The #MeToo campaign against sexual violence and harassment by powerful men has become “a bit of a witch-hunt”, mused craggy action star Liam Neeson, echoing Catherine Deneuve. Which is slightly confusing, since the targets of the alleged witch-hunt are all men. Shouldn’t it be a wizard-hunt?
The first appearance of “witch-hunt” in the OED, though, makes it clear that such sport is gender-inclusive. In Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines of 1885, we find it announced: “To-night ye will see. It is the great witch-hunt, and many will be smelt out as wizards and slain.” As a political metaphor, “witch-hunt” was popularised by George Orwell, and then widely used for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s obsessive investigations into supposed communists.
The phrase is rather awkward, though, in the #MeToo context, given that the term “witch” was historically used to denounce women who failed to conform to gender norms. And the most salient feature of the actual witch-hunts in Salem, Massachusetts and elsewhere, of course, was that witches didn’t actually exist. The same, regrettably, cannot be said of predatory men.
