Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man-Made World by Charlotte Perkins Gilman c. 1915

Sunshine for Women
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Our Androcentric Culture, or
The Man-Made World
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1911

Chapter I: As to Humanness

      Let us begin, inoffensively, with sheep.The sheep is a beast with which we are all familiar, being much used in religious imagery; the common stock of painters; a staple article of diet; one of our main sources of clothing; and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and stupidity.
      In some grazing regions the sheep is an object of terror, destroying grass, bush and forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great plains, sheep-keeping frequently results in insanity, owing to the loneliness of the shepherd, and the monotonous appearance and behavior of the sheep.
      By the poet, young sheep are preferred, the lamb gambolling gaily; unless it be in hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeatedly described, and much stress is laid upon the straying propensities of the animal.
      To the scientific mind there is special interest in the sequacity of sheep, their habit of following one another with automatic imitation.This instinct, we are told, has been developed by ages of wild crowded racing on narrow ledges, along precipices, chasms, around sudden spurs and corners, only the leader seeing when, where and how to jump.If those behind jumped exactly as he did, they lived.If they stopped to exercise independent judgment, they were pushed off and perished; they and their judgment with them.
      All these things, and many that are similar, occur to us when we think of sheep.They are also ewes and rams.Yes, truly; but what of it?All that has been said was said of sheep, genus ovis, that bland beast, compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness. so widely known.If we think of the sheep-dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and shepherd-ess), of the ferocious sheep-eating bird of New Zealand, the Kea (and Kea-ess), all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both rams and ewes alike.In regard to mutton, to wool, to general character, we think only of their sheepishness, not at all of their ramishness or eweishness. That which is ovine or bovine, canine, feline or equine, is easily recognized as distinguishing that particular species of animal, and has no relation whatever to the sex thereof.
      Returning to our muttons, let us consider the ram, and wherein his character differs from the sheep.We find he has a more quarrelsome disposition.He paws the earth and makes a noise.He has a tendency to butt.So has a goat--Mr. Goat.So has Mr. Buffalo, and Mr. Moose, and Mr. Antelope.This tendency to plunge head foremost at an adversary--and to find any other gentleman an adversary on sight--evidently does not pertain to sheep, to genus ovis; but to any male creature with horns.
      As "function comes before organ," we may even give a reminiscent glance down the long path of evolution, and see how the mere act of butting--passionately and perpetually repeated--born of the belligerent spirit of the male--produced horns!
      The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love and care for her little ones, gives them milk and tries to guard them.But so does a goat--Mrs. Goat.So does Mrs. Buffalo and the rest.Evidently this mother instinct is no peculiarity of genus ovis, but of any female creature.
      Even the bird, though not a mammal, shows the same mother-love and mother-care, while the father bird, though not a butter, fights with beak and wing and spur.His competition is more effective through display.The wish to please, the need to please, the overmastering necessity upon him that he secure the favor of the female, has made the male bird blossom like a butterfly.He blazes in gorgeous plumage, rears haughty crests and combs, shows drooping wattles and dangling blobs such as the turkey-cock affords; long splendid feathers for pure ornament appear upon him; what in her is a mere tail-effect becomes in him a mass of glittering drapery.
      Partridge-cock, farmyard-cock, peacock, from sparrow to ostrich, observe his mien!To strut and languish; to exhibit every beauteous lure; to sacrifice ease, comfort, speed, everything--to beauty--for her sake--this is the nature of the he-bird of any species; the characteristic, not of the turkey, but of the cock!With drumming of loud wings, with crow and quack and bursts of glorious song, he woos his mate; displays his splendors before her; fights fiercely with his rivals.To butt--to strut--to make a noise--all for love's sake; these acts are common to the male.
      We may now generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongs to the male--to any or all males, irrespective of species.That is feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females, irrespective of species.That is ovine, bovine, feline, canine, equine or asinine which belongs to that species, irrespective of sex.
Woman's natural work as a female is that of the mother; man's natural work as a male is that of the father; their mutual relation to this end being a source of joy and well-being when rightly held: but human work covers all our life outside of these specialties.Every handicraft, every profession, every science, every art, all normal amusements and recreations, all government, education, religion; the whole living world of human achievement: all this is human.
