Editing Openai/693bdf24-e170-8003-a4c5-e58f642dbe48 (section)

===== The historical argument is weaker than it appears. =====

Pre-modern societies placed decision-making authority in the hands of men not because women were intuitively understood to lack moral reasoning, but because:
* Authority was tied to physical force and property ownership.
* Moral judgment was conflated with enforcement power.
* Social stability was prioritized over individual moral autonomy.

The Bible does not present husbands as superior moral reasoners; it presents them as accountable authorities. Authority and moral insight were assumed to coincide because dissent without power was destabilizing, not because women were incapable of moral discernment.

If moral incapacity were the premise, women would not be treated as morally responsible agents at all—which they consistently were.