Hags: 'eloquent, clever and devastating' The Times

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Though they behaved with some semblance of civility, coven hags still wanted to increase their personal power, and so the third coven mate served to deal with disputes when the other two inevitably started arguing. Three was the typical number of members in hag covens, [1] most commonly with each hag being a different type, [4] but any grouping of hags larger than that, the maximum in a single coven being thirteen, usually ended in catastrophe. [1] [8] Motive [ ] Can't wait to read this. Victoria Smith is one of the best feminist writers around. Also, you can watch her talk about her book next Friday at a free online event: But eventually Dutchman-Smith's conservative, transphobic rhetoric became all too clear and I couldn't persist. I also liked the narrative about nurturing younger women but this is where I started to get a bit conflicted. I didn’t necessarily agree that women should therefore feel somehow indebted to older women for their help in the same way our kids didn’t ask us to be born. This is what I felt the author eluded to in some of her discussions and there did seem to be an us versus them mentality towards younger women that perhaps I don’t yet understand. Misogyny flourishes in spaces where it can be made to appear virtuous,” writes Smith. And that’s certainly the atmosphere that prevailed during the 17th-century witch-hunting era, when unruly women who gathered together to “gossip” or share subversive views were barbarically gagged with so-called scold’s bridles or, worse, executed for sorcery.

Apart from gods, hags were known to be spiritual in sense that they had their own superstitions, the most famous of them being the Rule of Three. The Rule of Three was a planar concept rooted in the realization that many realms and layers in the multiverse were arranged in multiples of three, and hags, as well as other users of witchcraft, were known to embrace the concept. As was said, all things came in groups of three, good, bad, and strange alike. Magic returned threefold upon its source, many spells were cast by chanting a phrase thrice, and covens required at least a trio to function. Though the oldest hags claimed to have invented it, or at the very least named it, [2] the narcissism and lying nature of hags made this seem questionable, [7] and there was also the possibility that some plane-traveling hags simply adopted the idea for themselves. [2] Magic [ ] My thoughts is that it would be hugely reductive to frame other feminist debates - e.g, the sex wars - in this way, but that is exactly what the author does. It seems intellectually lazy to not consider the actual ideas that are being debated - that in fact, the trans-inclusive feminists may have their own ideas and politics that are fully formed and cannot be attributed to naivety or ignorance. The book talks a bit about the sex wars, but barely touches on the gender debate - which in some ways is fair, since it's not what the book is about, but it becomes increasingly distracting in it's efforts to talk "around" what the issue even is! Rodney Thompson, Logan Bonner, Matthew Sernett (November 2010). Monster Vault. Edited by Greg Bilsland et al. ( Wizards of the Coast), pp. 164–167. ISBN 978-0-7869-5631-9. This is especially possible in an age where, as Smith points out, we tend to see our bodies as customisable meat suits that are meant to reflect our true selves, and “few people think their true self looks like a middle-aged woman”. Around twenty years ago, I remember observing with horror my mother’s elbows; they were dry and wrinkly, like those of most adults, and in contrast to my own perfectly smooth child-limbs. My elbows will never be like that, I thought. My logic, I think, went something like this: I would hate for my elbows to look like that, so how could they, when I would hate it so much? Similarly, we can tell ourselves that we couldn’t bear to be seen as ugly, stupid and irrelevant, and so we surely won’t be. By extension, then, if older women are seen that way, then it must be that they can bear it, perhaps because it is an accurate assessment.Then, at a certain age, not only have you learned that the game is rigged, but you can’t play any more in any case. You’re “cast out from the patriarchal meat market”. It makes sense that women in this position have different insights than their younger counterparts. And they are also less hesitant to share them: people care less what others think of them when whatever approval they once stood to lose has dwindled. Differences in the feminist politics typical of older and younger women (such as views on pornography, or transgender issues) should be understood in these terms, says Smith, not the convenient assumption that older generations are just incorrigibly narrow-minded. So, wisely sidestepping outrage porn, she chooses the higher ground: it's framed in terms of existing feminist rhetoric. "Misogyny" comes up a lot as a worse-sounding synonym for sexism, even though actual misogyny is pretty rare in society. To discount older women is, if you’re female, to write off your future self. Yes, we know why you do it. It is born of fear, and societal pressures, and a lot of deep, Freudian stuff to do with motherhood; if you are privileged, it may also have to do with guilt (shout about the Terfs and no one will notice you went to public school). However, our sympathy for you is limited. When you liken feminism to Covid-19 on the grounds that both had “problematic second waves”, you sound very ignorant to us. We wonder where you would be without the Abortion Act, the Equal Pay Act, and the women – your grandmothers among them, I expect – who struggled to make sure their daughters might have all the things they were denied themselves. She is as good on the toxic culture of self-improvement as she is on plastic surgery F. Wesley Schneider (May 2005). “The Ecology of the Green Hag”. In Erik Mona ed. Dragon #331 ( Paizo Publishing, LLC), pp. 56–60. If I was a cringy columnist writing for some pretentious paper, I’d probably say something along the lines of…

