The Man-Made World; Or, Our Androcentric Culture — John Shaqi
The Man-Made World; Or, Our Androcentric CultureGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
The Man-Made World; Or, Our Androcentric Culture
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
As the idea of heaven developed in the man's mind it became the Happy
Hunting Ground of the savage, the beery and gory Valhalla of the
Norseman, the voluptuous, many-houri-ed Paradise of the Mohammedan.
These are men's heavens all. Women have never been so fond of hunting,
beer or blood; and their houris would be of the other kind. It may be
said that the early Christian idea of heaven is by no means planned for
men. That is trite, and is perhaps the reason why it has never had so
compelling an attraction for them.
Very early in his vague efforts towards religious expression, man voiced
his second strongest instinct--that of combat. His universe is always
dual, always a scene of combat. Born with that impulse, exercising it
continually, he naturally assumed it to be the major process in life.
It is not. Growth is the major process. Combat is a useful subsidiary
process, chiefly valuable for its initial use, to transmit the physical
superiority of the victor. Psychic and social advantages are not thus
secured or transmitted.
In no one particular is the androcentric character of our common thought
more clearly shown than in the general deification of what are now
described as "conflict stimuli." That which is true of the male creature
as such is assumed to be true of life in general; quite naturally, but
by no means correctly. To this universal masculine error we may trace in
the field of religion and ethics the great devil theory, which has for
so long obscured our minds. A God without an Adversary was inconceivable
to the masculine mind. From this basic misconception we find all our
ideas of ethics distorted; that which should have been treated as a
group of truths to be learned and habits to be cultivated was treated
in terms of combat, and moral growth made an everlasting battle. This
combat theory we may follow later into our common notions of discipline,
government, law and punishment; here is it enough to see its painful
effects in this primary field of ethics and religion?
The third essential male trait of self-expression we may follow from
its innocent natural form in strutting cock or stamping stag up to the
characteristics we label vanity and pride. The degradation of women
in forcing them to adopt masculine methods of personal decoration as
a means of livelihood, has carried with the concomitant of personal
vanity: but to this day and at their worst we do not find in women the
_naive_ exultant glow of pride which swells the bosom of the men who
march in procession with brass bands, in full regalia of any sort, so
that it be gorgeous, exhibiting their glories to all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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