 Contemporary feminist philosophy of religion is also aware that the relation between symbolic structures, on the one hand, and gender constructions, on the other hand, cannot be specified in terms of a single explanatory model. The power of symbolic orders to invoke and reinscribe implicit gender understandings works in varied and complex ways, as shown in studies by Bynum (1986), Fulkerson (1994), and Hollywood (1995, 2002). Because religious symbols are polysemic and multivalent, they hold different meanings for different people at different times. It is never a simple matter of sheer reflection of the given social order. The relation between society and symbol, or between psyche and symbol, is recognized as open-ended. Relations of reversal or inversion of actual social structures may obtain, making it risky for the interpreter to posit a single unidirectional cause-effect relation between symbol and social setting. As Bynum points out, meaning is not so much imparted as it is appropriated “in a dialectical process whereby it becomes subjective reality for the one who uses the symbol”, allowing for the possibility that “those with different gender experiences will appropriate symbols in different ways” (1986: 9).