I am not sure I read the same book as all the broadsheet reviewers. She makes an interesting statement, one you go “oh, interesting” and then she argues her case in such a confused and random way that leaves you pondering what she actually just said. She quotes from other books and sources but often in the most random way, leaving you to puzzle out how that is actually supporting her argument in that instant. Another claimed method was even more direct, the use of magic to swap their spawn with those of other races while the original child was still in the womb, supposedly killing the mother, asleep at the time of the switch, at birth. This claim seemed more superstition than the others and had never actually been proven, although given hag access to weird magic it was difficult to put anything past the ability of their rotten witchery. [2] [5] [10] The Change [ ] If one did need to make a deal with a hag, the best way, if one could be said to exist, was when one could offer the hag something they needed or wanted. In the mind of the hag, part of their compensation for any given service was the suffering of the other party, and giving them something they genuinely desired made the matter more about sating their greed than their sadism. Because hags weren't subtle about self-expression, it would immediately become clear when a hag wanted to have or observe something, such as an odd spell, magic item, or person with bizarre magical abilities, sometimes snatching the object out of the holder's hands to perform more thorough examination. They would smell, shake, taste, feel, and hear the subject, person or otherwise, whispering to themselves before finally placing a mental value on it. [2]

I just don’t believe in repeatedly promoting and voicing negative views at the expense of others. We societally wouldn’t put up with it if she was being outwardly racist. Or xenophobic so why is transphobic ok? The true lifespan of hags was unknown, and if not fully immortal, they were nevertheless long-lived for many races. At minimum they lived for several centuries and at maximum many millennia, with lifespans comparable to dragons. [2] [5] Hags that had grown very old became known as aunties, although they could also achieve that respectable title by adopting or birthing several children, joining a powerful coven or placing themselves directly under an even older hag. The eldest of the hags, as well as the most wise and powerful, were known as "grandmothers" by their sisters, some of which had strength rivaling that of the archfey. [2] Subspecies [ ] My issue is the framing of all feminist debate as a generational conflict - Dutchman-Smith tries to frame the 'gender debate' as older, more 'experienced-laden' feminists who, by virtue of hitting female milestones e.g menopause, birth, have a more wordly understanding of sex and gender than 'naive', 'accomodating' younger feminists, who do not have the grasp on their own politics or feelings because they're too afraid of being called bigoted, or they're too foolish to understand they're aiding the patriarchy, or at one point Dutchman-Smith implies that women who call older women transphobic are simply trying to steal their careers - a suggestion that is awful, patronising and frankly misogynistic.

Smith cites the figure that over 90 per cent of cosmetic surgery patients are women, “as though somehow, quite reasonably, we are the ones most in need of repair”. For women, but not for men, the healthy, normal body of a person in midlife is considered shamefully wrong, so that while it’s not possible to look twenty years old forever, at least “handing over the cash” shows willingness to try. This social nicety of apologising for the ageing female face is much like covering one’s mouth to yawn. Making sure that we offer the books our customers want to read is the basis of good bookselling and good service means treating all our customers with respect and for them to feel welcome to choose the books they want.” An iconic part of hag mythology and one of their most potent creations were the magic items known as hag eyes, [10] [7] made from gemstones of reportedly varying worth and the real eye of a hag's victim. [1] [4] [5] Hag eyes required the effort of an entire hag coven to craft, although the details of their creation were possibly malleable. The ritual for creating a hag eye was said to take anywhere between an hour to three days to complete, and required the full attention of the coven to complete. This time was spent in a state of deep concentration and meditation, that prevented them from doing anything besides eating, drinking and sleeping, and anything that disrupted the process forced them to start over again. [1] [4] [5] [10]Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours. More recently, the “screaming, destructive witches” of Greenham Common” were decried as “belligerent harpies” but today, argues Smith, the feared coven has moved online in the form of Mumsnet – an internet parenting platform that has been derided both as a forum where silly women talk about prams and school catchment areas, and as a “toxic” cauldron of “TERFdom” (trans-exclusionary feminism). The exact methodology and timing of it was argued over, but the general idea of the changeling or caliban, was that a hag replaced their daughters with those of other races to continue their lineage. Despite occasionally feeling the compulsion to procreate, hags had no maternal instincts and only rarely raised their spawn themselves if they planned to use them in a coven. Instead, hags had to go out and find a suitable newborn child to kill and replace with their own spawn, parasitically leeching off whatever race or culture the hag targeted as she sadistically watched her daughter's growth and the impact it had on those around them. [1] [7] [10] Well, I'm here now or teetering on the brink and it's not so bad. Not that it really matters how I feel about it because it's unavoidable or the alternative is worse. I'm older than my mother was when she died.

Psychologists call this pattern of thought “splitting”: situating exaggerated good or bad traits in one individual or group to avoid confronting them elsewhere, a form of compartmentalisation that allows us to maintain a comfortably familiar view of the world and our place in it. This splitting by young women is mirrored by splitting on the level of the whole of society. Smith argues that the middle-aged woman “becomes a repository of sorts”, representing and thus containing many of our fears about the inevitability of dependency, infirmity and death. F. Wesley Schneider (July 2006). “The Ecology of the Annis”. In Erik Mona ed. Dragon #345 ( Paizo Publishing, LLC), pp. 64–68.Silat : A variety of hag from Zakhara, silat were a strange subrace known for their unpredictably. Leaning more towards chaos than evil, some were known to be benevolent and kind if approached in whatever manner they deemed "proper". [28] Metamorphosis [ ]