The Kyriarchy, for those of you who don’t follow a lot of feminist/ progressive scholarship, is “a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for “lord” or “master” (kyrios) and “to rule or dominate” (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination…Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.” What this means is that the various “isms” are intersected and overlapping and far more complicated than just a strict hierarchy.
Sometimes, I wonder about women who seem bound and determined to keep other women down. Or people in minority communities that want to deny rights to other minority groups. Or working class stiffs allying with big business when it seems like cutting yourself off at the knees. Heck, it always seemed to me to be the weirdest phenomenon in the world when feminists are against transgenders or homosexuals are against bisexuals. But, in some twisted way, maybe it does make sense, and that sense would be that if you are both oppressed and an oppressor, it is much easier to identify with the powerful than the powerless.
I’m female, I’m bisexual, I’m fat, and I’m crazy, I’m not-Christian and I’m definitely not rich. Those don’t exactly make me on top of the heap when it comes to rights in the United States. BUT, for all the things that I’m fighting against, I have plenty of privilege I’m coasting on. I’m white, a big one. I’m middle class, I’me educated, I’m mostly healthy, I have no visible health problems, and I’ve got pretty good health insurance. More than that, a lot of the things that count against me are not as visible as other things. If you look at me, with my wedding ring on my left finger, you’re not going to think “bisexual” which is pretty helpful on a day-to-day basis. I can pass as “straight”. No one after talking to me can go “oh, yep, she’s totally bonkers”. And, though in sheer dollar terms, lower class, I’m going to be pegged as middle class or higher by people I just talk to. My clothes are of that style, and my syntax is middle-to-upper class. So, depending on the situation, sometimes I’m going to be more oppressor than oppressed. Some times I’ll be more oppressed than oppressor.
I was thinking about this today when my racist friend* and I were talking about the African-American community. He, of course was hitting all the stock crap, (they are more violent than “normal” people, they’re out-breeding us, yada yada) and I was giving the pretty much stock answers (no they’re not, no they’re not, what in Christ are you smoking?) and I finally came with “Racist friend, seriously, how many black people do you actually KNOW? You live in the middle of freaking white-bred nowhere North Dakota.” His response, was “How many black people do YOU know, if you’re oh-so-progressive”. His retort, while completely dodging the issue, did give me pause. With the exception of a few people I worked with at the thrift store, I DON’T know anyone who’s black. I have more homosexual friends than black friends. Could you imagine being a black person and not having any white friends? It is a mark of great privilege that I don’t have to be exposed to a culture other than my own (though, I wish I could figure out what my culture WAS), and in the same token, it’s sad that we have such a segregated society that’s the case. I enjoy talking to my Somalia coworkers: they told me about things that I had only read about in books, and I did my best to try and explain fundamentalists Christians to them.
I wish the world was equitable so it would be like water. I don’t have to think about getting clean water- it comes out of the faucet. It took a lot of people to get it that way, and it takes a lot of people to maintain it, but for the most part it is just there. I want social justice to be as invisible as clean water- something that you’re grateful for if you stop and think about it, but you rarely do that.
*Hey, if they get to have “gay friends” and “black friends” I get a racist friend.
“Kyriarchy” is another bogus queer theory term. It’s a way of describing patriarchy without holding the male class responsible for their dominating and oppressive behavior. It’s not a “feminist” term.
Authentic feminism is concerned with the pattern, causes, and cessation of female subjegation while queer theory is concerned with finding excuses and justifications for whatever wierd ass crap they feel like doing — which usually turns out to be subjegating females.
Queer theory seeks to justify oppressive behavior, while feminism seeks to stop oppressive behavior. Kyriarchy believes that the cause of oppression is too complicated to hold any class of people responsible, probably because blaming anybody for anything would stress them out too much. For instance, rather than acknowlege the harm of reducing a class of people to sexualized objects, they prefer to think that prositution and pole-dancing are “empowering”.
I am going to rip queer theory to shreds during my next series, btw.
Considering that the places I found dealing with the “Kyriarchy” were feminist books and websites, I’m going to have to massively disagree with you on that. And that Fiorenza is a feminist.
Also, I think “authentic” (whatever the fuck that means) should be very concerned with queer, race, and class theory. Feminists in particular should be worried that we’re not just a “middle class, white, straight woman’s” movement. To just say that “Oh, that class of people are responsible for subjugating that class of people” IS simplistic. I’m more than willing to hold individuals to their behaviors, but we are at any one time in dozens of different classes, and there have been times when my race and relative class privilege have protected me when I was vulnerable for being female.