That one sex should have monopolized all human activities, called them "man's work," and managed them as such, is what is meant by the phrase "Androcentric Culture."
Chapter 2: The Man-Made Family
What man has done to the family, speaking broadly, is to change it from an institution for the best service of the child to one modified to his own service, the vehicle of his comfort, power and pride.
      The peculiar changes brought about in family life by the predominance of the male are easily traced.In these studies we must keep clearly in mind the basic masculine characteristics: desire, combat, self-expression--all legitimate and right in proper use; only mischievous when excessive or out of place.Through them the male is led to strenuous competition for the favor of the female; in the overflowing ardours of song, as in nightingale and tomcat; in wasteful splendor of personal decoration, from the pheasant's breast to an embroidered waistcoat; and in direct struggle for the prize, from the stag's locked horns to the clashing spears of the tournament.
      It is earnestly hoped that no reader will take offence at the necessarily frequent, reference to these essential features of maleness.In the many books about women it is, naturally, their femaleness that has been studied and enlarged upon.And though women, after thousands of years of such discussion, have become a little restive under the constant use of the word female: men, as rational beings, should not object to an analogous study--at least not for some time--a few centuries or so.
      How, then, do we find these masculine tendencies, desire, combat and self-expression, affect the home and family when given too much power?
      First comes the effect in the preliminary work of selection.One of the most uplifting forces of nature is that of sex selection.The males, numerous, varied, pouring a flood of energy into wide modifications, compete for the female, and she selects the victor, this securing to the race the new improvements.
      In forming the proprietary family there is no such competition, no such selection.The man, by violence or by purchase, does the choosing--he selects the kind of woman that pleases him.Nature did not intend him to select; he is not good at it.Neither was the female intended to compete--she is not good at it.
      If there is a race between males for a mate--the swiftest gets her first; but if one male is chasing a number of females he gets the slowest first.The one method improves our speed: the other does not.If males struggle and fight with one another for a mate, the strongest secures her; if the male struggles and fights with the female--(a peculiar and unnatural horror, known only among human beings) he most readily secures the weakest.The one method improves our strength--the other does not.
      The effect of this on the woman has been inevitably to weaken and overshadow her sense of the real purpose of the family; of the relentless responsibilities of her duty as a mother.She is first taught duty to her parents, with heavy religious sanction; and then duty to her husband, similarly buttressed; but her duty to her children has been left to instinct.She is not taught in girlhood as to her preeminent power and duty as a mother; her young ideals are all of devotion to the lover and husband: with only the vaguest sense of results.
      The young girl is reared in what we call "innocence;" poetically described as "bloom;" and this condition is held one of her chief "charms."The requisite is wholly androcentric.This "innocence" does not enable her to choose a husband wisely; she does not even know the dangers that possibly confront her.We vaguely imagine that her father or brother, who do know, will protect her.Unfortunately the father and brother, under our current "double standard" of morality do not judge the applicants as she would if she knew the nature of their offenses.
      Furthermore, if her heart is set on one of them, no amount of general advice and opposition serves to prevent her marrying him."I love him!" she says, sublimely."I do not care what he has done.I will forgive him.I will save him!"
      This state of mind serves to forward the interests of the lover, but is of no advantage to the children.We have magnified the duties of the wife, and minified the duties of the mother; and this is inevitable in a family relation every law and custom of which is arranged from the masculine viewpoint.
      From this same viewpoint, equally essential to the proprietary family, comes the requirement that the woman shall serve the man.Her service is not that of the associate and equal, as when she joins him in his business.It is not that of a beneficial combination, as when she practices another business and they share the profits; it is not even that of the specialist, as the service of a tailor or barber; it is personal service--the work of a servant.
      Why, on the face of it, given a daughter and a son, should a form of service be expected of the one, which would be considered ignominious by the other?
      The underlying reason is this.Industry, at its base, is a feminine function.The surplus energy of the mother does not manifest itself in noise, or combat, or display, but in productive industry.Because of her mother-power she became the first inventor and laborer; being in truth the mother of all industry as well as all people.
