Visions of kyriarchy

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Constructing a discourse and/or narrative where the persons who belong to a certain category of people is seen as if they were immensely powerful. This can be done in at least three ways:

1. Faking the facts: Making claims so that the targeted category would, if the claims were true, fit into a reasonable definition of kyriarchy. 2. Making up nonsensical criteria for power: Any person or category can easily be constructed as being overwhelmingly powerful by a tailor-made (or better yet unspecified) definition of power. 3. Confusing macro level kyriarchy with individual persons: Twisting macro level kyriarchy into being constructed as if individual persons would be inherently powerful or guilty simply for being included in the category.

Faking the facts

In a fictional kyriarchy, the elevated category doesn't even have to exist. It could be space lizards from another dimension, or whatever. Even when the claims are about an actual category of people (which may or may not be in a kyriarchal position in society), the level of prestige/ownership/leadership held by persons in the group is exaggerated beyond what's true – sometimes very obviously so, with absurd claims about “them” secretly controlling everything behind the scenes. Note that real life kyriarchy exists on sliding scales, where a set of kyriarchal structures may be more or less prevalent in a society. Faking the facts can make an actually present form of kyriarchy seem much more (or less) severe than it actually is.

Making up nonsensical criteria for power

If “power” is inherently bad and has no real meaning beyond being bad, then it stands to reason that anyone we dislike is inherently overwhelmingly powerful. Any person or category can easily be constructed as being overwhelmingly powerful by a tailor-made (or better yet unspecified) definition of power. If we in a literal sense demonize the people we hate, we can even arbitrarily assign them to have conveniently unspecific supernatural powers. (If we starts specifying these powers, it crosses over into “faking the facts” instead.) Or we could simply decide that individuals in our category are somehow owed sexual or romantic relationships with individuals of the other category, and thus frame their right to say “no” as if it was some kind of oppression against us.

Confusing macro level kyriarchy with individual persons

When analyzing kyriarchy, it is very important to keep in mind that power is typically concentrated to special subsets of a category, rather than being equally distributed among all individuals who are included in the category itself. In other words, belonging to a category favored by a kyriarchal structure does not make a person become inherently powerful or responsible.