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The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
page 104 of 169 (61%)
fellows; whereby, gradually, our higher social nature establishes rules
and precedents to which we personally agree to submit. The process of
social development is one of progressive co-ordination.

From independent individual action for individual ends, up to
interdependent social action for social ends we slowly move; the "devil"
in the play being the old Ego, which has to be harmonized with the new
social spirit. This social process, like all others, having been in
masculine hands, we may find in it the same marks of one-sided
Specialization so visible in our previous studies.

The coersive attitude is essentially male. In the ceaseless age-old
struggle of sex combat he developed the desire to overcome, which is
always stimulated by resistance; and in this later historic period of
his supremacy, he further developed the habit of dominance and mastery.
We may instance the contrast between the conduct of a man when "in love"
and while courting; in which period he falls into the natural position
of his sex towards the other--namely, that of a wooer; and his behavior
when, with marriage, they enter the, artificial relation of the master
male and servile female. His "instinct of dominance" does not assert
itself during the earlier period, which was a million times longer than
the latter; it only appears in the more modern and arbitrary relation.

Among other animals monogamous union is not accompanied by any such
discordant and unnatural features. However recent as this habit is when
considered biologically, it is as old as civilization when we consider
it historically: quite old enough to be a serious force. Under its
pressure we see the legal systems and forms of government slowly
evolving, the general human growth always heavily perverted by the
special masculine influence. First we find the mere force of custom
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