      Man's entrance upon industry is late and reluctant; as will be shown later in treating his effect on economics.In this field of family life, his effect was as follows:
      Establishing the proprietary family at an age when the industry was primitive and domestic; and thereafter confining the woman solely to the domestic area, he thereby confined her to primitive industry.The domestic industries, in the hands of women, constitute a survival of our remotest past.Such work was "woman's work" as was all the work then known; such work is still considered woman's work because they have been prevented from doing any other.
      **Gilman continues with a well-worth-reading, but somewhat lengthy, analysis of the wrongs which the male-dominant family do to all of it's members - both male and female children, the husband, and the wife.
Chapter 3: Health and Beauty
NOTE--The word "Androcentric" we owe to Prof. Lester F. Ward.In his book, "Pure Sociology," Chap. 14, he describes the Androcentric Theory of life, hitherto universally accepted; and introduces his own "Gyneacocentric Theory."All who are interested in the deeper scientific aspects of this question are urged to read that chapter.Prof. Ward's theory is to my mind the most important that has been offered the world since the Theory of Evolution; and without exception the most important that has ever been put forward concerning women.
      Throughout nature the male is the variant, as we have already noted.His energy finds vent not only in that profuse output of decorative appendages Ward defines as "masculine efflorescence" but in variations not decorative, not useful or desirable at all.
      The female, on the other hand, varies much less, remaining nearer the race type; and her function is to select among these varying males the specimens most valuable to the race.In the intense masculine competition the victor must necessarily be stronger than his fellows; he is first proven equal to his environment by having lived to grow up, then more than equal to his fellows by overcoming them.Thishigher grade of selection also develops not only the characteristics necessary to make a living; but secondary ones, often of a purely aesthetic nature, which make much of what we call beauty.Between the two, all who live must be up to a certain grade, and those who become parents must be above it; a masterly arrangement surely!
      Here is where, during the period of our human history, we in our newborn consciousness and imperfect knowledge, have grievously interfered with the laws of nature.The ancient proprietary family, treating the woman as a slave, keeping her a prisoner and subject to the will of her master, cut her off at once from the exercise of those activities which alone develop and maintain the race type.
As a male he is appealed to by the ultra-feminine, and has given small thought to effects on the race.He was not designed to do the selecting.Under his fostering care we have bred a race of women who are physically weak enough to be handed about like invalids; or mentally weak enough to pretend they are--and to like it.We have made women who respond so perfectly to the force which made them, that they attach all their idea of beauty to those characteristics which attract men; sometimes humanly ugly without even knowing it.
We are the only race where the female depends on the male for a livelihood.We are the only race that practices prostitution.From the first harmless-looking but abnormal general relation follows the well recognized evil of the second, so long called "a social necessity," and from it, in deadly sequence, comes the "wages of sin;" death not only of the guilty, but of the innocent.It is no light part of our criticism of the Androcentric Culture that a society based on masculine desires alone, has willingly sacrificed such an army of women; and has repaid the sacrifice by the heaviest punishments.
Chapter 4: Men and Art

Chapter 5: Masculine Literature .
      When we are offered a "woman's" paper, page, or column, we find it filled with matter supposed to appeal to women as a sex or class; the writer mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's--Kuchen, Kinder, Kirche, Kleider [Kitchen, Children, Church, Dress].They iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion of cookery, old and new; of the care of children; of the overwhelming subject of clothing; and of moral instruction.All this is recognized as "feminine" literature, and it must have some appeal else the women would not read it.What parallel have we in "masculine" literature?
      "None!" is the proud reply."Men are people!Women, being 'the sex,' have their limited feminine interests, their feminine point of view, which must be provided for.Men, however, are not restricted--to them belongs the world's literature!"
      Yes, it has belonged to them--ever since there was any.They have written it and they have read it.It is only lately that women, generally speaking, have been taught to read; still more lately that they have been allowed to write.It is but a little while since Harriet Martineau concealed her writing beneath her sewing when visitors came in--writing was "masculine"--sewing "feminine."
