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.
In our own species all this is changed. We have been so taken
up with the phenomena of masculinity and femininity, that our
common humanity has largely escaped notice. We know we are human,
naturally, and are very proud of it; but we do not consider in what
our humanness consists; nor how men and women may fall short of it,
or overstep its bounds, in continual insistence upon their special
differences. It is "manly" to do this; it is "womanly" to do that;
but what a human being should do under the circumstances is not
thought of.
The only time when we do recognize what we call "common
humanity" is in extreme cases, matters of life and death; when
either man or woman is expected to behave as if they were also
human creatures. Since the range of feeling and action proper to
humanity, as such, is far wider than that proper to either sex, it
seems at first somewhat remarkable that we have given it so little
recognition.
A little classification will help us here. We have certain
qualities in common with inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity,
resilience. It is clear that these are not human. We have other
qualities in common with all forms of life; cellular construction,
for instance, the reproduction of cells and the need of nutrition.
These again are not human. We have others, many others, common to
the higher mammals; which are not exclusively ours—are not
distinctively "human." What then are true human characteristics? In
what way is the human species distinguished from all other
species?
Our human-ness is seen most clearly in three main lines: it
is mechanical, psychical and social. Our power to make and use
things is essentially human; we alone have extra-physical tools. We
have added to our teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing machine;
to our claws the spade, harrow, plough, drill, dredge. We are a
protean creature, using the larger brain power through a wide
variety of changing weapons. This is one of our main and vital
distinctions. Ancient animal races are traced and known by mere
bones and shells, ancient human races by their buildings, tools and
utensils.
That degree of development which gives us the human mind is a
clear distinction of race. The savage who can count a hundred is
more human than the savage who can count ten.
More prominent than either of these is the social nature of
humanity. We are by no means the only group-animal; that ancient
type of industry the ant, and even the well-worn bee, are social
creatures. But insects of their kind are found living alone. Human
beings never. Our human-ness begins with some low form of social
relation and increases as that relation develops.
Human life of any sort is dependent upon what Kropotkin calls
"mutual aid," and human progress keeps step absolutely with that
interchange of specialized services which makes society organic.
The nomad, living on cattle as ants live on theirs, is less human
than the farmer, raising food by intelligently applied labor; and
the extension of trade and commerce, from mere village
market-places to the world-exchanges of to-day, is extension of
human-ness as well.
Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing made at once and
unchangeable, but a stage of development; and is still, as Wells
describes it, "in the making." Our human-ness is seen to lie not so
much in what we are individually, as in our relations to one
another; and even that individuality is but the result of our
relations to one another. It is in what we do and how we do it,
rather than in what we are. Some, philosophically inclined, exalt
"being" over "doing." To them this question may be put: "Can you
mention any form of life that merely 'is,' without doing
anything?"
Taken separately and physically, we are animals,
genus homo ; taken socially and
psychically, we are, in varying degree, human; and our real history
lies in the development of this human-ness.
Our historic period is not very long. Real written history
only goes back a few thousand years, beginning with the stone
records of ancient Egypt. During this period we have had almost
universally what is here called an Androcentric Culture. The
history, such as it was, was made and written by men.
The mental, the mechanical, the social development, was
almost wholly theirs. We have, so far, lived and suffered and died
in a man-made world. So general, so unbroken, has been this
condition, that to mention it arouses no more remark than the
statement of a natural law. We have taken it for granted, since the
dawn of civilization, that "mankind" meant men-kind, and the world
was theirs.
Women we have sharply delimited. Women were a sex, "the sex,"
according to chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for special
services peculiar to femininity. As one English scientist put it,
in 1888, "Women are not only not the race—they are not even half
the race, but a subspecies told off for reproduction
only."
This mental attitude toward women is even more clearly
expressed by Mr. H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The
American Woman" in the "Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where
he says: "Her constitutional restlessness has caused her to
abdicate those functions which alone excuse or explain her
existence." This is a peculiarly happy and condensed expression of
the relative position of women during our androcentric culture. The
man was accepted as the race type without one dissentient voice;
and the woman—a strange, diverse creature, quite disharmonious in
the accepted scheme of things—was excused and explained only as a
female.
She has needed volumes of such excuse and explanation; also,
apparently, volumes of abuse and condemnation. In any library
catalogue we may find books upon books about women: physiological,
sentimental, didactic, religious—all manner of books about women,
as such. Even to-day in the works of Marholm—poor young Weininger,
Moebius, and others, we find the same perpetual discussion of
women—as such.
