Kyriarchy?

[ChristinedePizan]

I saw this term on a website:http://fuckyeahfeminists.com/ and it's not something I've come across before. I googled it and didn't feel much the wiser when I got the wiki definition

Anyone feel able to elaborate?

Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza is, to coin a phrase, awesome. Brain the size of the universe, lovely person, inspiring writer and speaker, fearless in the face of patriarchal power in the RCC (makes Bishops quake, she's so much smarter than most of them and knows more theology) - and yes, an academic Feminist Theologian. She was one of the key thinkers in my journey out of the RCC and in calling myself a feminist. I met her a few times in the 80's when she was a visiting speaker over here in the glory days of UK feminist theology (before anglican women could be ordained - i.e. tamed and incorporated into the patriarchal church structures!)

What she did (many years since I was involved in feminist theology) is to coin a term that helped American white christian feminists dialogue with American black christian feminists. We (WCFs) were constantly talking about patriarchy - we kept being pulled up by BCF who pointed to our position of power in relation to Black men (American BCFs began to develop something called Womanist Theology). I had a journal article rejected because the Womanist theologian peer reviewer didn't think I had taken that perspective into account :( Well no, because I was white working class British and that's another whole layer of power structures to think about!

So ESF has never, to my knowledge, ever suggested that we should replace the word patriarchy with kyriarchy - but she simply coined a phrase which seemed more descriptive of the complexity of interlocking societal power structures we all operate within. She was looking to make common ground with the womanist theologians I think - and they were (are?) a powerful voice in the American academic christian feminist / womanist scene (in the 80's / early 90's anyway).

So the term has to be seen in it's context, an academic word, coined within a very specific context. My view is that it can be useful in some situations to use it, like most words, in particular when in academic dialogue with women who do not fall into the 'white privileged' category, either through race or class.

catsrus wrote - "the term has to be seen in it's context, an academic word, coined within a very specific context."

Unfortunately, I expect the very specific context will be ignored by most people, leading to misuse of the term.

once you let words out into the wild you have no control over who they associate with or what they do :)

a bit like teenagers really.....

I notice a tendency for some analysts to use the term kyriarchy instead of patriarchy even when the only significant variable they are studying is sex. For example, when comparing white able-bodied heterosexual middle-class males and white able-bodied heterosexual middle-class females. The inequality in that comparison is patriarchy. Use of the term kyriarchy could be, and I think sometimes is, used as a kind of mask or euphemism for patriarchy. It would let patriarchy off the hook to some extent. I would dislike that use of kyriarchy.

The harmful effects of patriarchy should be named and shamed. Kyriarchy could make them less obvious. That plays into the hands of anti-feminists.

That makes sense cats, thanks so much. I think I agree with what vesuvia is saying.

I didn't mean to come across as if I were saying Fiorenza was wrong, or not bright - I don't know her - I was just trying to stress that, if she claimed not to be aware of some of the meaning of the word, I'd think she was. It'd be like calling yourself a catholic feminist and expecting people to notice catholic means 'whole world', not the church. And kyriarchy doesn't even have a capital letter to help it. But if she's used the word in a very precise context for theology, I can accept she probably didn't intend for it to get spread about and used in totally different contexts.

I have to say I've not seen it used at all but I think you are right vesuvia and LRD when other variables such as race and class are not involved then patriarchy is absolutely the right term to use.

I don't think she was creating terms for an oppressed group to use dittany I think she was searching for a word that might be useful across marginalised groups, including women, so as a woman useful for her too. A word which described multiple and intersecting hierarchies of power.... I keep wanting to draw a diagram, though I suspect it would have to be 4 dimensional .

I suppose I need to go back and read what ESF said all those years ago but I'm supposed to be marking not on MN

I think the issue for me is, she came up with a term to help her interact with marginalised groups in a very specific and religious context. And none of my googling mentioned religion, except as something potentially oppressive, and (as Goth Anne's quotation indicates), some users of this term not only don't realize it originally had a religious context, they actually deny one of the main religious meanings of the word.

