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
The law dictates the rules, the government enforces them, but the
main business of life, hitherto, has been esteemed as one long fierce
struggle; each man seeking for himself. To deliberately legislate for
the service of all the people, to use the government as the main engine
of that service, is a new process, wholly human, and difficult of
development under an androcentric culture.
Furthermore they put forth those naively androcentric protests,--women
cannot fight, and in case their laws were resisted by men they could not
enforce them,--_therefore_ they should not vote!
What they do not so plainly say, but very strongly think, is that women
should not share the loot which to their minds is so large a part of
politics.
Here we may trace clearly the social heredity of male government.
Fix clearly in your mind the first head-ship of man--the leader of the
pack as it were--the Chief Hunter. Then the second head-ship, the Chief
Fighter. Then the third head-ship, the Chief of the Family. Then the
long line of Chiefs and Captains, Warlords and Landlords, Rulers and
Kings.
The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it. The Fighter enriched himself
with the spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch lived on the labor of
women and slaves. All down the ages, from frank piracy and robbery to
the measured toll of tribute, ransom and indemnity, we see the same
natural instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his hands the government
is a thing to sap and wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse to
want something very much; to struggle and fight for it; to take all he
can get.
Set against this the giving love that comes with motherhood; the endless
service that comes of motherhood; the peaceful administration in the
interest of the family that comes of motherhood. We prate much of the
family as the unit of the state. If it is--why not run the state on that
basis? Government by women, so far as it is influenced by their sex,
would be influenced by motherhood; and that would mean care, nurture,
provision, education. We have to go far down the scale for any instance
of organized motherhood, but we do find it in the hymenoptera; in
the overflowing industry, prosperity, peace and loving service of the
ant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most highly socialized types of
life, next to ours, and they are feminine types.
We as human beings have a far higher form of association, with further
issues than mere wealth and propagation of the species. In this human
process we should never forget that men are far more advanced than
women, at present. Because of their humanness has come all the noble
growth of civilization, in spite of their maleness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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