman should be.

The further back in history you go, the harder it can be to find documented queer women accused of witchcraft. This is for a variety of reasons. One is that the language surrounding lesbianism was scant; starting in 1601, the word ‘tribade’ was used to refer to lesbians. But even though there was technically a term used to describe women who are sexually attracted to women, that doesn’t mean it was used often, and it certainly doesn’t mean that society viewed lesbianism as acceptable. Additionally, many of these women were killed, so they weren’t able to document their stories, and even if they were able to, it would be incredibly risky to write (even in a diary) about sexual encounters with other women. In fact, Anne Lister, who began her diaries in 1806 (long after many of the historical witch hunts), was so concerned about her writing being found that she created her own ‘crypt hand,’ a cipher she used to talk about the most private aspects of her life related to sexuality.

All of that to say, it’s not shocking that we have very few accounts of confirmed lesbians accused of witchcraft throughout the centuries of witch panics worldwide. That said, looking broadly at what these witch hunts sought to accomplish, it’s clear that lesbians fell under the umbrella of women they’d wish to accuse.

The Goal of Historic Witch Hunts

“Malleus Maleficarum” (”Hammer of Witches”), published in 1487 by the German Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer, was a manual for identifying and punishing witches. As the printing press became more popular, it also enabled books like “Malleus Maleficarum” to be circulated more widely.

As with all witch hunts, women were the primary focus, so it’s not surprising that lesbians would be included. In fact, because many lesbians defied gender roles, they were likely particularly targeted. In the “Malleus,” a lot of focus is on female sexuality, basically framing witchcraft as a female and sexual crime. The Malleus outlined that sodomy was something sinful and unnatural, and claimed that Satan employed demons to tempt people to commit these types of sexual sins. It wasn’t just sodomy, either; tribadism (the very old term for lesbianism) during this time period was also seen as something that the Devil could influence women to partake in.

As the McGill Department of English Undergraduate Review writes, “Malleus Maleficarum thus not only invokes a gendered, feminine conception of witchcraft, but suggests that women’s bodies and the sexual deviancy of witchcraft are inherently tied. In doing so, Malleus presents a deadly opposition between the sexes and posits that it is only under the staunch policing of women’s sexuality that they do not turn to the corruptions of the Devil.”

Additionally, even before the “Malleus” was published and throughout the 13th to 17th century, European witch hunts targeted any woman who was different (and lesbians would certainly be seen as different). According to the IMSS Chicago Museum, “Women were accused of being witches for any perceived abnormal behavior.”

With the extreme misogyny in the “Malleus,” paired with the obsessive focus on women’s sexuality, and targeting those who didn’t fit traditional society’s idea of what a woman should be, it seems very reasonable that lesbians were impacted by the witch hunts occurring. And it wasn’t just because of this one book either, the “Malleus” certainly made an impact, but witch hunts, even before the “Malleus,” was widespread and had an intense focus on any woman who was ‘abnormal,’ or who didn’t fit the gendered stereotypes of the day, which many lesbians would naturally fall under.

Specific Examples

There are very few examples of ‘confirmed’ lesbians, though it makes sense that lesbians were impacted in these witch hunts. The most famous example of a lesbian accused of witchcraft is Maud Galt. Maud was from Scotland and was accused of witchcraft following one of her servants going before the Privy Council saying that Maud had been “abusing ane of hir servants with a peis of clay formed lyk the secreit member of ane man.” The servant also brought the artificial phallus as evidence. In the charge, numerous instances of attempted rape of various servants were listed. However, rather than investigating for sexual assault, the Privy Council investigated under the charge of witchcraft instead.

Julian Goodare writes in “The European Witch-Hunt,” “the shocked authorities found the idea of witchcraft easier to cope with than lesbianism.”

The council ended up dropping the charge entirely, and there is no further recorded action that was taken against Maud.

Another less-reported potential lesbian was Margaret Duchall, another Scottish woman. According to research by Rebecca Hallett, “she [Margaret] confesses to have seduced several women and gotten them to join her in a covenant with the Devil. When they made this pact with the Devil, Margaret claims the women were naked and that subsequently they engaged in same-sex relations.”