I have nothing against feminist theologians or the idea of being religious and a feminist. But for me, when something religious is packaged as a religiously neutral concept, I feel uncomfortable. It is too similar, IMO, to the way colonialism sometimes makes a Trojan Horse to get Christianity to marginalized groups.

oh bloody hell this is too interesting - I have work to do people! and no self control...

I think one thing to bear in mind LRD is the different origins of feminism in the USA and the Europe. In the USA early feminism was largely steered by women of religion, who were very involved in their churches and fought tooth and nail for alternative readings of the bible and church history. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton as one of the main examples. These early suffragists often came to the women's rights issue via the abolitionist movement, so feminism / civil rights / church is historically something closely intertwined in US feminist discourse. It's not odd for a US woman to be both religious and feminist, nor do some US feminists think you have to be left wing to be a feminist

It was also the case for early UK suffragists that they were on the whole religious and abolitionist - but our current flavour of feminism is more rooted in the labour movement I think - we have been more used to class issues than race and the notion of a right wing feminist is just plain weird :)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton

Thanks cats. I will say again - I don't have anything against religious feminists. I really don't. I do have a problem with religious origins being obscured. It's not the fact she's a theologian, or that the word has strong religious connotations that bothers me - its the fact there are so many blogs using the term, which seem to have been written by and for people who have no idea or are resistant to acknowledging that religion was part of its origin.

I don't think the term has any religious connotations to be honest - I would be interested to know why you think it has and what you think they are? (ESF is a scholar of ancient languages, not surprising she used a greek root) - it is simply a term coined by a religious feminist in order to dialogue with African American religious womanists!

What I was trying to convey is that this would be totally unproblematic in the context of the USA, so if the term is being used in US feminist blogs with no mention of the theologian who came up with up then that simply would not be an issue for many (most?) US feminists.

The question for me is "is it a useful word" and I end up saying that it might be in some situations. It's just a word to describe networks of power ... not quite sure how it ends up being religion by stealth. If we were to stop using words that had been coined by people who believed in god we wouldn't be able to say much at all :)

cats - the word 'kyrios' has a meaning in Classical Greek. It is not a meaning that has made its way into any English or Christian context. It is not an uncommon word, but not super-common either. The word 'kyrios' also has a meaning in Christianity. This is a very common meaning, known to many Catholics and other Christians the world over, including those in English-speaking contexts, including those in the USA. I would say this second meaning has overtaken the first by quite some way. The meaning is 'Lord, Christ'.

I'm not being wilfully obscure here. I honestly don't think this is a tiny academic point, a quibble about etymology. It is just not possible that she, a theologian, would not know the meaning of the word. It is not probably that she'd expect a Catholic, or religious audience for that word not to include other people who knew the meaning of the word. It is much less likely the people she was trying to communicate with would know the relatively obscure Classical Greek meaning. I really want to know why she chose that word. There are others she could have chosen that would not carry this meaning.

Dittany, I'm relatively new here and I have no idea which members describe themselves radical feminist, liberal feminist, conservative feminist, separatist feminist or any other term. I only go by what people say so didn't realise it was specifically radical feminists here who were challenging the use of the term Kyriarchy.

As you say, radical feminist views may occupy a "very marginal form of feminism when you're looking at the whole picture (of feminism.)" But, they can still benefit from social, economic and political privilege by virtue of their ethnicity, being non-disabled, class background, cultural heritage and education. Holding radical political views doesn't erase all these privileges, even when they actively seek not to engage with them.

So, my unease still rests with the idea that feminists who hold other non-gender based privileges rejecting the use of self-identification terms chosen by other feminists who are marginalised due to their "less favoured" ethnicity, class, culture, education, etc.

Cats, you also have a point about the slightly differing origins of feminism in the US and the UK. In the US, for example, there were strong connections between more liberal Christian groups (e.g. Unitarians, Quakers), the Temperance Movement and feminism/suffragette movement. Some, particularly Lucretia Coffin Mott (who was a driver of the abolitionist and feminist movements) and Carrie Chapman Catt (founder of the League of Women Voters, but also an avid campaigner against anti-semitism) were better at recognising the interconnectedness of oppression. Sadly, Elizabeth Cady Stanton espoused some quite abhorrently racist and classist views.

