Bitchy History

• Cookies, Community, and Conspiracy Theories: The Culture Wars over Girl Scouts

  Every few years, the Girl Scouts accidentally start a culture war.You’d think an organization best known for cookies and camping would be safely boring. Instead, they keep ending up at the center of national freakouts: heavy metal lawsuits over Thin Mints, boycotts over “woke” cookies, outrage over letting trans girls join, hand-wringing because some troops show up at marches or dare to talk about things like civil rights and bodily autonomy.On paper, it looks absurd. In practice, it tells us a lot about how terrified people are of girls with power.A few threads we pull onWithout spoiling the whole thing, here’s the kind of territory we cover:Girl Scouts as a quiet jailbreakWhen Juliette Gordon Low started the Girl Scouts in 1912, she wasn’t waving a big political banner. She was doing something more subversive: telling girls they could be competent. They could learn skills, make decisions, and be useful outside the living room.In a world that still largely treated girls as decorative future wives, even that was a problem.When world friendship became suspiciousFast-forward to the early Cold War: the Girl Scouts are teaching international friendship, letter-writing to girls abroad, learning about other cultures, normal “let’s be good humans” stuff.Then the Red Scare hits, and suddenly:* global awareness looks like treason,* maps and folk songs get labeled “propaganda,” and* someone publishes a rant asking if even the Girl Scouts have been infiltrated.Politicians actually spent time worrying about whether girls’ badges were secretly preparing them for world government. Because obviously the real threat to the nation is twelve-year-olds who know where Belgium is.Without spoiling the whole thing, here’s the kind of territory we cover:Girl Scouts as a quiet jailbreakWhen Juliette Gordon Low started the Girl Scouts in 1912, she wasn’t waving a big political banner. She was doing something more subversive: telling girls they could be competent. They could learn skills, make decisions, and be useful outside the living room.In a world that still largely treated girls as decorative future wives, even that was a problem.When world friendship became suspiciousFast-forward to the early Cold War: the Girl Scouts are teaching international friendship, letter-writing to girls abroad, learning about other cultures—normal “let’s be good humans” stuff.Then the Red Scare hits, and suddenly:* global awareness looks like treason,* maps and folk songs get labeled “propaganda,” and* someone publishes a rant asking if even the Girl Scouts have been infiltrated.Politicians actually spent time worrying about whether girls’ badges were secretly preparing them for world government. Because obviously the real threat to the nation is twelve-year-olds who know where Belgium is.From communists to feminists to “woke”Once you decide that girls doing things is dangerous, you can keep rebranding the danger forever.We walk through how:* In the 1950s, the fear was “communism” and “internationalism.”* By the 1970s–80s, it shifts to “sexual agendas” and feminism.* In the 90s and 2000s, it’s “family values” vs. “girl power.”* Now it’s “gender ideology,” trans inclusion, and DEI.The details change. The anxiety doesn’t: adults panicking that girls might become people who think for themselves.So what’s the big picture?Underneath all the congressional pearl-clutching, boycotts, Facebook rants, and thinkpieces, the story is actually pretty simple:* The Girl Scouts aren’t radical in the way their loudest critics imagine.* They are consistently in the business of giving girls skills, confidence, and practice being in charge.* That alone is enough to set off repeated moral panics in a society that still isn’t comfortable with girls having real agency.Every time a troop sets up a cookie booth, negotiates prices, learns how to manage money, or plans a service project, they’re doing something that hits patriarchy where it hurts: they’re rehearsing power.That’s the through-line of this episode:the Girl Scouts as an accidental case study in what happens when you treat girls like future adults instead of future wives and mothers, and how threatened people get when you do.Additional Reading: * Emily Swafford, “The Challenge and Promise of Girl Scout Internationalism: From Progressive-Era Roots to Cold War Fruit.”Excellent on how world friendship, maps, and pen pals went from wholesome to “suspicious” in a Cold War climate.* Susan H. Swetnam, “Look Wider Still: The Subversive Nature of Girl Scouting in the 1950s.”Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 37, no. 1 (2016).Traces the 1953–54 handbook controversy, the “un-American” accusations, and what conservatives thought Girl Scouts were really up to.* Jennifer Helgren, American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War (Rutgers University Press, 2017).Broader than just Girl Scouts, but great for situating them within U.S. projects of “global responsibility” and youth citizenship.* “When the Girl Scouts Were Accused of Being Commies,” JSTOR Daily.Short, accessible summary that ties together Swetnam’s research, LeFevre, and the Red Scare backlash.* Amy Erdman Farrell, Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA (Ferris & Ferris / UNC Press, 2025)Farrell—an American studies and women’s and gender studies scholar and former Scout—offers a full institutional history of GSUSA from 1912 to the early 21st century. It’s more academic than nostalgic, but if you want a single, up-to-date, critical-yet-affectionate history of the Girl Scouts that sits perfectly with a “culture wars over girlhood” episode, this is it. Get full access to Bitchy History at www.bitchyhistory.com/subscribe

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• A Brief History of Setting Women on Fire