At no point in this post, nor in any of the other posts that I’ve put, did I ever say that oppressive behavior was justified, nor that it shouldn’t be pointed out (in fact, I think I did just the opposite, showing how damaging my privilege can be). Additionally, I have never said that “prostitution” or “pole-dancing” are “empowering”. Ever. You’re putting words in my mouth that quite frankly I’m insulted to have them there.
I’ll look forward to seeing exactly why there isn’t straight privilege. I really doubt that you can say that without being extremely wrong.
Oh god I didn’t realize your philosophy gravitated toward the queer end, otherwise I wouldn’t have said what I did, here, as of course you would assume I was attacking you personally. My apologies! Alhough I obviously don’t agree with all the logic behind that ideology, there were certainly more tactful ways of putting it. Don’t suppose there’s anyway to dig myself out of the doghouse? Nah, didn’t think so, lol.
Anyway, I think there’s more than a few misconceptions, not that I am holding myself out as perfect. To begin with, there’s nothing wrong with me putting me first — and if you have an objection with that idea then you should also have the same objection whenever you put yourself first. Which means in order for you to avoid the accusation of hypocrisy then you must put yourself second, … so I might as well be first! lol a little existential humor there… But it does sorta get at one problem with identity politics:
All oppression has a single root, if we look deep enough, if we’re not divided by games of “who goes first” and “who’s more oppressed” and “who’s been left out this time”. Since I’m interested in killing oppression at the root, then the root is where I go — which is why I personally refuse to get side-tracked by identity subgroup politics. It’s the difference between seeing oppression as being comprised of a thousand disadvantaged subgroups which all need a thousand different bandaids, or seeing oppression as a single entity which can attacked more easily at the core.
I think queer theory isn’t interested in killing oppression at the core, instead, they are interested in dividing everybody into little subgroups who then argue forever how to apply bandaids even while most of them continue actual oppressive behavior. Your reply was no better than “well some WASPS are oppressive toooooooooooo” and that is not a rebuttal, it deflects criticism rather than address criticism.
Does white, able-bodied etc privilege play a part for some women who prefer to ignore the subgroups? Of course, but that is a non-logical reason to disown feminism. It’s saying that because some women suck, then feminism must therefore suck. Again, it is non-logical as hell and I can’t stress that enough. “Some black people suck, so therefore anything to do with anti-racism must be disbanded”. Makes as much sense…
Nigel won’t study anti-racism literature, Nigel won’t discuss anti-racism, Nigel won’t tell people he is opposed to racism, Nigel won’t stand up for anti-racism activists, Nigel will denigrate anti-racist activists — all because he believes that some Black people suck. I hope you can see that Nigel needs assistence with his reasoning skills… Of course he will respond defensively when this is pointed out to him, what other recourse does he have, other than to admit he was mistaken?
And that’s just the first problem — really my annoyance with queer theory requires multi blog posts to sort out, but another problem is assuming that only white middle class females should be described as feminist. This is not logical, as it assumes there are zero women in India, China, Arabia, etc, who are concerned about the status of females. The entirety of queer theory rests upon non-logic, and further I believe it creates more harm for females then it helps.
I know you don’t like hearing any of this, and again I apologize for intruding. Oh, and you’re totally welcome to argue and criticise when I start my series!
I’d like to say something, but quite frankly, I can’t make heads or tails of your response.
I’m not disowning feminism. I’m just saying that oppression feeds into other things besides just men as a class oppressing women as a class. Of course I want to kill oppression at it’s core, but at the end of the day, I think there’s more oppression than JUST men on women. To say otherwise ignores absolutely everything else in the world.
Hello, I came here via Google and felt an urge to chime in.
I can’t make head or tails of “m Andrea”s second post either.
With that said, I want to jump into the debate as well because I am fascinated by the concept of Kyriarchy.
m Andrea says:
““Kyriarchy” is another bogus queer theory term. It’s a way of describing patriarchy without holding the male class responsible for their dominating and oppressive behavior. It’s not a “feminist” term.”
Kyriarchy should not REPLACE the term of Patriarchy. Patriarchy should be understood as a very important element within Kyriarchy.
Patriarchy can go along way to explain why men rape women, why women still only earn .77 cent to the man’s dollar, why there has never been a woman president, etc.