      We have not, it Is true, confined men to a narrowly construed "masculine sphere," and composed a special literature suited to it.Their effect on literature has been far wider than that, monopolizing this form of art with special favor.
Men having been accepted as humanity, women but a side-issue; (most literally if we accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men did or said was human--and not to be criticized.In no department of life is it easier to contravert this old belief; to show how the male sex as such differs from the human type; and how this maleness has monopolized and disfigured a great social function.
      History is, or should be, the story of our racial life.What have men made it?The story of warfare and conquest.Begin at the very beginning with the carven stones of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea, what do we find of history?
      "I Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of Lords! (etc. etc.), "went down into the miserable land of Kush, and slew of the inhabitants thereof an hundred and forty and two thousands!"That, or something like it, is the kind of record early history gives us.
      The story of Conquering Kings, who and how many they killed and enslaved; the groveling adulation of the abased; the unlimited jubilation of the victor; from the primitive state of most ancient kings, and the Roman triumphs where queens walked in chains, down to our omni present soldier's monuments: the story of war and conquest--war and conquest--over and over; with such boasting and triumph, such cock-crow and flapping of wings as show most unmistakably the natural source.
      All this will strike the reader at first as biased and unfair."That was the way people lived in those days!" says the reader.
      No--it was not the way women lived.
      "O, women!" says the reader, "Of course not!Women are different."
      Yea, women are different; and men are different! Both of them, as sexes, differ from the human norm, which is social life and all social development.Society was slowly growing in all those black blind years.The arts, the sciences, the trades and crafts and professions, religion, philosophy, government, law, commerce, agriculture--all the human processes were going on as well as they were able, between wars.
      The male naturally fights, and naturally crows, triumphs over his rival and takes the prize--therefore was he made male.Maleness means war.
      Not only so; but being male, he cares only for male interests.Men, being the sole arbiters of what should be done and said and written, have given us not only a social growth scarred and thwarted from the beginning by continual destruction; but a history which is one unbroken record of courage and red cruelty, of triumph and black shame.
      As to what went on that was of real consequence, the great slow steps of the working world, the discoveries and inventions, the real progress of humanity--that was not worth recording, from a masculine point of view.Within this last century, "the woman's century," the century of the great awakening, the rising demand for freedom, political, economic, and domestic, we are beginning to write real history, human history, and not merely masculine history.But that great branch of literature--Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and all down later times, shows beyond all question, the influence of our androcentric culture.
      There are two main branches found everywhere, from the Romaunt of the Rose to the Purplish Magazine;--the Story of Adventure, and the Love Story.
      The Story-of-Adventure branch is not so thick as the other by any means, but it is a sturdy bough for all that.Stevenson and Kipling have proved its immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories and the tales of successful rascality we call "picaresque"Our most popular weekly shows the broad appeal of this class of fiction.
      All these tales of adventure, of struggle and difficulty; of hunting and fishing and fighting; of robbing and murdering, catching and punishing, are distinctly and essentially masculine.They do not touch on human processes, social processes, but on the special field of predatory excitement so long the sole province of men.
      Now for the main branch--the Love Story.Ninety per cent. of fiction is In this line; this is preeminently the major interest of life--given in fiction.What is the love-story, as rendered by this art?
      It is the story of the pre-marital struggle.It is the Adventures of Him in Pursuit of Her--and it stops when he gets her!Story after story, age after age, over and over and over, this ceaseless repetition of the Preliminaries.
      Here is Human Life.In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matter of inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering all emotions, all processes, all experiences.Out of this vast field of human life fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, as its necessary base.
      "Ah! but we are persons most of all!" protests the reader."This is personal experience--it has the universal appeal!"
      Take human life personally then.Here is a Human Being, a life, covering some seventy years; involving the changing growth of many faculties; the ever new marvels of youth, the long working time of middle life, the slow ripening of age.Here is the human soul, in the human body, Living.Out of this field of personal life, with all of its emotions, processes, and experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, mainly of one sex.
      The "love" of our stories is man's love of woman.If any dare dispute this, and say it treats equally of woman's love for man, I answer, "Then why do the stories stop at marriage?"