Is Fiorenza especially un-priviledged in terms of ethnicity, class, culture and education?

No idea really. The point for me isn't the linguistic origins or who was first to use it. The icky bit for me is if those who don't benefit from ethnic, class, cultural or educational privilege are told by other feminists who do so benefit that they can't use a word that they have chosen because it has meaning for them. That's all really. I'm not defending the word personally.

OK - sorry I see what you are getting at - so it's effectively tainted for you by that association. (I suspect a convent school diet of kyrie eleisons to blame here??)

For me, and I suspect for her as primarily a biblical scholar (but of course can't speak definitively on this one!) Christos would be that association (meaning the annointed one, the greek translation of the hebrew word messiah), not kyrios - which has no religious associations in the text it's just a hierarchical title. It did get a religious association through liturgical use though!

It's widely used within the text of the christian scriptures to refer to all sorts of "lords" - it turns up all over the place and only in some of them is it in reference to that guy Jesus. She has spent most of her adult life translating texts from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic - I honestly suspect that for her it was just seen as the appropriate word to use. No different really to using it's english equivalent of "lord" in non-religious speech - so to say 's/he was lording it over everyone' doesn't bring to mind any religious associations for me even though I was heavily exposed to the "Lord" in a religious meaning of the word. ESF is immersed in ancient Greek - she is probably more exposed to the neutral meaning than liturgical on a daily basis.

But I do agree that for people exposed to liturgies etc where the term was used to refer to JC then it can have resonances. I still can't see it as religion by stealth though - as kyrios is still a religiously neutral word (unlike christos)

cats - it's not 'tainted' for me at all. As I say, I do not have a problem with feminists being religious. I just know what the word means. In an English-speaking religious context, it is much more directly associated with Christ than, say, dominus. It's not like using the English equivalent of Lord.

I simply do not believe any theologian could say that kyrios is a religiously neutral word. It's just not plausible.

I was a theologian and spent 20 yrs teaching theology and I think the word is religiously neutral (might have to name change again here!) I do think it has religious connotations in English though, so totally agree there - but I don't think many people would get that or feel as you do about it, and I still don't think it's religion by stealth as no-one who uses the word is going to start believing anything religiously different!

I'm suggesting that for ESF it is exactly like using the english equivalent of lord in everyday speech - particularly as she's German so both are foreign languages to her :-)

We may have to agree to disagree on the word and religious neutrality, and I'm aware the theology I know most about may well be the area that thinks this word is least neutral (if that makes sense?). I didn't realize Fiorenza wasn't a native English speaker, but that does make a lot more sense now.

I know it sounds like an etymological quibble. But it seems to me that her word has fallen out of its original context, and doesn't really work so well in a more general sphere, especially not as a replacement for patriarchy (which was the original suggestion, though I do see that it wasn't her suggestion). I think patriarchy is such a good work and helps us to get the concept really clear - for a replacement to be much use, it needs to be better than this, both linguistically and conceptually.

To be fair, it is slightly less of an easy option in the US than the UK, even now. But I agree, basically.

happy to agree to differ LRD (finished the marking - yeah!!) and ditanny, yes, I actually agree - if you are referring to my post earlier I was just trying to make the point that the 'flavour' of US and UK feminism is quite different WRT how it relates to religion, so any term with any kind of religious association might be treated with suspicion here and not there.
Mary Daly - I met her once too, in the 80's a formidable woman (in the best sense!) I remember reading her books and worrying that I would end up agreeing with her (quite outside my comfort zones) of course I did end up agreeing with her (well most of the general gist anyway). Mustn't forget Daphne Hampson too, not as well known but very influential in terms of post-christian feminism. She too took me way outside my comfort zones but was proved to be right in the end, I did need to wipe my feet and shut the door behind me when I left christianity - I didn't leave religion though - but found somewhere more compatible with my feminism (became a Quaker)