EFFEMINACY AS VILIFICATION IN THE LETTER OF JUDE: FEMALE SEXUALITY AND THE CONSTITUTION OF HIERARCHY AND AUTHORITY

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss effeminacy as a vilification technique in the Letter of Jude. It aims to question the power relations embedded in an institutionalised patriarchal mind-set central to sexual ethics and the female body in the Letter of Jude. This power display is demonstrated by the author’s presentation, to the reader, of himself as the embodiment of the authoritative traditions, and the way his opponents are feminised, in terms of female depravity, as a kind of cliche used in religious discourse (cf. Jer 3:1-10). This research explores a privileged heteropatriarchy and its binary understandings of gender and sexual ethics. It seems that binary opposites enforced and sanctioned sexual ethics in the Jude community, although gender-specific issues are absent from the Letter. Questioning the inevitability of heteropatriarchy, and its normative status for constructing ‘authority’ and ‘truth’ in Jude, will be a logic outcome of the study.