Witches Sluts Feminists

In Kristen J. Sollée’s book, Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive, she writes: “The witch is at once female divinity, female ferocity, and female transgression. She is all and she is one. The witch has as many moods and as many faces as the moon.

Most of all, she is misunderstood.

With a pretty straightforward title, Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive leaves no questions as to what you should expect to find in its pages. From the “All-American Witch”, AKA what really went down in Salem, to the “Political Witch-hunt” of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, this book will leave you with the what, why, and how of the words witch, slut, and feminist in our history. Albeit, “our” means mostly “American” in this case, but Sollée states right off the bat in her introduction that the Christian, Anglo-European view is so prevalent in the media’s perception of the witch that she decided to pick apart the biggest offender.  

Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive is a history lesson with a contemporary feel. It will educate you without overwhelming you with dry facts. It will answer questions such as “when did ‘witch’ become a negative term?” or “how has the internet changed witchcraft and the feminist movement?” with a plethora of sources, 225 in the 200 pages to be exact, from historians to witch-identifying people to historians who are also witches. 

Sollée’s voice is snarky, and her comments are brief but amusing. She never makes herself the focal point. This is not a person on her soapbox, shouting her beliefs at you for 200 pages. She is merely the vessel for the dozens of voices woven into the passages, telling their stories, findings, research, their histories. It is a cumulative journey, each sentence building on the last, each chapter carrying you further through time, showing you a history of adversity and of perseverance, leading you to the present-day identities of witches, sluts, and feminists.   

Reviewed by: Ash Dietrich 

Publisher: ThreeL Media

Publication Date: May 22, 2017

ISBN: 9780996485272

Length: 200 pages