Library / Literature & Fiction
The Man-Made World; Or, Our Androcentric Culture
- Pages
- about 153
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2.8 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
The family is older than humanity, and therefore cannot be called
a human institution. A post office, now, is wholly human; no other
creature has a post office, but there are families in plenty among birds
and beasts; all kinds permanent and transient; monogamous, polygamous
and polyandrous.
We are now to consider the growth of the family in humanity; what is
its rational development in humanness; in mechanical, mental and social
lines; in the extension of love and service; and the effect upon it of
this strange new arrangement--a masculine proprietor.
Like all natural institutions the family has a purpose; and is to be
measured primarily as it serves that purpose; which is, the care and
nurture of the young. To protect the helpless little ones, to feed and
shelter them, to ensure them the benefits of an ever longer period of
immaturity, and so to improve the race--this is the original purpose of
the family.
When a natural institution becomes human it enters the plane of
consciousness. We think about it; and, in our strange new power of
voluntary action do things to it. We have done strange things to the
family; or, more specifically, men have.
Balsac, at his bitterest, observed, "Women's virtue is man's best
invention." Balsac was wrong. Virtue--the unswerving devotion to one
mate--is common among birds and some of the higher mammals. If
Balsac meant celibacy when he said virtue, why that is one of man's
inventions--though hardly his best.
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.
Among the heavy millions of the stirred East, a child--necessarily a
male child--is desired for the credit and glory of the father, and his
fathers; in place of seeing that all a parent is for is the best service
of the child. Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all natural law,
is of wholly androcentric origin.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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