Androprimacy

Abstract

This article introduces a new analytical concept for the study of religion and gender that I term “androprimacy” by examining its specific instantiation in two early Christian sources, the Ethiopic Didəsqəlya and the Greek Apostolic Constitutions. These texts were concerned with the governance of Christian domestic and ecclesiastical bodies. I maintain that androprimacy is qualitatively different than, but interrelated with, other concepts and social structures of sexism, oppression, and marginalization that enables us to understand social anisometric dynamics predicated along the lines of sexual difference better. Particularly, I examine how narratives of androprimacy are used to legitimate other sexist structures, such as patriarchy and misogyny, by strategies of female erasure and the neutralization of motherhood.