Kyriarchy?

Perhaps LRD - she is described as a feminist theologian though and her book titles confirm that (I haven't read any of her books).

She isn't just a theologian who is also a feminist IYSWIM. That is why I spoke about academic feminism. I guess by that term I mean 'pronouncements made about feminism from within an academic context by an academic who includes feminism in their remit even if it is in combination with other subjects'.

I have been having a little think about this again and I have had a little personal light bulb moment.

I think liberal feminists and radical feminists do not define patriarchy in the same way. We tend to describe the difference between the two schools as being how we want to go about achieving women's rights. But I reckon the real difference is in how we define patriarchy.

For me, as a radical feminist, patriarchy is Patriarchy with a capital P and it is omnipresent.

Everything within The Patriarchy is patriarchal and everything that is patriarchal is The Patriarchy.

So when I said above, for example;

"white supremacy is patriarchal"

I could equally have said

"white supremacy is patriarchy"

Um, ok.

I just think there's probably a distinction to be made between someone whose academic subject is feminism or women's studies, and someone like this, whose subject is theology.

Nah, that's a feminist academic

(This is off-topic, but I have to say, I am doing a PhD with two feminists as my supervisors, and I still don't recognize what people call 'academic feminism'. I have a sneaking suspicion that some people who're called 'academic feminists' actually - like Fiorenza - just do readings of their own subjects (in this case theology) from what they think is a feminist viewpoint. That may be valuable - one of my supervisors does it very well for medieval lit. - but it isn't going to result in a coherent ideology, is it?!)

That is an interesting article. I read pretty much all of it with my eyebrows raised.

I'm another one who is not happy with a word being coined (I hesitate to say 'made up' only because I'm not an authority on Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza), by a theologian. I can't help but make a face at that. And I love made up words - but I like made up words that make people (especially oppressed people) exclaim "hah! perfect that is exactly what I was trying to say, I can't believe we never had a word for that universal phenomenon before".

Also to quote from the link provided by LRD I was again at these bits in particular;

"At the very least, an on-going and informal conversation of patriarchy vs. kyriarchy would be achieved."

"Solely pursuing your own liberation often comes at the expense of others. That?s not liberation, that?s mainstream feminism."

That sounds like divisive talk to me.

I don't trust academic feminism and this whole kyriarchy thing just isn't convincing me.

Hi,

I don't think this has been linked to before, but it made me think about the problems, in terms of the ways the term could very easily be misused:

www.myecdysis.com/2010/11/truthout-about-kyriarchy-an-open-letter-to-feminist-writers-bloggers-and-journalists/

For me - sorry, I know this sounds very basic - the problem is, with a term like patriarchy, we all know what the actual meaning is. And if you look it up in a dictionary, it is self-explanatory: the rule of the fathers. Gotcha. And if you wanted to delve a bit, you'd probably get that the term 'patriarch' can specifically mean the male founders and leaders of the Judeo-Christian religion, that it is a Greek term with an academic sound to it. And you could bring those things to inform your view if you so chose.

With this term kyriarchy, I'm sorry, I still do not understand what its root meaning is. I've googled and read a lot, and all I come up with is the root meaning of the Greek words (which leaves me no wiser, as I am not sure which meaning of kyrios is intended or how - the different connotations don't seem to me to add to the term as they do with patriarchy), and the explanation that it was a coinage to describe intersecting structures of oppression. I assume Fiorenza called it 'kyriarchy' and not 'bob' for a reason, but can anyone let me in on her thinking?

Sorry if that sounds a bit wishy-washy. But personally, I am really uneasy about signing up to a word when I don't fully understand what the thinking behind it was.

I guess it would be simpler if I just said;

white supremacy is patriarchal
classism is patriarchail
abelism is patriarchial
homophobia is patriarchal

and so on.

Intersectionality is the word used to describe the resulting 'melting pot' of the different social hierarchies which underpin a patriarchy.

I don't see what kyriarchy is adding to the mix - we already have patriarchy and intersectionality as analytic tools plus all the 'isms'.

I'm another one who is wary of the how and why this term was coined.

Also what dittany said about male violence is pretty well what I meant with my use of 'domination'. I cannot think of a single oppressive system which is founded on female violence. That is what I meant when I said that women do not have institutionalised power. We may at times benefit from it (white privilege for example) but we don't have any ownership of it (not that I think that is a bad thing - what woman wants to own something founded on male violence?).

I'm just popping back in to link to Twisty's last post because I luff her very much and this way I can just say "what she said".

Beachcomber, I nodded along to your post this morning, which said: "each and every human interaction is 'polluted' if you like, by the twin concepts of domination and submission.

"These concepts at group or societal level become supremacy and oppression.

"I think this is what the word kyriarchy is trying to represent, except that we already have a word for it already - patriarchy."

That heads back into the question of what patriarchy means, exactly, and the fact that it's a gendered word. Of course you're right, Dittany, that the violence and oppression which bring about stark inequalities are predominantly exercised by men. I think 'predominantly' is a big issue here. I'd argue that women can perpetrate violent subordination of others. I'd also point out that human rights only exist reliably where they are enforced by law, which is done predominantly by men (seeing as they're the ones in charge.)