What Patriarchy struggles to explain more is the complex power dynamic between a wealthy white woman and an impoverished black man.
In this case, both people are oppressed by “the system” (a less descriptive word I suppose for Kyriarchy), but in completely different ways – but for very similar reasons (to keep the powerful in power).
I’m a student of history myself, and I think my favorite example for history to illustrate this point comes from 17th century Poland. I may take up a lot of internet space for this.
All of the land was owned by a small aristocracy that controlled everything. There were no citizens, only subjects.
But not all subjects were treated equally. Gentile, Christian subjects were peasants – they worked the land for the aristocrats and basically produced only a small surplus beyond what they ate.
They then took there surplus into town – which was run by the Jewish subjects of the aristocrats. The Jews ran the markets and were the craftsmen that produced the various other goods that the peasants might need. They were the tailors, the butchers, the iron-workers, etc. In addition, the Jews were also hired by the aristocracy to be the tax-collectors and rent-collectors. They also operated as the money-lenders.
Even though both the Jews and the Gentiles were subjects of the aristocracy – the system created by the aristocracy essentially ensured that the two would hate each other. And in 1648, when the Ukrainian peasants revolted – the Jews were brutally massacred. To the peasants, who in their lifetime never saw the aristocrats who controlled they lives, the Jews were the face of power.
In this example, Kyriarchy created a very complicated power dynamic. In some ways Jews did have quite a lot of privilege that the peasants resented, and to a large degree they were complicit in the oppression of the peasants.
At the same time though, the Jews were also oppressed – and the peasant rebellion simply oppressed them more. The theme of Jews as being the real ‘power’ reoccurred in history lots of times over the next four centuries and ultimately led to the Holocaust. It still reappears now and then when people try and claim that Israel controls the US Government.
Jews and Gentiles could have united together in rebellion to defeat the Aristocracy… and the Aristocracy probably knew that, which is why they created the system to divide Jews and Gentiles.
The take-away lesson for me from the above examples is that resistance movements always need to be careful about who their ‘enemy’ actually is. A more contemporary example would be the immediate reaction of may gays and lesbians in California to blame black voters for Proposition 8.
Similarly, after Hurricane Katrina – poor whites in St. Bernard’s Parish passed a ruling that only people with family members could move into the Parish after reconstruction – clearly targeted at keeping blacks out. Blacks and whites in Louisiana could have united to force politicians to strengthen the levee’s BEFORE the Hurricane. But Kyrarchy designs itself to divide people, and thus even after the disaster the animosities continued.
These are just a few examples. The idea of kyriarchy appears all over the place – in history and today. I’d say Kyriarchy in essence claims that most nearly everyone in the world is both oppressed and an oppressor simultaneously.
In this sense Kyriarchy doesn’t let people off the hook. It still insists that men oppress women, but also insists that women can be oppressors too (and in fact, very often are) – oppressive even to men!
There is only one logical response to Kyriarchy – solidarity. If Kyriarchy succeeds by division, then it fails when people unite. Lets recognize the ways that the system makes us oppressors (and challenge them) and also the way that it oppresses us and our friends. Its the only way.
Thank you for this article. It can be really difficult to describe some of the aspects of queer theory and the newer ideas in feminism, and I think you’ve done a great job.
m Andrea, I have to say that you’re completely missing the point here. Kyriarchy is a way of pointing out that there is more going on than man oppressing woman. Reality is a little bit more complicated than the binary mode of thinking we easily slip into. Furthermore, Kyriarchy is not a way of separating our oppressions into distinct categories. If anything, the concept of Patriarchy is more likely to do so by implicitly ruling out oppressions that are not cisgender-based.
Kyriarchy is a way of gathering all oppressions together and showing additional systemic problems. Patriarchy is included within the concept of Kyriarchy, not the other way around.
mAndrea seems to think that some men oppressing some women is the big picture which is entirely false. Funny thing is mAndrea seems to be using feminism in the exact way she claims Kyriarchy is doing which is to keep people divided and prevent them from stopping oppression from its root.
There is a whole lot more oppression at work other than male over female. There’s white over black, rich over poor, female over male, black over white, etc…..
Yeah, so mAndrea’s latest blog post seems to be a nice little nugget of classic second-wave transphobia. Containing, in fact, the word “transmorons”, as well as “normal women”.
No wonder she doesn’t like the word “kyriarchy”. It’s too clear.