Fiona’s Reviews > In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial > Status Update

"I realize that new hopes of making a positive difference mean I am now actively interested in this area, whereas before I wanted only to forget my miserable experiences."

This habit of just dropping and citing names with 0 context drives me crazy. Who is Dominique Brancher? Yes, great observation but who are you?

So this Dr. Dreuf and the play he's from is at least a bit satirical.

"the general impression of moribund commercialism that this civilization gives off" is so apt.

This would've been a great place to point out the misconception that nails and hair don't grow after death.

It is kind of crazy that her older age is what people would go after Brigitte Macron for when even the author should call out that she was his teacher and the whole situation is crazy.

"And yet, on encountering voluntarily childless women, people still regularly threaten, 'You’ll regret it one day!' They are betraying some very weird thinking. Can we force ourselves to do something we haven’t the least wish to do solely in order to head off a hypothetical regret hovering in the distant future?" Thinking Fast and Slow had a whole heuristic for the idea of future regret that shows a fallacy...

"Women are particularly vulnerable to this paradoxical 'injunction to want a child.' And they are all the more sensitive to it because, as one (voluntarily childless) woman remarked to Debest, they have a tendency 'not to distinguish between what they want and what is asked of them.' Jeanne Safer describes how one day she came to realize that she didn’t want to have a baby: she 'want[ed] to want to have a baby.'"

"At this point, we come to the same paradox that lies at the heart of the beauty industry: to be a 'real woman' means putting blood, sweat and tears into achieving something that’s meant to come naturally."

"For example, aren’t you just a little responsible for the existence of the child born somewhat later, with someone else, to the partner whom you left, or for the one conceived by two friends whom you introduced?" I would say this is not the level of intensity detractors have in mind. Kind of a weak statement unless the argument is that these examples should actually be as valid.