It's largely an argument about words, isn't it - or about the relative blame for societal ills, which may be laid at the feet of men. If it's just about words (as I hope,) there ought not to be too much of a conflict because kyriarchy encompasses the concept and the fact of patriarchy. It shouldn't affect feminist principles because feminism is about liberating women from gendered oppression. It's not feminism's job to liberate black women from racial oppression as well ... or is it?

Am willing to be told where I'm wrong here!

Lenin, the matriarchy thread's really interesting, but hasn't answered my opinion about how much oppression is male in origin - OK, 99.999% but I would expect that to change as women succeed in wresting more power from those damn patriarchs, iyswim.

Could you possibly be a bit less patronizing Dittany, there's really no need for it. I really disagree with your framing here, it's clear where the concepts of kyriarchy and intersectionality come from and it's not as a long winded way of promoting the sex industry.

Again: don't like it, don't use it, but don't deny women of colour, women with disabilities etc, the right to define oppression as they see it on their own terms.

Dittany - I am by no means pro sex industry, but I still feel Kyriarchy is a valuable concept. Talking about the violence underpinning the patriarchy is absolutely true, but then so is the violence holding racism and white supremacy.

Again, if Kyriarchy doesn't cut it as a concept for you, if it doesn't describe what you are fighting against, don't use it; but I think we should accept why others do want to use it and we definitely shouldn't be looking askance at them for doing so.

(dang, shouldn't have gone off to have cake and coffee in the middle of a post!)

I feel like I need a three dimensional model to keep hold of the complexity here :)

Christine - what you say is true about all of the nations/societies you cite being patriarchal. But, there are other divisions within society which mean some groups have greater privileges than others. That might be about the relative darkness/lightness of skin tone, or cultural/clan/tribal background, your faith, political allegiance as well as other "indicators" of social, political and economic value and status you get in the UK - like sexual orientation, class, disability, etc.) So, patriarchy isn't the only oppression game in town.

And, that is what GAD was saying can be a problem with "mainstream feminists," who seem unable to recognise that women (and men) can experience multiple, overlaid and interlaid forms of oppression when they are identified with more than one group seen as "inferior" by society.

The intersectionality bit is where it starts to get complex. If you are a white woman, you are disadvantaged due to sexism, but you have other advantages due to your ethnicity, perhaps compounded by your potential to "influence" privileged white males through your relationship with them (stuff Catherine Hakim would probably class as "using erotic capital" vomit.) But what if you are or a trans woman? That drops you down a few notches on the status bar but if you're from a middle class background, that can bump you back up.

The same could be said for a Black man - male privilege = (hand up from men in general), racism = (slap down from society), education = (hand up to more economic opportunities), disability = (slap down due to able-bodied chauvinism.)

I realise that's a very, very simplistic explanation of it so apologies if it doesn't hit the right note. One of my lightbulb moments on this issue happened about 15 or 16 years ago in a training course led by Ellen Pence of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project of Duluth. It was through using the Power & Control Wheel that I realised just how similar the mechanisms and methods of oppression in society are, regardless of the group they are used against.

Dittany, have just seen your post above mine and recognise your points. My brain needs a rest to absorb.

There were some interesting comments on that page, GAD, that reflected my concerns about narrowness and about hierarchy.

As a feminist woman, I should never fail to observe where sexism is in play (though I do, being an imperfect feminist) or stop working to mitigate and/or remove sexism. The fact that I'm a feminist woman doesn't, however, give me authority to know what ails every woman. I am sure that sexism ails every woman to an extent, because of the patriarchy. But, if my Brixton neighbours say racism is an even bigger problem for them than sexism, then I must respect their more informed judgement.

It's impossible, therefore, to look at feminist issues without also taking other -isms into account. The only exception to this is when I'm looking at feminist issues relating to white, able-bodied, straight, educated women in Britain - I'm competent to identify how much of the problem is down to sexism here, because no other -isms are at work. This came home to me on a personal level when I started to experience ageism.

Feminism, imo, should recognise the importance of intersectionality without either diluting its own message or downplaying other factors.

The essay on kyriarchy that I read appealed to me because of the honeycomb idea. Real life doesn't suggest rigid, layer-cake power structures to me; more a system of privileges balanced precariously upon one another. If hierarchies were neatly defined, you'd be able to declare that one disadvantage was worse than the other - but you can't. Does an educated, straight woman have more or fewer privileges than an illiterate, gay man? How the hell do you measure that?

I believe it's natural for humans to seek hierarchical structures - plural - because we're hard-wired to look for patterns. They help us predict what will happen in a given situation. But I think it's a mistake to say there's a hierarchy, or a hierarchy of hierarchies: it's an oversimplification.

I'm rambling far too much here, mainly beacuse I keep being scared of saying feminism should be taking care of other human problems besides sexism! That's not what I think, of course; feminism exists specifically to address sexism against women. But I do think it can be too narrow, too rigid and too hierarchical in its theories. Eradication of the patriarchy would not cure all human ills. Feminism should recognise that it's part of a complex, in which each part's relative importance must shift according to circumstances.

... even that's a bit waffly, but at least it's only one paragraph