The Man-Made World; Or, Our Androcentric Culture

“Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“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.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“A man hits me--I hit the man a little harder--then he won't do it again.' Unfortunately he did do it again--a little harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action and reaction till society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumelious cities to the ground.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“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.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“What do we find, here in America, in the field of 'politics?'We find first a party system which is the technical arrangement to carry on a fight. It is perfectly conceivable that a flourishing democratic government be carried on ; public functionaries being elected on their merits, and each proposed measure judged on its merits; though this sounds impossible to the androcentric mind.'There has never been a democracy without factions and parties!" is protested.There has never been a democracy, so far--only an androcracy.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained.In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce; wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Punishment [is] applied like a rabbit's foot, with as little regard to its efficacy.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“In exact proportion as women grow independent, educated, wise and free, do they become less submissive to men-made fashions.””

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman