Hello, Mr Kyle.
Your support for the idea is noted and appreciated. The widely-offered arguments you mention, though...
It strikes me that the entire lore argument boils down to "we've never done it before, so we shouldn't do it now, even though we can't actually think of any particular reason not to and most of us don't especially seem to mind, either way". Honestly, even if I was in favour of the
status quo, I'd really have a job selling this one.
Institutional bias is still bias. Regardless of how any of us might feel about this question, "it's their way" offers no argument, excuse or defence of any sort. Inherited prejudice is at least as wrong as any other kind of bigotry, if not more so.
From a lore perspective, while there's obviously no imminent danger of a pro-slavery institution ever achieving anything approaching modernity, the Imperial Navy's pretence that only men fly starships deserves only outright mockery from every last one of the Empire's own citizens.
It's not really a pretense that only men fly starships though. What you're missing is the fact that Imperial language has shifted. It's not surprising that over 1,000 years the meaning of words might alter somewhat, in fact the surprising thing, and this is probably simply a conceit for our benefit, is that language from 1,000 years in the future is actually comprehensible.
In this case the shift is in the gendered nature of certain tltles. The male derivations have not been used in ignorance of the role females have played in building the empire. Females have simply coopted those titles for themselves as well, and it started happening so long ago that by now it's the new normal.
If a woman is the Emperor (not Empress) and everyone is OK with this, Emperor is no longer a patriarchal term because in this setting it no longer carries that exclusivist presumption. It only carries that presumption with us in the 21st century because "that's how it's always been done." In the Empire, it's done differently. Gender has no bearing on title in the Empire. We're not used to it, but this is the normal in the Empire.
If a woman can be called Emperor and no one bats an eye, then no one in this setting is concerned in the slightest about titles such as Duke or Baron also be used by females, or even any concept that it was ever done any other way. In Imperial use these are clearly NOT gendered terms. And that is truer equality if you stop and think about it than assigning each gender their own arbitrary exclusivist title -- for one thing it overruns the whole problem of intersex, transgender, gender dysphoria, etc. If you're capable of holding the rank of Duke, you're given the rank of Duke no matter how you go pee and dividing Imperial ranks by such a silly standard doesn't even make sense to Imperials.
Clearly Imperial feminism chose a different path than 21st century Western feminism in terms of how to approach the overall question of cultural and mental equality. I would argue in favor of Imperial feminism, the true equality of neither lowered expectations nor lowered privilege nor separate recognized titles for either gender, is the superior way.
To put a finer point on this - if these titles are no longer gender exclusive in Imperial use, then continuing to beg the question by assuming that they are, and then trying to use your assumption that they are exclusive to prove that they are exclusive when in this setting they're clearly not, simply reveals YOUR biases. You're slapping 21st century meanings and assumptions onto 31st century imperial titles, where they don't belong.
By slapping 21st century Feminist assumptions on the Empire, you're actually putting the cart before the hourse -- and not just before but way before. 1,000 years before in fact. Do think on that please.
