The issue of gender equality has come to center-stage in British public thanks to the debate on male-preference primogeniture. American readers may be unfamiliar with the term ‘male-primogeniture’ so a brief word of explanation may be helpful.
The rules of succession for the British thrown are governed by a system in which firstborn sons take precedence over their older sisters in line for the throne. A woman will only inherit the throne of Britain if she has no male siblings. A younger brother – no matter how young – will always bump ahead to first-place in line above older sisters. Given the system of male primogeniture, the present Queen became monarch only because she did not have any brothers. Similarly, Queen Victoria (1819 –1901) was only able to inherit the throne because she had been the only child of Edward, Duke of Kent and Victoria Maria Louisa of Saxe-Coburg.
I don’t intend to defend or criticize the system of male primogeniture in this post. In fact, I don’t think it is a clear-cut issue biblically. Rather, I’d like to use the recent debate as an opportunity to make a few observations about gender equality. Specifically, I will suggest that (a) gender discrimination is both laudable and inescapable, and that (b) those who are advancing gender equality are often guilty of the same problem as those who practice male domination; as such, feminism and male domination are both opposite sides of the same coin.
OK, I suspect a lot of angry readers will not read any further, but hear me out. Continue reading “Gender Equality Takes Center Stage”