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
Observe the result on the population! In the first place the balance is
broken--there are not enough men to go around, at home; many women are
left unmated. In primitive warfare, where women were promptly enslaved,
or, at the best, polygamously married, this did not greatly matter
to the population; but as civilization advances and monogamy obtains,
whatever eugenic benefits may once have sprung from warfare are
completely lost, and all its injuries remain.
In what we innocently call "civilized warfare" (we might as well speak
of "civilized cannibalism!"), this steady elimination of the fit leaves
an everlowering standard of parentage at home. It makes a widening
margin of what we call "surplus women," meaning more than enough to
be monogamously married; and these women, not being economically
independent, drag steadily upon the remaining men, postponing marriage,
and increasing its burdens.
The birth rate is lowered in quantity by the lack of husbands, and
lowered in quality both by the destruction of superior stock, and by
the wide dissemination of those diseases which invariably accompany the
wife-lessness of the segregated males who are told off to perform our
military functions.
The external horrors and wastes of warfare we are all familiar with;
A. It arrests industry and all progress. B. It destroys the fruits of
industry and progress. C. It weakens, hurts and kills the combatants. D.
It lowers the standard of the non-combatants. Even the conquering nation
is heavily injured; the conquered sometimes exterminated, or at least
absorbed by the victor.
This masculine selective process, when applied to nations, does not
produce the same result as when applied to single opposing animals.
When little Greece was overcome it did not prove that the victors were
superior, nor promote human interests in any way; it injured them.
The "stern arbitrament of war" may prove which of two peoples is
the better fighter, but ft does not prove it therefor the fittest to
survive.
Beyond all these more or less obvious evils, comes a further result, not
enough recognized; the psychic effects of military standard of thought
and feeling.
Remember that an androcentric culture has always exempted its own
essential activities from the restraints of ethics,--"All's fair in
love and war!" Deceit, trickery, lying, every kind of skulking underhand
effort to get information; ceaseless endeavor to outwit and overcome
"the enemy"; besides as cruelty and destruction; are characteristic of
the military process; as well as the much praised virtues of courage,
endurance and loyalty, personal and public.
Also classed as a virtue, and unquestionably such from the military
point of view, is that prime factor in making and keeping an army,
obedience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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