Yesterday I wasn’t feeling well, so I crawled into bed and indulged in one of my favorite geeky pleasures–a documentary marathon featuring social histories and folklore, mostly pre-1492.

First came a couple King Arthur documentaries–the history of the myth and, possibly, the men. Even though my fuzzy thoughts were in a tired tangle, I had the presence of mind to be miffed on behalf of Guinevere and the women of her time. So Arthur and his ilk could run around having amorous affairs, but Guinevere’s crush on Lancelot was blamed for bringing both “virtuous” men, and ultimately all of Camelot, down? Not that I’m defending her adulterous inclinations, but how very Garden of Eden. “It was the woman you put here with me!” Chivalry, my eye.

One scholar commented that the way Guinevere was portrayed in Le Morte D’Arthur, one moment a child-like paragon of purity and virtue, the next an evil, carnal temptress, represented the struggle to view women as human beings in the Middle Ages. Intrigued by this topic, I made the mistake of turning next to a documentary about the “witch hunts” in Europe, the gendercide of the day.

Wow.

Historians estimate that between 1480 and 1750, somewhere between 60,000 and 300,000 women were executed for “witchcraft,” usually confessed to under unthinkable torture. The Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer Against Witches), a witch hunting manual that waxed eloquent about the manifold weaknesses of the female gender, most especially their “insatiable carnal lust,” went through 36 printings and was, for a time, second in popularity only to the Bible. There were hamlets in Germany where Every. Single. Woman. was convicted of witchcraft and killed.

Is it just me, or does that seem rather extreme? I mean, misogynist or not, most men at least think women are handy to have around.

What I couldn’t get over (besides the fiendish brutality these poor women endured, and the way some accusations against women never change), was the frenzied terror the witch hunters whipped up against these women. For the most part, these were women who had lived in their communities their entire lives, and never caused anyone actual harm. They were smaller than their accusers, physically and socially weaker, with no rights and no means of defending themselves. There is no doubt that there were evil people abroad, delighting themselves in lascivious speculations, hungrily cooking innocents over open flames, but it wasn’t these women. It was their accusers.

And yet, somehow, it was the women everyone was afraid of.

It occurred to me that this phenomenon goes well beyond the witch hunts. The Native Americans were “savages,” so of COURSE God wanted us to take their land, and we were justified in “defending” ourselves against them. Whether or not people of African descent have souls was the matter of some debate during the centuries we spent kidnapping and enslaving them. “The Birth of a Nation,” a silent film showing the KKK riding to the rescue of a poor white woman being chased by actors in blackface, brazenly promoted a belief that is still widespread (if not widely admitted) today: black males are dangerous. Immigrants of varying ethnicities have commonly been blamed for the social and economic problems of the more established community–the Italians, the Irish, the Japanese, the Mexicans. And the standard defense of our lackadaisical response to poverty and human suffering has typically been self-righteous speculation about the “inferior moral character” of the poor, the underclass, or the lower castes.

This, despite the fact that they were/are the vulnerable ones, and if anyone was to be feared, it was the accusers.

I realize that many people resist conversations about racial, gender, social or economic privilege, protesting that the injustices are not their fault, that there is nothing they can do about it. It makes us uncomfortable and defensive. And yet failing to acknowledge the very real harm that our ancestors, our communities, and the attitudes of our own hearts have caused only reinforces unhealthy patterns. Humbly assessing our own hearts, and the actions that flow out of them, is certainly more Christ-like than lobbing defensive accusation at others.

So, what do you think? What is behind the human tendency to villainize the vulnerable? Have you ever experienced that, or taken part in it?