A young woman faces life--the seventy year stretch remember; and is given the same books--with restrictions.Remember the remark of Rochefoucauld, "There are thirty good stories in the world and twenty-nine cannot be told to women."There is a certain broad field of literature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have tried to keep it to themselves.But in a milder form, the spades all named teaspoons, or at the worst appearing as trowels--the young woman is given the same fiction.Love and love and love--from "first sight" to marriage.There it stops--just the fluttering ribbon of announcement, "and lived happily ever after."
The humanizing of woman of itself opens five distinctly fresh fields of fiction: First the position of the young woman who is called upon to give up her "career"--her humanness--for marriage, and who objects to it; second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that her discontent is social starvation--that it is not more love that she wants, but more business in life: Third the interrelation of women with women--a thing we could never write about before because we never had it before: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action between mothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child," wherein the child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship; the love and hope, the patience and power, the lasting joy and triumph, the slow eating disappointment which must never be owned to a living soul--here are grounds for novels that a million mothers and many million children would eagerly read: Fifth the new attitude of the full-grown woman who faces the demands of love with the high standards of conscious motherhood.
There are other fields, broad and brilliantly promising, but this chapter is meant merely to show that our one-sided culture has, in this art, most disproportionately overestimated the dominant instincts of the male--Love and War--an offense against art and truth, and an injury to life.
Chapter 6: Games and Sports
The basic feminine impulse is to gather, to put together, to construct; the basic masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, to destroy.It seems to give pleasure to a man to bang something and drive it from him; the harder he hits it and the farther it goes the better pleased he is.
Games of this sort will never appeal to women.They are not wrong; not necessarily evil in their place; our mistake is in considering them as human, whereas they are only masculine.
If we recall once more the statement with regard to entertaining anecdotes, "There are thirty good stories in the world, and twenty-nine of them cannot be told to women," we get a glaring sidelight on the masculine specialization in jokes.
"Women have no sense of humor" has been frequently said, when "Women have not a masculine sense of humor" would be truer.If women had thirty "good stories" twenty-nine of which could not be told to men, it is possible that men, if they heard some of the twenty-nine, would not find them funny.The overweight of one sex has told in our amusements as everywhere else.
Chapter 7: Ethics and Religion
In the interests of health and happiness, monogamous marriage proves its superiority in our race as it has in others.It is essential to the best growth of humanity that we practice the virtue of chastity; it is a human virtue, not a feminine one.But in masculine hands this virtue was enforced upon women under penalties of hideous cruelty, and quite ignored by men.Masculine ethics, colored by masculine instincts, always dominated by sex, has at once recognized the value of chastity in the woman, which is right; punished its absence unfairly, which is wrong; and then reversed the whole matter when applied to men, which is ridiculous.
Ethical laws are laws--not idle notions.Chastity is a virtue because it promotes human welfare--not because men happen to prize it in women and ignore it themselves.The underlying reason for the whole thing is the benefit of the child; and to that end a pure and noble fatherhood is requisite, as well as such a motherhood.Under the limitations of a too masculine ethics, we have developed on this one line social conditions which would be absurdly funny if they were not so horrible.
Meanwhile, we can see quite clearly the effect of manhood.Keeping in mind those basic masculine impulses--desire and combat--we see them reflected from high heaven in their religious concepts.Reward!Something to want tremendously and struggle to achieve!This is a concept perfectly masculine and most imperfectly religious.A religion is partly explanation--a theory of life; it is partly emotion--an attitude of mind, it is partly action--a system of morals.Man's special effect on this large field of human development is clear.He pictured his early gods as like to himself, and they behaved in accordance with his ideals.In the dimmest, oldest religions, nearest the matriarchate, we find great goddesses--types of Motherhood, Mother-love, Mother-care and Service.But under masculine dominance, Isis and Ashteroth dwindle away to an alluring Aphrodite--not Womanhood for the child and the World--but the incarnation of female attractiveness for man.
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.
Chapter 8: Education
The origin of education is maternal.The mother animal is seen to teach her young what she knows of life, its gains and losses; and, whether consciously done or not, this is education.
