Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: the Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon)
1978., pg 186:
"This massacre of women [witch-persecution], then, masked a secret
gynocidal fraternity, whose primary targets were women living outside the
control of the patriarchal family, women who represented
an option -- an option of 'eccentricity', and of 'indigestibility'.
The term 'eccentric' is derived from the Greek ek
(out of) plus kentrum (center of a circle).
One definition in Merriam-Webster is 'not having the same center... opposed
to concentric'. It also means 'deviating from
some established type, pattern, or rule.' The women hunted as witches
were (are) in a time/space that is not concentric with androcracy. Hags
are Self-centering, constituting the Society of Outsiders, defining gynocentric
boundaries. This is the dreaded option of Dreadful, Dreadless Crones,
the ultimate indigestible threat to the 'majesty of God.' Therefore in
the name of god this Self-centering process must be halted and all Hag-centered
process re-moved, sucked back into the dead center of patriarchal darkness."