Professional Anxious Lesbian

Kyriarchy!

For starters, you should know that I enjoy neologism in general, and thus words such as heteronormativity, which most spell-checks deny and privileged little white gamer boys cry over because they can't wrap their brains around it, delight me beyond reason. I like having a word specifically for the occasion.

Until recently (like a year or back, I'm a bit late in hearing this word), we've been stuck with the term "patriarchy" to talk about systemic rules of certain groups over other groups, namely, male over female. The problem is that with third-wave feminism we have a LOT of black and chicana women authors stepping in and there has been a stronger focus from queer theory and third world feminism and of course Marxism, whether you want to be a communist or not is such a powerful theory that a lot of people use it to watch the capitalist machine go! Thus, to just say men have all the power is both simplistic and inaccurate. It's not helpful to talk about the role of the poor or the role of a white woman in power over a black man, and on and on. Even more so, it makes you feel like a second-waver when we're probably moving past third at this point.

Kyriarchy - 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.

This word makes me excited. :)

( Long rambling talk of multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression, and how people respond to even mentioning any of this )

I totally stole some of these lines from akiko. Thanks!

Do not respond to this post with complaints deconstructing the articles if you haven't read them because I will beat you to death with teaspoons :)