Beyond the Binary: Hymnographic Constructions of Eastern Orthodox Gender Identities

Purpura discusses on how recognition of gender as a socially constructed human product might yield greater inclusivity to gender expressions beyond the cisgender heteronormative binary based on Eastern Orthodox. The "problem of gender" in scholarship on Eastern Orthodox thought and practice all too often persists in addressing itself only to the role of women in the church and chiasmically prioritizing types of holiness based on the cisgender gender binary of men and women as a means to acquiring theosis. Suggesting that the performance of gender identities and masculine and feminine attributes in Orthodox hymnography does not necessarily correlate with particularly male- or female-sexed bodies. And posit that the tendency to negate the validity of a spectrum of nonbinary and intersecting gender identities and to reinforce a binary theological construction of separate but equal gender is surprisingly alien to the immense boundary-crossing and identity-shaping hymnographic voice of the Eastern Orthodox Church.