  Buy Me A CoffeeThis episode is about witch hunts, but not the Halloween kind. We’re talking about how early modern Europe went from relying on women healers and midwives for everything to torturing and killing them as witches, and how that panic helped clear the way for male-dominated, professional medicine.I walk through how climate crisis, war, plague, and sky-high infant mortality created a pressure cooker where someone had to be blamed, and the woman who literally had her hands on the body, your midwife, became the obvious target. Then we zoom out with Silvia Federici, Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, Lyndal Roper, and others to look at the bigger picture: witch hunts as a way to break women’s communal power over healing and reproduction so their bodies and labor could be folded into a new patriarchal, capitalist order.And just to be crystal clear: this is a critique of the history of medicine, not an argument against modern medical or prenatal care. Birth has always been dangerous; today’s doctors, midwives, and nurses save lives every day. The point isn’t “reject medicine,” it’s “understand how misogyny got baked into the system so we can demand better.”Recommended ReadingPrimary Historical Works* Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of FearA sweeping global analysis of witch beliefs and why societies became terrified of women’s power.* Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque GermanyEssential for understanding the psychology of witchcraft accusations and gendered fear.* Owen Davies, The Oxford History of Witchcraft and MagicExcellent overview of European witch beliefs and cultural shifts.* P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, Witch Beliefs and Witch Trials in the Middle AgesGreat for primary source material and early Church anxieties about women healers.Feminist Analyses* Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and NursesClassic feminist history on how women healers were pushed out of medicine.* Silvia Federici, Caliban and the WitchA groundbreaking argument connecting witch hunts to capitalism and reproductive control.* Silvia Federici, Witches, Witch-Hunting, and WomenShort, sharp essays connecting early modern persecutions to contemporary gendered violence. Get full access to Bitchy History at www.bitchyhistory.com/subscribe

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• Joan of Arc: The Original Girlboss (Who Got Burned for It)

  Joan of Arc has been everything to everyone: saint, witch, nationalist mascot, feminist icon, medieval teenager who simply refused to stay in her lane. In this episode, we cut through six centuries of myth to get to the girl in the armor — the one who heard divine voices, out-strategized grown men, terrified theologians, and paid for it with her life.We look at how a France in crisis accidentally created its most enduring symbol, how Joan’s gender-bending authority sparked a medieval moral panic, and how her trial was less a quest for truth than a masterclass in patriarchal damage control.And because we’re Bitchy History, we also trace Joan’s unlikely afterlife: from canonized saint to suffragette poster girl to “girlboss” before the term existed — and why exceptional women like Joan often become symbols while systemic change stays conveniently off-limits.It’s a story about faith, politics, misogyny, nationalism, witchcraft panic, and the dangerous power of a woman who actually believes her own voice.Additional Reading:* Daniel Hobbins (trans.) – The Trial of Joan of ArcDefinitive English translation of her 1431 heresy trial. Essential.* British Library Digitized Manuscripts:Egerton MS 984 (condemnation trial) & Stowe MS 84 (rehabilitation trial)Some of the most important surviving documents of medieval Europe.* Helen Castor – Joan of Arc: A HistoryThe gold standard narrative history — detailed, vivid, and non-hagiographic.* Françoise Meltzer – “Joan of Arc in America” On how Americans mythologized Joan as everything from patriotism to purity.* Karma Waltonen – “Saint Joan: From Renaissance Witch to New Woman”Excellent analysis of Shaw’s Saint Joan and Joan’s modern feminist reclamation.* Elizabeth Fox-Genovese – “Culture and Consciousness in the Intellectual History of European Women”Essential for understanding why Joan was threatening to patriarchal structures.* Mark Twain – Personal Recollections of Joan of ArcSurprisingly earnest and historically grounded — his personal passion project.* George Bernard Shaw – Saint JoanThe most influential literary reimagining of Joan’s trial and personality. Get full access to Bitchy History at www.bitchyhistory.com/subscribe

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• The Real First Thanksgiving

  Thanksgiving is right around the corner for my American listeners, so let’s revisit an early episode of Bitchy History today, because it’s seasonal. Remember that Thanksgiving is a propaganda holiday and the Puritans sucked. But while it may be a sham, as Buffy reminds us, it’s a sham with yams. Get full access to Bitchy History at www.bitchyhistory.com/subscribe

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• Women and the Black Plague: Death, Dowries, and Doing Men’s Jobs

  The Black Death (1347–1351) killed ~40% of Europe and blew a hole in the labor market. Women stepped in, running farms, shops, and guild work; inheriting property; training apprentices; and powering textiles, silk, and brewing. Then, as populations recovered, elites used laws, guild charters, inheritance rules, and moral panics to shove women back to the margins. Crisis granted responsibility; recovery revoked rights.Sources & further reading* Judith M. Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England.* Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound; Of Good and Ill Repute.* Martha C. Howell, Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities.* Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages; An Age of Transition?* Caroline M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages.* Samuel K. Cohn Jr., The Black Death Transformed.* David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West.* Heather Swanson, Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Medieval England.* Sandy Bardsley, Venomous Tongues: Women’s Voices, Complaints, and the Legal Power of Speech in Late Medieval England.* Craftswomen and the Guilds - Lost Art PressEpisode CreditsWritten & Narrated by: Meredith WalkerProduced by: Bitchy History Media Get full access to Bitchy History at www.bitchyhistory.com/subscribe

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