Margaret claims a variety of other things as well, including supposedly dancing naked with women. Eventually, the women’s husbands and other village men arrested them. Margaret was executed on June 1, 1658.

I have been unable to find any other records of Margaret Duchall’s testimony, but I still think it’s an interesting history to include. Her testimony is said to be from ‘Confessions of Witches’, which is part of the National Library of Scotland, which I don’t have access to.

Satanic Panic

While ‘witch hunts’ may not look the same way they did centuries ago, the 1980s and 1990s were rife with ‘Satanic panic.’

As history.com explains “The satanic panic, as it has become known, was what sociologists call a ‘moral panic,’ says Mary deYoung, professor emeritus of sociology at Grand Valley State University and author of The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic. Moral panics occur during times of social change, she explains, when people identify an enemy or ‘folk devil’ as the cause of a social shift.”

This moral panic was an intense wave of public accusations (sounds eerily familiar, right?) claiming day care workers were abusing children through satanic rituals, and heavy metal music was driving teens to suicide, among many other things.

It’s not entirely unsurprising, then, that a group of four lesbians got caught up in the panic. In a case that’s become known as the ‘San Antonio Four,’ Elizabeth Ramirez, Anna Vasquez, Cassandra Rivera, and Kristie Mayhugh, four openly lesbian women, were accused in the fall of 1994 of sexually assaulting two of Elizabeth Ramirez’s young nieces. From the beginning, the women denied any abuse and agreed to cooperate with authorities.

However, it soon became clear there was significant bias in the case, and it is also important to note that, before the accusations, Elizabeth had rejected advances from Javier Limon, the nieces’ father. The women were eventually (wrongfully) convicted, and it took a long time for the truth to come out.

In 2010, the younger victim recanted her trial testimony. She explained that she and her sister had made the false claims because Javier Limon, their father (who also wanted to be with Elizabeth), pressured them to. After a lengthy legal battle on November 23, 2016, “the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the writs and vacated the convictions of the four women, ruling in favor of them on their actual innocence claim and the faulty science claim.”

Modern Day

In 2018, a horrific story emerged from Cameroon. A teenage girl had been praying for her same-sex desires to go away. When they didn’t, she came to the conclusion she must be bewitched. It appears her family believed similarly because tragically, four years later, she was chained and violently raped by a man that her family forced her to marry. All of this happened because they discovered she was a lesbian. This young girl is far from the only young person in Cameroon to endure corrective rape due to their sexuality.

As Reuters reported, “Belief in witchcraft is widespread in Cameroon. Even though it is illegal to practice black magic, authorities do little to stop families consulting sorcerers who perform ritual sacrifices to ‘cure’ their relatives of homosexuality.”

Modern-day ‘witch hunts’ still exist as well. In February of this year, four people were arrested in India who were suspected of burning a mother and her 10-month-old son to death because they were suspicious that witchcraft was being practiced.

This isn’t something unheard of in India, “according to the National Crime Records Bureau, more than 2,500 people, mostly women, were killed in India on suspicion of witchcraft between 2000 and 2016.”

It’s not always a tragic life and death tale; lesbians have also been referred to as ‘witches’ as an insult. At the end of last year, a lawsuit was settled in California in which an anti-LGBTQ+ board member accused a special education director who was a lesbian of being a witch. The educator alleged that she was demoted and forced to resign due to her sexuality. The suit was resolved when the school district agreed to pay the teacher $700,000 over the next 20 years.

From the 13th century to modern day, society has often struggled with women who don’t fit its narrow idea of what a woman should be. When a woman is ‘abnormal,’ when she doesn’t bend to gender stereotypes, she is targeted, whether that’s through a witch hunt, Satanic panic, or something else entirely. There’s no doubt that in many ways society has improved for women who are lesbians or who are different in other ways, but it’s possible to see traces of historic witch hunts in modern-day scandals.

Cover image from an 1892 lithograph