This conscious education was, for long, given to boys alone, the girls being left to maternal influence, each to learn what her mother knew, and no more.This very clear instance of the masculine theory is glaring enough by itself to rest a case on.It shows how absolute was the assumption that the world was composed of men, and men alone were to be fitted for it.Women were no part of the world, and needed no training for its uses.As females they were born and not made; as human beings they were only servants, trained as such by their servant mothers.
We can see the masculine influence everywhere still dominant and superior.There is the first spur, Desire, the base of the reward system, the incentive of self-interest, the attitude which says, "Why should I make an effort unless it will give me pleasure?" with its concomitant laziness, unwillingness to work without payment.There is the second spur, Combat, the competitive system, which sets one against another, and finds pleasure not in learning, not exercising the mind, but in getting ahead of one's fellows.Under these two wholly masculine influences we have made the educational process a joy to the few who successfully attain, and a weary effort, with failure and contumely attached, to all the others.This may be a good method in sex-competition, but is wholly out of place and mischievous in education.Its prevalence shows the injurious masculization of this noble social process.
Chapter 9: "Society" and "Fashion"
      "Society" consists mostly of women.Women carry on most of its processes, therefore women are its makers and masters, they are responsible for it, that is the general belief.
      We might as well hold women responsible for harems--or prisoners for jails.To be helplessly confined to a given place or condition does not prove that one has chosen it; much less made it.
      No; in an androcentric culture "society," like every other social relation, is dominated by the male and arranged for his convenience.There are, of course, modifications due to the presence of the other sex; where there are more women than men there are inevitable results of their influence; but the character and conditions of the whole performance are dictated by men.
"This grand desideratum has always been monopolized by men as far as possible.What intercourse was allowed to women has been rigidly hemmed its by man-made conventions.Women accept these conventions, repeat them, enforce them upon their daughters; but they originate with men.
The feet of the little Chinese girl are bound by her mother and her nurse--but it is not for woman's pleasure that this crippling torture was invented.The Oriental veil is worn by women, but it is not for any need of theirs that veils were decreed them.
When we come to the modern special field that we call "society," we find it to consist of a carefully arranged set of processes and places wherein women may meet one another and meet men.These vary, of course, with race, country, class, and period; from the clean licence of our western customs to the strict chaperonage of older lands; but free as it is in America, even here there are bounds.
Men associate without any limit but that of inclination and financial capacity.Even class distinction only works one way--the low-class man may not mingle with high-class women; but the high-class man may--and does--mingle with low-class women.It is his society--may not a man do what he will with his own?
"Society" is strictly guarded--that is its women are.As always, the main tabu is on the woman.Consider carefully the relation between "society" and the growing girl.She must, of course, marry; and her education, manners, character, must of course be pleasing to the prospective wooer.That which is desirable in young girls means, naturally, that which is desirable to men.Of all cultivated accomplishments the first is "innocence."Beauty may or may not be forthcoming; but "innocence" is "the chief charm of girlhood."
Why? What good does it do her? Her whole life's success is made to depend on her marrying; her health and happiness depends on her marrying the right man.The more "innocent" she is, the less she knows, the easier it is for the wrong man to get her.
      "Society" is very largely used as a means to bring together young people, to promote marriage. If "society" is made and governed by women we should naturally look to see its restrictions and encouragements such as would put a premium on successful maternity and protect women--and their children--from the evils of ill-regulated fatherhood.
      Do we find this? By no means.
      "Society" allows the man all liberty--all privilege--all license.There are certain offences which would exclude him; such as not paying gambling debts, or being poor; but offences against womanhood--against motherhood--do not exclude him.
      How about the reverse?
      If "society" is made by women, for women, surely a misstep by a helplessly "innocent" girl, will not injure her standing!
      But it does.She is no longer "innocent."She knows now.She has lost her market value and is thrown out of the shop.Why not? It is his shop--not hers.What women may and may not be, what they must and must not do, all is measured from the masculine standard.
      A really feminine "society" based on the needs and pleasures of women, both as females and as human beings, would in the first place accord them freedom and knowledge; the knowledge which is power. It would not show us "the queen of the ballroom" in the position of a wall-flower unless favored by masculine invitation; unable to eat unless he brings her something; unable to cross the floor without his arm.Of all blind stultified "royal sluggards" she is the archetype. No, a feminine society would grant at least equality to women in this, their so-called special field.
