a frantic sputter of alarm over the "feminization" of our schools. It
is true that the majority of teachers are now women. It is true that
they do have an influence on growing children. It would even seem to be
true that that is largely what women are for.

But the male assumes his influence to be normal, human, and the female
influence as wholly a matter of sex; therefore, where women teach boys,
the boys become "effeminate"--a grievous fall. When men teach girls, do
the girls become -----? Here again we lack the analogue. Never has it
occurred to the androcentric mind to conceive of such a thing as being
too masculine. There is no such word! It is odd to notice that which
ever way the woman is placed, she is supposed to exert this degrading
influence; if the teacher, she effeminizes her pupils; if the pupil, she
effeminizes her teachers.

Now let us shake ourselves free, if only for a moment, from the
androcentric habit of mind.

As a matter of sex, the female is the more important. Her share of the
processes which sex distinction serves is by far the greater. To be
feminine--if one were nothing else, is a far more extensive and
dignified office than to be masculine--and nothing else.

But as a matter of humanity the male of our species is at present far
ahead of the female. By this superior humanness, his knowledge, his
skill, his experience, his organization and specialization, he makes and
manages the world. All this is human, not male. All this is as open to
the woman as the man by nature, but has been denied her during our
androcentric culture.