Captain Marvel and the Admission that Gender Equality Is a Modern Illusion

Let me start out by defining what I mean by "equality." The word "equality" in our culture has come to mean, "I can do all of the same things that you do." Apparently, this might have meant that I can run a mile just as fast as an Olympic athlete and give birth to children, but of course, those absurdities are never pressed. Instead, the idea of equality seems to be the idea of sameness just between the genders in general. Women need to have the same opportunities that men have because they can do anything men can do. Equality is a bad idea, not because it threatens men, but because it isn't true.

I went to see Captain Marvel this past week, and thought it was a pretty good movie. Not the best, but still an important link in the Marvel Universe. Of course, we are bombarded with female leads and heroes these days in TV shows and movies. After all, we all need to be convinced that women can kick as much butt and take names as men. There is simply nothing more true to life than watching a 130 pound woman take down a 250 pound muscular man trained in special forces and martial arts. As we all have been told since our youth, women can do anything men can do (except open a jar of pickles of course).

What I thought was most humorous about the movie, however, is that in its attempt to convince everyone how powerful women are, and how they can do anything men can do, it ended up inadvertently admitting that they can't.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

The movie basically starts out with Brie Larson's character fighting Jude Law's character, and of course, Jude Law, small man that he is, still whoops up on her pretty badly. She ultimately wins by using her special powers. The movie then ends with him telling her to fight him without the special powers to see if she can finally beat him. She, of course, uses her special powers anyway and then tells him that she has nothing to prove to him.

What the movie subconsciously admits by this, even though it was going for another message entirely, is that a woman is not as strong as a man and cannot equal him without technology. Technology, not the woman, is what gives the apperance of equality between men and women.

In other words, women cannot be equal to men without something that fills the gap between them. This is what technology does for women, which is why gender equality is a modern illusion.

A woman cannot fight off a man who attacks her. Give her a gun and she can. A woman cannot eat meat without a man going out and killing an animal. Give her a weapon or a grocery store and now she can. A woman cannot walk away from sex without the threat of a child prohibiting her from advancing in the work place. Give her birth control and now she can. She can enter into wars, be as successful in business as a man while having sex, she can defend her home, eat all of the same foods as a man, all without a man, because she is given the technology that allows her to feed her illusions of equality.

Instead of equality of sameness, the Bible teaches equality of value. Both the man and the woman are valuable in the differing roles they play in life. These differing roles are wrapped around the bringing up of covenant children in the world and preserving the life of the family in different ways. When the woman does what only the woman can do or should do, she is superior to the man. He cannot do what she can do. Perhaps, one day technology will allow him to do anything she can do, but it will not be him doing it. It will be the technology doing it. The technology, not the male human, will have equality with the woman in the same way that the technology today, not the female human, has equality with the man.

If the argument is that technology can do whatever a man can do, then granted, to some degree, this is true; but all this says of the woman is that she cannot. In fact, the fact that she cannot is the very reason she must use technology. Her very use of it to equal the man is an admission that she is not equal in and of herself.

Yes, we can all fly in airplanes, but it does not mean humans can do what birds do. We can all scuba dive in the sea, but it does not mean we can all do what fish do. A man is a man. A woman is a woman. And each is made beautiful and shows the beauty of God by embracing, rather than hiding, their gendered humanity with technology.