The patriarchy is dead ... but the kyriarchy lives on
The patriarchy is dead ... but the kyriarchy lives on | Nichi Hodgson | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
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From reclaiming the F word to objecting to objectification – there's a new feminist army determined to finally flatten the patriarchy. But here's the really radical news: patriarchy is dead. It's dead simplistic, dead inaccurate, and no longer a useful way of framing gender inequality in the UK. Forget about castrating patriarchy – it's time to corral kyriarchy, the system identified by Harvard theologian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, which explains how ethnicity, class, economics and education, as well as gender, intersect to oppress us all, men as well as women.
So, kyriarchy: the substitution of one elitist, etymological hair-splitting term for another, I hear my newly estranged sisters cry – just what feminism needs. But this is a neologism with a difference. Where patriarchy – literally, rule of the father – explains only how traditional male authority dictates to, and subjugates women, kyriarchy (from the Greek: kyrios – lord/master; archion – dominion/rule) relates how each of us, whatever our gender, is a bundle of privileges we can all too readily abuse by invoking the "master power", whether that's as a black female barrister, a mixed-race trans male teacher, or a white immigrant male labourer. At the same time, the term's connotations of elite authority perfectly tap into the legacy of oppression that western feminists, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Germaine Greer, have dedicatedly derided.
Scoff at my linguistic parsing, but terminology matters. Just as contemporary feminism is so keen to detox the term "feminist", so "patriarchy" carries a whole truckload of outdated assumptions about male-perpetuated oppression that blinker us all. Take porn for example. Patriarchy just isn't useful when we want to talk about how its proliferation is negatively impacting on men and women alike. Kyriarchy, by contrast, accounts for the increasing numbers of men who are suffering from sexual performance anxiety or emotional disconnection with women, which can be related to x-rated overconsumption, and how female performers, who can make good money out of being the object of both male and female desire and envy, can argue they are somewhat empowered by doing so. This isn't to claim porn stars as emancipated feminist role models; it's just to recognise that sexual allure and money, rightly or wrongly, accord power that oppresses too.
Kyriarchy links the latest feminist wave to decades of activism, while better framing today's more subtle oppressions. It helps us to recognise the interconnection of education, class and eating disorders such as anorexia, and of domestic violence and poverty, rather than encouraging us to indiscriminately blame men. It contextualises the contempt of working-class male unionists towards Margaret Thatcher. It helps to explain how women themselves can in some cases morph into the supremacist bully, when paranoid mothers pass on anxieties about food and bodies to their daughters, ground down themselves by years of trying to live up to constructed notions of beauty.
Perhaps most importantly, kyriarchy exposes a sin within the women's movement itself: that of feminist-perpetuated oppression. (I can already hear feminists hissing at me as I type. But don't worry – I'll hiss at myself in the mirror later for perpetuating the stereotype of internecine cat-fighting.) When feminist commentators and charities working to "liberate" sex workers relate their tales for them, rather than letting them speak first-hand, that's kyriarchy. It's also kyriarchy when minority male feminists are forced to veto voting rights in equality action groups because they are male.
Kyriarchy has the potential to settle the age-old argument about "privileged" feminism once and for all. Perhaps that's why it's so frightening to those that balk at the term, and will dismiss this as yet another example of woman-eating-woman. It may feel counterintuitive, but recognising your own privilege doesn't make the struggle for gender equality any less credible: it makes it more so, by allowing feminists to see that advantages – such as being born to a semi-prosperous family or being well-educated – don't necessarily protect against, say, rape.
Whatever British feminism has achieved, it has never managed to fully convince men to get their march on. At least kyriarchy, with its emphasis on individual liberation and social equality, gives guys a chance to whinge about how they're oppressed too. And not just by the feminists.
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Oh frabjous day! No one is to blame for anything, as it's all someone else's fault! Ever failed at anything? No worries, you're a helpless victim - it's only natural. We can all take each other to court for psychological abuse and then we'll all compensate each other and live happily ever after, free of the soul-crushing obligation to take any responsibility for our own inadequacies.
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