Gender, Theology, and Ministry Certificate

“Male and female are created through the erotization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex and the distinctively feminist account of gender inequality. ” – Catharine MacKinnoni “…‘power ’ is undeniably in vogue…‘submission ’ most emphatically is not.”- Sarah Coakleyii “ To deconstruct the concept of matter or that of bodies is not to negate or refuse either term. To deconstruct these terms means, rather, to continue to use them, to repeat them, to repeat them subversively, and to displace them from the contexts in which they have been deployed as instruments of oppressive power. ” – Judith Butleriii Submission is not often discussed with high regard in contemporary Western culture. Submission, if discussed at all, is understood as something to be avoided – a risk to one’s freedom; to one’s sense of control and power. Much, however, has been written regarding power and its effects, with this idea of power rooted in agency and freedom.iv Sarah Coakley correctly points out that the Enlightenment demand for autonomy, despite the intellectual criticism it has accrued in contemporary philosophical debate, “has in practice barely been softened by postmodernity’s more nebulous question for the state of agency. ” She goes on to point out that neither in autonomy or agency “is any concomitant form of human ‘submission’ an obvious asset.”v In other words, submission has been denounced by both modernity an