Calling Marianne Williamson 'Kooky' Reeks of Sexism

Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In March of 2023, spiritual leftist and failed 2020 presidential democratic nominee Marianne Williamson announced her bid for the presidency. Almost immediately, commentators began attacking, not her policies, but her kookiness. "Let the Cranks Run," Jack Shafer argued in Politico, a picture of Williamson on the thumbnail. "If I had a, what's it called? A little globe here, a crystal ball," Biden's press secretary mocked when asked about her bid, "Then I can tell you…. If I could feel her aura. I just don't have anything to share on that."

This is not a new line of attack. When she ran in 2020, commentators routinely brought up this alleged mysticism. "Marianne Williamson for Secretary of Crystals," read a 2019 title in Salon. "I was just waiting for her at some point to be like, 'We don't need a plan, my friends. Just give me one vial of CBD oil, and our chakras will be aligned,'" Trevor Noah joked of her performance at a 2019 debate.

In as roundabout a way as possible, these commentators were and still are calling her crazy. A kooky person who believes in kooky things and should not be taken seriously: a woman to be dismissed. These comments deserve to be scrutinized, not only because they tap into a very bitter history, but because they are being used by people who claim to support feminism and other progressive issues.

If we want to scrutinize controversial women, and Marianne Williamson does have things worth being examined; we should focus on those items, not indirectly bringing up the trope of the crazy woman.

The devil's in the uterus

It should surprise no one that people have been calling women crazy for a long time. The word hysteria, a word that means showing unhealthy emotion or excitement, has roots in the Greek word hystera, meaning "womb." This connection exists because there was an ancient belief that the uterus roamed inside a woman's body in search of semen — something that should give one pause the next time they use this word. As the decades passed, it became a "diagnosis" whose cure has been everything from bed rest to reading less to getting a good f@cking.

What does this have to do with people making fun of Williamson for crystals? In many ways, everything. Witchy things such as "crystals" and magic are currently depicted as belonging to the feminine domain. Women are more likely to believe in things such as astrology or tarot, and while we can debate the reasons for that, marketing for these practices still remain heavily woman-oriented.

This gendered association is not biological (men can like magical things, too), but it does have a long, complicated history. Healers, wise people, or however you want to call magic users, have been around for a long time, and these practitioners haven't always been women. There have been Kings who have consulted tarot cards. Male scholars who believed in astrology. It would be easy to come down with a gender-essentialist view of witchcraft, saying this was always a realm that exclusively belonged to women, but history is more complicated.

Our current association has more to do with how the Middle Ages decided to treat women in Western Europe. In no small part due to the misogynistic book the Malleus Maleficarum (c. 1487), a text that synthesized a lot of longstanding beliefs of women being duplicitous and feeble and claimed they were a good reason for them to be susceptible to devil worship, our current conception of the witch was, if not born, then popularized. As the book became reprinted over the centuries, the image of the haggard, broom-flying woman who preys on innocents such as children was quickly solidified, and all women, particularly female-oriented professions, such as healers and brewers, started receiving more widespread accusations of witchcraft.

This fearmongering helped give rise to a moral panic that we know today as the witch hunts or witch trials, where thousands of people were killed for no good reason — again, something that might give one pause the next time they want to use that word when someone tweets at them meanly. While some countries had greater amounts of male victims (see Iceland and Russia), historically, and especially in the United Kingdom, the country chiefly responsible for colonizing America, women were more likely to be executed for witchcraft in the Middle Ages. And wouldn't you know it, the same rhetoric we see with hysteria was evident during these persecutions, with many women erroneously believed to be susceptible because of their "feeble" nature. As Dr. Charlotte-Rose Millar writes for the University of Queensland:

“…much of it had to do with ideas about women’s temperaments. One of the most vitriolic texts, Heinrich Kramer’s 1487 Malleus Maleficarum described how women were ‘chiefly addicted to Evil Superstitions’ and went on to blame her greed, her credulous nature, her feeble mind and body, her slippery tongue, her jealous nature and her inherently evil disposition for her tendency to give in to the Devil’s influence.”

In other words, crazy. A possessed witch was not in control of her senses, hysterical.

One cannot separate modern-day society's hatred of witch-like practices from misogyny. Craziness has been tied in the West, for centuries, to womanhood. And magic, so closely linked with the feminine because of these massacres, has been decried along with it. When people claim to believe that a man's corpse was buried in a cave, arose as a zombie to talk to his followers, and then magically teleported to the afterlife, they call it having faith in Christianity. But when people talk about other aspects of spirituality, such as crystals and magic, it's treated as kooky women's shit.

