From my point of view there's no doubt about this. It is fact and it's fact the world over though, sadly, much worse in some parts of the world. For example, a young girl was recently stoned to death in Somalia. She was married but recently gang raped. She was then accused of adultery and dragged off by a mob of men to be stoned to death, which they did successfully. There are other details to this story, but I have, I think, relayed the reality of it. What's horrific, is that it is not particularly unusual.
Now, women in America aren't stoned to death anymore, ( as suspected witches, for instance ), but the hangover of Puritan misery still is embedded in our society on many levels. And while I know these various issues regarding women could be its own thread, Sarah Palin was an outstanding example of what I consider a woman who fully 'bought in' to a kind of soft-core misogony.
I say 'soft-core' because, if she was as fundamental a Christian as she has claimed then she would adhere to Pauls direction to Timothy that 'women should remain silent'. IOW, she would not have gone into politics but rather would've stayed at home cooking and being pregnant and the like.
So, to me, she is a living example of religious hypocrisy and how women, by buying into or playing along with sexist thinking, become female sexists. Women against women, so to speak.
Anyway, good point ysabella.
Women weren't stoned to death in America, I've read an awful lot about the struggles of women here, and I've never read any reference of that happening.
Regarding the accusations and sentences of those labeled witches, they weren't stoned to death either, nor were they burned. They were sentenced to hanging, and there were men who hung on that charge (also as accomplices). The closest you get to anything do with a stone, was poor old Giles Corey, of what is now Peabody, MA, who had stone weights placed upon his chest, hoping to get him to confess knowledge of witchcraft, implicate his wife, Martha. To the last, Corey demanded more weight be applied, because he would not lie to please those who accused him and his wife.
It's a bit silly to restrict misery to the "puritans", seriously, misery has been brought about by all faiths at one time or another, as well as by those who were athiests, including in to the current age. In all candor, if you can understand that it was wrong for the puritans to decide how one and all to think, how can you justify an excuse for whatever side you happen to belong to, to be able to demand the same? What about secular hypocrisy?
I dunno, perhaps the lack of distinction is unfortunately lost on some?
