Witchcraft trials celebrated male society’s triumph over matriarchal nature

Evidence

But this relationship differs from the relationship of oppression because woman herself aspires to and recognizes the values concretely attained by males. It is the male who opens up the future toward which she also transcends; in reality, women have never pitted female values against male ones: it is men wanting to maintain masculine prerogatives who invented this division; they wanted to create a feminine domain—a rule of life, of immanence—only to lock woman in it. But it is above and beyond all sexual specification that the existent seeks self-justification in the movement of his transcendence: the very submission of women proves this. Today what women claim is to be recognized as existents just like men, and not to subordinate existence to life or the man to his animality. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 157 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Thus, the triumph of patriarchy was neither an accident nor the result of a violent revolution. From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 166 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Patriarchy triumphed through men’s biological privilege, not accident or revolution — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 166; Men invented the feminine-immanence division to preserve masculine privileges — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 157; Colonial warfare gave men new dominance over previously matriarchal societies

Broader Connections

• Men invented the feminine-immanence division to preserve masculine privileges #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 157
• Patriarchy triumphed through men’s biological privilege, not accident or revolution #corroborates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 166
• Colonial warfare gave men new dominance over previously matriarchal societies #corroborates (0.72)