Some might have initially countered these claims against Williamson by pointing out that she allegedly doesn't believe in crystals and things of that nature. Yet that retort is disrespectful to the millions of people who do. Even if Williamson believed in these stigmatized types of spirituality, it wouldn't make her crazy or deserving of ridicule.

And so these comments, especially about her alleged fringe spirituality, are tapping into the trope of the unhinged witch. The Biden administration was perpetuating bigotry here. It doesn't matter if press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is a woman — women can still perpetuate misogyny (note — the witch hunts are an excellent historical example of that). And she appears to be perpetuating this meme to make Marianne Williamson out to be an unserious person not worthy of consideration: a woman who needs to be politically burned.

But what about the crystals?

This tactic is frustrating because while you may disagree with Williamson, she has run on pretty substantive issues. Her 2020 campaign was centered on the need for reparations (i.e., providing descendants of slavery restitution for that historical injustice), a policy many would argue that we need (see The Case for Reparations). Her current campaign is centered on bread-and-butter economic issues such as Medicare-for-all. As Nathan J. Robinson writes in Current Affairs:

“Certainly, Marianne Williamson’s 2024 platform is dead serious….Williamson lists a very clear and detailed 25-point labor plan that includes ensuring universal paid time off, criminally prosecuting executives who target labor organizers, establishing a National Worker Resource Center to help workers organize, requiring worker representation on corporate boards, banning intrusive employer surveillance of workers, ending noncompete clauses, preventing employers from wrongly classifying full-time workers as independent contractors, stepping up NLRB enforcement measures, ending right to work laws, and much more.”

Biden will likely run again, and it's clear that he doesn't want to address these issues because, frankly, she is more progressive than him. It's easier for him to leverage misogyny, laundered through the lips of a woman, than it is for him to take her seriously. That would mean a bitter primary where he has to go on the record speaking out against progressive policy.

Now there are fair criticisms of Marianne Williamson. There have been numerous reports that she has been mean to her staff, possibly even making them cry. As Lauren Egan notes in Politico of staffers talking of her 2020 campaign: "Those interviewed say the best-selling author and spiritual adviser subjected her employees to unpredictable, explosive episodes of anger. They said Williamson could be cruel and demeaning to her staff and that her behavior went far beyond the typical stress of a grueling presidential cycle."

Although if we are going to go there, and we should, Joe Biden is in a similar boat. The president has been routinely described as having a "short fuse," a very charitable way of saying he has anger problems. Unlike Williamson, he has also been accused of using his power to put women in positions of intense discomfort (what some might classify as harassment). And so, while Marianne Williamson's leadership deserves to be scrutinized, this sadly seems par for the course, when it comes to our options for president.

Another criticism of Williamson is her position on medication for mental health. From what I can gather from past remarks, she seems to believe that our society is profoundly unhealthy and that doctors can often overprescribe medication for situations that are more environmental than biological. For situations of "Normal Human Despair," as she calls it. She did a video recently for The Gravel Institute, where she blames neoliberalism for a mental health crisis.

And listen, while our current economic system worsens our mental health, the line between environmental and biological problems is not as clear-cut as she often argues (a misconception that is quite pervasive, even among experts). This is an area where I vehemently disagree with her (the revolution isn't going to get rid of depression, y’all). Though again, something tells me President Biden would have equally cringeworthy thoughts on mental health if one got him off the record and away from speech writers.

Finally, one might also disagree with her policies. Not everyone believes that we need reparations or to reduce wealth inequality. That's a normal and healthy debate to have, but all of this other talk of her being a kooky woman, commentators have advanced, is gross to me.

A hysterical conclusion

Karine Jean-Pierre's comments, in particular, were disappointing. Biden started his term telling staffers he would fire them on the spot if they disrespected colleagues. It's a shame that the same logic doesn't apply to Williamson when it comes to civility. I guess reaching across the aisle doesn't count for "kooky" women.

There is a lot to like and dislike about Williamson. Her progressive policies are a breath of fresh air in a primary I thought would be very stale. Yet I worry about her managerial style (though, again, most leaders at that level are more petulant off-camera than I would like).

However, even if she were a kooky witch praying to a crystal every month charged by the full moon's rays, that would not be a reason to disparage her. If you believe in the principles of respect and comradery, they should apply to even the people you think are weird.