I'm sure this kind of behavior gets more than your bra chunked in the flames...
I have no idea how I cam across it, but I did...so, now you get to share. Women have long railed about historic inequalities: the pay gap, the education gap, the promotion gap, and on and on. However, there is one gap that even the most strident of feminists had probably never heard of...
What I call the "wergild gap". For those unfamiliar, wergild is the "blood price"; that is, the price at which a person's life is valued. Many cultures had this arrangement throughout antiquity, and it still appears in criminal restitution statutes and/or wrongful death suits. The wergild for a slave could be steep, while the blood price for a lord, shah, khan, prince or other nobilitas was often without value, save the perpetrator's own life.
Beowulf has no idea what this "wrongful death" thing is, but he'd be grateful if you'd explain it to his skald.
However, while bouncing around the interwebz the other evening, I came across the most interesting gap in blood price ever...and it's from the Bible, specifically batshit Leviticus...
27:3 And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver...27:4 And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels.
Yes, predating the actuaries, Moses and God arranged a nifty little convention whereby the life of a woman (aged 20-60) was worth 40% less than a man. Interesting. Very interesting. As, if you needed any more proof that feminism and or Judiasm/Christianity were incompatible, I think the wergild gap is astonishing, and stands on its own merits.
There's a dammed good reason Moses and the gang are called "Patriarchs"
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