Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man Made World

t "society" is made by women; and that women are responsib

t it in their pages. The force of inertia acts in the domain of psychics as well as physics; any idea pushed into the popular

its processes, therefore women are its makers and masters

s for jails. To be helplessly confined to a given place or con

nvenience. There are, of course, modifications due to the presence of the other sex; where there are more women than men the

change, not only definite ideas, facts, and feelings, but to experience that vague general stimulus and

se was allowed to women has been rigidly hemmed its by man-made conventions. Women accept th

not for woman's pleasure that this crippling torture was invented. The Oriental veil

use; the need for association is as human as the need for privacy. But the public house was-and is-for men only. The woman was kept as f

the women of older lands gathered at the well, or in the market place, to our own women on the church steps or in the se

places wherein women may meet one another and meet men. These vary, of course, with race, country, class, and period; from the cle

n only works one way-the low-class man may not mingle with high-class women; but the high-class man m

inction; the subordinate caste was once a subordinate race; and while mating, upward, was al

on, quinteroon, griffada, mustafee, mustee, and sang d'or-to white again; was not through white mothers-but whi

t, 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

rrying; her health and happiness depends on her marrying the right man. The more "i

ich the delicate Amelia possessed was an unsuspecting breast to lavish esteem. Unversed in the secret villanies of a base degenerate world, she eve

it as if you had never seen "society" befo

e it is. As a human being she has others!) Marriage is our way of safeguardin

ade and governed by women we should naturally look to see its restrictions and encouragements such as would put

d this? B

ain offences which would exclude him; such as not paying gambling debts, or be

ut the

, surely a misstep by a helplessly "inno

and is thrown out of the shop. Why not? It is his shop-not hers. What women may and m

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

men, however, would

hid in capstrings) saying, "No, no, young man. You won't do. You've b

your right to marry! Go into retirement for seven years, an

it-for "Society" to say? It is r

requirements and absolute exclusions of "society," are of men, by men, for men,-to paraphrase a threadbare quotation. And then, upon all that vast e

and associate with "the fallen"? His esteem would be forfeited, they would

m help, sympathy, re-establishment-or for other reasons; and it does not

t acquiescence with prescribed models of architecture, furniture, literature, or anything else; there is not much difference; but in personal decoration there is a most conspicuous difference. Women do to-day submit to more grotesque ugl

rdens 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 t

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

en." To these I would suggest a visit to some summer shore resort during the week and extending over Saturday night. The women have all the w

n she does afterward. This has long been observed and deprecated by those who write Advice to Wives, on the ground that this difference is displeasing to the husband-that she loses

sa McRae," an extremely dainty and well-dressed stenographer, who captured and married a fastidious young man, her employer, by the

usiness. To continually attract the vagrant fancy of the male, nature's born "variant," they must not only pile on artificial charms, but change them constantly. They do. From

nge them, but since Nature's Variant tires of any face in favor of a new one, the lady who woul

a business manufactures and supplies this amazing stream of fashions; again

grow independent, educated, wise and free, do they become less submissive to men-made fash

elves" is known to all. They like women to be foolish, changeable, always newly

of the dependent, degraded position of her sex; and it ought to be humiliating to men to see t

-he does not represent her trimmed. In any part of the world where women are even in part economically

ithin their prescribed bounds; and those of the half-world, who