Chris Doss
Maybe. I think that ideologies have a momentum of their own, somewhat divorced from though perhaps based on actual concerns of domination, and I'm not looking to try to distinguish the chicken from the egg here. What I do insist on, though, is that when people were burning witches/wizards (as male witches were called), they usually genuinely thought that the people burned were actual servants of Satan and thus a grave threat. It was not a conscious subterfuge.
^^^^ CB: My thought is that they definitely believed in the Devil and it was not a subterfuge. This gets to be the base-superstructure thingy. Superstructure or ideology does have some independence from the base, but it is limited by the base. There could have been a whole other "ideology" than superstition about witches, as long as it functioned to keep women under men's domination. The ideology can have a life of its own as long as it carries out the domination function.
Take the history of racism. Throughout the masses of racists have sincerely believed that Black people or people of color are inferior morally, physically, mentally to white people. It was not a subterfuge. But it was a ruling idea of the ruling classes ( I'm not sure _all_ of them really believed it; Did Thomas Jefferson believe Sally Hemmings was "inferior" ? He might have had his doubts at certain moments), because it bolstered the ability to rule, divided the working classes between white and colored.
Similarly, this superstition about witches buttressed male supremacy, whether consciously on most people's part or not. That's the objective analysis.
We must always ask "Cui (what group) bono ?" of seemingly irrational ideas and actions ?
^^^^^
As an undergrad, I took a class from the Kant scholar Mary Gregor (RIP), and I remember how she said, "if we thought there were a group of people bent on evil, and we thought they only way to get rid of them was by burning them, what would we do?" I found it hard to answer that question. :)