      Its attitude toward men, however, would be rigidly critical.
First, and very clearly, the human female carries the weight of sex decoration, solely because of her economic dependence on the male.She alone in nature adds to the burdens of maternity, which she was meant for, this unnatural burden of ornament, which she was not meant for. Every other female in the world is sufficiently attractive to the male without trimmings.He carries the trimmings, sparing no expense of spreading antlers or trailing plumes; no monstrosity of crest and wattles, to win her favor.
She is only temporarily interested in him.The rest of the time she is getting her own living, and caring for her own young.But our women get their bread from their husbands, and every other social need.The woman depends on the man for her position in life, as well as the necessities of existence.For herself and for her children she must win and hold him who is the source of all supplies.Therefore she is forced to add to her own natural attractions this "dance of the seven veils," of the seventeen gowns, of the seventy-seven hats of gay delirium.
When the artist uses the woman as the type of every highest ideal; as Justice, Liberty, Charity, Truth--he does not represent her trimmed.In any part of the world where women are even in part economically independent there we find less of the absurdities of fashion.Women who work cannot be utterly absurd.
But the idle woman, the Queen of Society, who must please men within their prescribed bounds; and those of the half-world, who must please them at any cost--these are the vehicles of fashion.
Chapter 10: Law and Government

Chapter 11: Crime and Punishment
Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world?Who raised the food and garnered it and cooked it and served it?Who built the houses, the temples, the acqueducts, the city wall?Who made the furniture, the tools, the weapons, the utensils, the ornaments--made them strong and beautiful and useful?Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spite of the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the real industrial civilization behind that gory show?--Why just the slaves and the women.
A religion which had attractions for the real human type is not therefore to be utterly despised by the male.
      Service and love and doing good must always remain side issues in a male world.Service and love and doing good are the spirit of motherhood, and the essense of human life.
      Human life is service, and is not combat.There you have the nature of the change now upon us.
      What has the male mind made of Christianity?
      Desire--to save one's own soul.Combat--with the Devil. Self-expression--the whole gorgeous outpouring of pageant and display, from the jewels of the high priest's breastplate to the choir of mutilated men to praise a male Deity no woman may so serve.
      What kind of mind can imagine a kind of god who would like a eunuch better than a woman?
Some persons are so morally diseased that they must have hospital treatment.The world's last prison will be simply a hospital for moral incurables.They must by no means reproduce their kind,--that can be attended to at once.Some are morally diseased, but may be cured, and the best powers of society will be used to cure them.Some are only morally diseased because of the conditions in which they are born and reared, and here society can save millions at once.
      As a matter of fact we make our crop of criminals, just as we make our idiots, blind, crippled, and generally defective.Everyone is a baby first, and a baby is not a criminal, unless we make it so.It never would be,--in right conditions.Sometimes a pervert is born, as sometimes a two-headed calf is born, but they are not common.
      The older, simpler forms of crime we may prevent with case and dispatch, but how of the new ones?--big, terrible, far-reaching, wide-spread crimes, for which we have as yet no names; and before which our old system of anti-personal punishment falls helpless?What of the crimes of poisoning a community with bad food; of defiling the water; of blackening the air; of stealing whole forests?What of the crimes of working little children; of building and renting tenements that produce crime and physical disease as well?What of the crime of living on the wages of fallen women--of hiring men to ruin innocent young girls; of holding them enslaved and selling them for profit? (These things are only "misdemeanors" in a man-made world!)
      And what about a crime like this; to use the public press to lie to the public for private ends? No name yet for this crime; much less a penalty.
      And this: To bring worse than leprosy to an innocent clean wife who loves and trusts you?
      Or this: To knowingly plant poison in an unborn child?
      No names, for these; no "penalties"; no conceivable penalty that could touch them.
      The whole punishment system falls to the ground before the huge mass of evil that confronts us.
