(I hope to post more parts of this is anyone's interested in reading it. And let me clarify I'm an American and I don't actually dislike the monarchy or think it should be abolished, I just don't like some of the sexism that comes with it)
The monarchy in Great Britain is one of the few monarchies in Europe that still has male-preference primogeniture. For the unfamiliar, basically that means that when the throne is vacant, it goes to the oldest son. Only if there are no sons can it go to a daughter. If there are no children at all, it goes back through the line of the next son back a generation. For example, if a King had a girl first, and then a boy, the boy would get the throne even though he's younger than his sister. If he has no sons and one daughter, she gets the throne. If he has no children at all, it would go to his younger brother or his brother's descendants.
Getting passed the general unfairness of getting anything simply because you were born to the right family at the right time, it's also unfair in another sense. It's astonishingly outdated and sexist. That's the reason the monarchies in Sweden, Norway, and Belgium, among other places, changed it to absolute primogeniture, which is where the eldest child, regardless of gender, takes the throne. One of the main reasons Britain hasn't changed like those other countries is that it just hasn't come up since Queen Victoria's children. Every monarch since Queen Victoria has either had a sons first, or hasn't had sons at all. If the current Queen had had a younger brother, she would not be reigning right now unless the law had been changed in her favor.
There's plenty of other fun sexism in the monarchy, but most of that is based on tradition, not law. Like that fun tradition where the heir to the throne should marry a virgin, if he's a man and she's a woman, that is. He doesn't have to be a virgin, of course, because boys will be boys. And even though Queen Elizabeth was the heir to the throne when she married Prince Philip, I doubt he was a virgin and I doubt anyone bothered to ask either way. That's one of the main reasons Prince Charles married Princess Diana. He needed a well-born suitable virgin to marry, to maintain tradition, and he figured he could also keep up another royal tradition and keep a mistress on the side.
That's another tradition I'm not crazy about. Men can cheat, women can't. Princess Margaret became a black sheep when her marriage ended because of her affair, even though her husband had been having one too. Princess Diana faced the same issue years later. She was already an outsider, and according to her version of events, the Queen refused to help her when Charles started wandering and said that sort of thing was expected. But when she herself had an affair she was criticized and ostracized by the establishment. Charles himself told her he "didn't want to be the only Prince of Wales who didn't have a mistress", and discounting Princes who died really young, that's actually pretty true.
A by-product of the "men can cheat, women can't" rule, is the delightful tradition of slut-bashing. From almost five centuries ago with Henry VIII's wives to today, if you don't like a royal woman, you call her a slut. What was wrong with Wallis Simpson that made them hate her so much they refused to ever meet her to give her a chance to prove them wrong? Slut. Why was Princess Margaret the "bad sister"? Slut. What was wrong in Charles and Diana's marriage? Slut(both Diana and Camilla fit this one). In order to be a slut you don't necessarily have to sleep around a lot, you're just not virgin or a faithful wife who looks the other way with dignity when she finds out her husband's screwing his ex-girlfriend.
Hopefully within the next generation, Prince William and Prince Harry will be able to marry the women they love, virgin or not. Hopefully, they'll be able to stay faithful to these women despite the long-standing tradition of "getting some on the side". And hopefully girls and boys will have an equal shot at the throne, so once this issue does come up, they'll be no conflicts. And hopefully in future generations they'll start to realize that women are more than virgins and sluts and that a woman's worth is not in what's between her legs or what she chooses to do with it.
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You're missing an important point here.
The laws of succession of ALL the monarchies of which the Queen is head of state are identical. In order to change any of them, they all have to change simultaneously. That means that the sexism which you mention is also written into the laws of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and some other smaller places. This is far more than merely a British matter.
(Here's a VERY recent example of the problem you cite: Lady Louise Windsor is a princess, a five-year-old granddaughter of the Queen. At her birth she was eighth in line to the throne. Her baby brother, James, Viscount Severn, was born last November and immediately displaced her, merely because she's a girl.)
Oh yes, that was my mistake that I didn't mention it was also law in the commonwealth. But I do believe if Britain changed the law the other countries would follow. I have a friend who's involved with a feminist group in Canada that's extremely bothered by that law, but Canada can't change 'till the U.K. does. You couldn't risk having a Queen of Canada who wasn't also Queen of Great Britain.
And the example of Louse and James is a good recent one, but I don't think it really matters where either of them are in the succession as the chances of the throne going to either of them are really slim. I'm also bothered that Prince Michael lost his place in the succession a few decades ago when he married a Catholic woman, but no one thinks he's ever going to end up King so there wasn't a whole lot of outrage about the situation, as there would be if Prince Charles or Prince William did the same. I'm doubtful the law will change until it "comes up", as in there's a genuine discrepancy over who will reign next.
It has always peeved me that a King in charge can have a Queen but a Queen in charge can only have a prince-consort. This language says that a King always supersedes a Queen---why? Why can't a Queen have a King AND be in charge?
Jeniann: They all have to change at the same time. None of them can go first, because as you say you couldn't risk having the laws different in one realm to the other. The Statute of Westminster 1931 says
I really hope they change this, but then I'd really rather they got rid of the monarchy entirely in both countries.IANAL.
(this = the law on primogeniture and the anti-RC measures, not the Statute of Westminster)
Totally agree with your outrage. I recognize, though that there is a motivation - however absurd - for guarding female virginity and sexuality when inheritance is on the line. And the motive has nothing to do with morality really. I don't AGREE with the motive, I simply acknowledge that it existed;
No matter how many women the king has sex with, any children that result from that sex will be known as the children of their mothers. However if a Queen strays, the Prince she gives birth to could be the real heir - or could actually be the progeny of the stable boy, or the Duke, or whomever. Same with virginity. If she's not a virgin at marriage, she could be pregnant with a "pretender" to the throne.
So the attitudes re: female chastity are hypocritical and reprehensible of course. And I believe they stem in part from basic biology. Everybody knows who the mom is. If it's important to know who the dad is, as apparently it was back in those days with regard to monarchy and inheritance, then you have to make sure the women aren't straying. So they intimidated and brainwashed women into compliance. Even to the point of chopping off the heads of the ones that didn't!
Nowadays we'd like to think things have changed. And hey, with dna tests, doesn't matter how many men the Queen has!
"How very unlike the home life of our own dear Queen!"