This is a book about men—as such. It differentiates between
the human nature and the sex nature. It will not go so far as to
allege man's masculine traits to be all that excuse, or explain his
existence: but it will point out what are masculine traits as
distinct from human ones, and what has been the effect on our human
life of the unbridled dominance of one sex.
We can see at once, glaringly, what would have been the
result of giving all human affairs into female hands. Such an
extraordinary and deplorable situation would have "feminized" the
world. We should have all become "effeminate."
See how in our use of language the case is clearly shown. The
adjectives and derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien
and derogatory when applied to human affairs; "effeminate"—too
female, connotes contempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas
"emasculate"—not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no
feminine analogue. "Virile"—manly, we oppose to "puerile"—childish,
and the very word "virtue" is derived from "vir"—a
man.
Even in the naming of other animals we have taken the male as
the race type, and put on a special termination to indicate "his
female," as in lion, lioness; leopard, leopardess; while all our
human scheme of things rests on the same tacit assumption; man
being held the human type; woman a sort of accompaniment and
subordinate assistant, merely essential to the making of
people.
She has held always the place of a preposition in relation to
man. She has been considered above him or below him, before him,
behind him, beside him, a wholly relative existence—"Sydney's
sister," "Pembroke's mother"—but never by any chance Sydney or
Pembroke herself.
Acting on this assumption, all human standards have been
based on male characteristics, and when we wish to praise the work
of a woman, we say she has "a masculine mind."
It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a universal
assumption. The human mind has had a good many jolts since it began
to think, but after each upheaval it settles down as peacefully as
the vine-growers on Vesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as
permanent ground.
What we see immediately around us, what we are born into and
grow up with, be it mental furniture or physical, we assume to be
the order of nature.
If a given idea has been held in the human mind for many
generations, as almost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere
and continued effort to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest
we have in stock, one of the big, common, unquestioned world ideas,
vast is the labor of those who seek to change it.
Nevertheless, if the matter is one of importance, if the
previous idea was a palpable error, of large and evil effect, and
if the new one is true and widely important, the effort is worth
making.
The task here undertaken is of this sort. It seeks to show
that what we have all this time called "human nature" and
deprecated, was in great part only male nature, and good enough in
its place; that what we have called "masculine" and admired as
such, was in large part human, and should be applied to both sexes:
that what we have called "feminine" and condemned, was also largely
human and applicable to both. Our androcentric culture is so shown
to have been, and still to be, a masculine culture in excess, and
therefore undesirable.
In the preliminary work of approaching these facts it will be
well to explain how it can be that so wide and serious an error
should have been made by practically all men. The reason is simply
that they were men. They were males, avid saw women as females—and
not otherwise.
So absolute is this conviction that the man who reads will
say, "Of course! How else are we to look at women except as
females? They are females, aren't they?" Yes, they are, as men are
males unquestionably; but there is possible the frame of mind of
the old marquise who was asked by an English friend how she could
bear to have the footman serve her breakfast in bed—to have a man
in her bed-chamber—and replied sincerely, "Call you that thing
there a man?"
The world is full of men, but their principal occupation is
human work of some sort; and women see in them the human
distinction preponderantly. Occasionally some unhappy lady marries
her coachman—long contemplation of broad shoulders having an
effect, apparently; but in general women see the human creature
most; the male creature only when they love.
To the man, the whole world was his world; his because he was
male; and the whole world of woman was the home; because she was
female. She had her prescribed sphere, strictly limited to her
feminine occupations and interests; he had all the rest of life;
and not only so, but, having it, insisted on calling it
male.
This accounts for the general attitude of men toward the now
rapid humanization of women. From her first faint struggles toward
freedom and justice, to her present valiant efforts toward full
economic and political equality, each step has been termed
"unfeminine" and resented as an intrusion upon man's place and
power. Here shows the need of our new classification, of the three
distinct fields of life—masculine, feminine and human.
As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's sphere," sharply
defined and quite different from his; there is also a "man's
sphere," as sharply defined and even more limited; but there
remains a common sphere—that of humanity, which belongs to both
alike.
In the earlier part of what is known as "the woman's
movement," it was sharply opposed on the ground that women would
become "unsexed." Let us note in passing that they have become
unsexed in one particular, most glaringly so, and that no one has
noticed or objected to it.
As part of our androcentric culture we may point to the
peculiar reversal of sex characteristics which make the human
female carry the burden of ornament. She alone, of all human
creatures, has adopted the essentially masculine attribute of
special sex-decoration; she does not fight for her mate as yet, but
she blooms forth as the peacock and bird of paradise, in poignant
reversal of nature's laws, even wearing masculine feathers to
further her feminine ends.
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."