Chapter 12: Politics and Warfare (with Woman and the State)
      Primitive warfare had for its climax the possession of the primitive prize, the female.Without dogmatising on so remote a period, it may be suggested as a fair hypothesis that this was the very origin of our organized raids.We certainly find war before there was property in land, or any other property to tempt aggressors.Women, however, there were always, and when a specially androcentric tribe had reduced its supply of women by cruel treatment, or they were not born in sufficient numbers, owing to hard conditions, men must needs go farther afield after other women.Then, since the men of the other tribes naturally objected to losing their main labor supply and comfort, there was war.
      Thus based on the sex impulse, it gave full range to the combative instinct, and further to that thirst for vocal exultation so exquisitely male.The proud bellowings of the conquering stag, as he trampled on his prostrate rival, found higher expression in the "triumphs" of old days, when the conquering warrior returned to his home, with victims chained to his chariot wheels, and braying trumpets.
      When property became an appreciable factor in life, warfare took on a new significance.What was at first mere destruction, in the effort to defend or obtain some hunting ground or pasture; and, always, to secure the female; now coalesced with the acquisitive instinct, and the long black ages of predatory warfare closed in upon the world.
      Where the earliest form exterminated, the later enslaved, and took tribute; and for century upon century the "gentleman adventurer," i.e., the primitive male, greatly preferred to acquire wealth by the simple old process of taking it, to any form of productive industry.
      We have been much misled as to warfare by our androcentric literature.With a history which recorded nothing else; a literature which praised and an art which exalted it; a religion which called its central power "the God of Battles"--never the God of Workshops, mind you!--with a whole complex social structure man-prejudiced from center to circumference, and giving highest praise and honor to the Soldier; it is still hard for its to see what warfare really is in human life.
      The instinct of combat, between males, worked advantageously so long as it did not injure the female or the young.It is a perfectly natural instinct, and therefore perfectly right, in its place; but its place is in a pre-patriarchal era.So long as the animal mother was free and competent to care for herself and her young; then it was an advantage to have "the best man win;" that is the best stag or lion; and to have the vanquished die, or live in sulky celibacy, was no disadvantage to any one but himself.
      Humanity is on a stage above this plan.The best man in the social structure is not always the huskiest.When a fresh horde of ultra-male savages swarmed down upon a prosperous young civilization, killed off the more civilized males and appropriated the more civilized females; they did, no doubt, bring in a fresh physical impetus to the race; but they destroyed the civilization.
      The reproduction of perfectly good savages is not the main business of humanity.Its business is to grow, socially; to develop, to improve; and warfare, at its best, retards human progress; at its worst, obliterates it.
      Combat is not a social process at all; it is a physical process, a subsidiary sex process, purely masculine, intended to improve the species by the elimination of the unfit.Amusingly enough, or absurdly enough; when applied to society, it eliminates the fit, and leaves the unfit to perpetuate the race!
      We require, to do our organized fighting, a picked lot of vigorous young males, the fittest we can find.The too old or too young; the sick, crippled, defective; are all left behind, to marry and be fathers; while the pick of the country, physically, is sent off to oppose the pick of another country, and kill--kill--kill!
Peace congresses have begun to meet, peace societies write and talk, but the monuments to soldiers and sailors (naval sailors of course), still go up, and the tin soldier remains a popular toy.We do not see boxes of tin carpenters by any chance; tin farmers, weavers, shoemakers; we do not write our "boys books" about the real benefactors and servers of society; the adventurer and destroyer remains the idol of an Androcentric Culture.
      The inextricable confusion of politics and warfare is part of the stumbling block in the minds of men.As they see it, a nation is primarily a fighting organization; and its principal business is offensive and defensive warfare; therefore the ultimatum with which they oppose the demand for political equality--"women cannot fight, therefore they cannot vote."
      Fighting, when all is said, is to them the real business of life; not to be able to fight is to be quite out of the running; and ability to solve our growing mass of public problems; questions of health, of education, of morals, of economics; weighs naught against the ability to kill.
Woman and the State

      Sorry, but I didn't read this chapter.
Chapter 13: Industry and Economics

      Sorry, but I didn't read this chapter.
Chapter 14: A Human World

      Sorry, but I didn't read this chapter.
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last updated Dec 27, 2000