a few notes on feminist language from E. Shuessler Fiorenza

[sophiaserpentia]

I write "wo/men" in this way in order not only to indicate the instability in the meaning of the term but also to signal that when I say wo/men I also mean to include subordinated men. ... My way of writing wo/men seeks to underscore not only the ambiguous character of the term "wo/man or wo/men" but also to retain the expression "wo/men" as a political category. Since this designation is often read as referring to white women only, my unorthodox writing of the term seeks to draw to the attention of readers that those kyriarchal structures which determine wo/men's lives and status also impact the lives and status of men of subordinated race, classes, countries, and religions, albeit in different ways. The expression "wo/men" must therefore be understood as inclusive rather than as an exclusive universalized gender term. Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, pp. 4-5, footnote.

Whereas in the 1970's feminist theorists used as key analytic categories androcentrism/gender (=male-female dualism) and patriarchy (=the domination of the father/male over women) and distinguished between sex and gender roles, such a dualistic gender approach has been seriously questioned by other feminist theorists who are pointing to the multiplicative structures of domination determining most wo/men's lives. In order to theorize structures of domination in antiquity and the multiplicative intersection of gender, race, class, and ethnicity in modernity I have sought to articulate a social feminist heuristic model that replaces the notion of patriarchy/patriarchalism with the neologism of kyriarchy as a key analytic category. ...

"Kyriarchy" means the domination of the lord, slave master, husband, the elite freeborn educated and propertied man over all wo/men and subaltern men. It is to be distinguished from kyriocentrism, which has the ideological function of naturalizing and legitimating not just gender but all forms of domination. Kyriarchal relations of domination are built on elite gender, race, class, and imperial domination as well as wo/men's dependency, subordination, and obedience -- or wo/men's second-class citizenship. ibid, p. 95