The Man-Made World; Or, Our Androcentric Culture

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, this canon was made manifest. Here, one man had spent a lifetime in trying to accomplish something; and at the eleventh hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the rich triumph long deferred, he finds another man, of character well known to him, impudently and falsely claiming that he had done it first. Mr. Peary expressed himself, quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard to the effrontery and falsity of this claim—and all the country rose up and denounced him as "unsportsmanlike!"

Sport and the canons of sport are so dominant in the masculine mind that what they considered a deviation from these standards was of far more importance than the question of fact involved; to say nothing of the moral obliquity of one lying to the whole world, for money; and that at the cost of another's hard-won triumph.

If women had condemned the conduct of one or the other as "not good house-wifery," this would have been considered a most puerile comment. But to be "unsportsmanlike" is the unpardonable sin.

Owing to our warped standards we glaringly misjudge the attitude of the two sexes in regard to their amusements. Of late years more women than ever before have taken to playing cards; and some, unfortunately, play for money. A steady stream of comment and blame follows upon this. The amount of card playing among men—and the amount of money lost and won, does not produce an equivalent comment.

Quite aside from this one field of dissipation, look at the share of life, of time, of strength, of money, given by men to their wide range of recreation. The primitive satisfaction of hunting and fishing they maintain at enormous expense. This is the indulgence of a most rudimentary impulse; pre-social and largely pre-human, of no service save as it affects bodily health, and of a most deterring influence on real human development. Where hunting and fishing is of real human service, done as a means of livelihood, it is looked down upon like any other industry; it is no longer "sport."

The human being kills to eat, or to sell and eat from the returns; he kills for the creature's hide or tusks, for use of some sort; or to protect his crops from vermin, his flocks from depredation; but the sportsman kills for the gratification of a primeval instinct, and under rules of an arbitrary cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, beast or fish that is hard to catch, that requires some skill to slay; that will give him not mere meat and bones, but "the pleasure of the chase."

The pleasure of the chase is a very real one. It is exemplified, in its broad sense in children's play. The running and catching games, the hiding and finding games, are always attractive to our infancy, as they are to that of cubs and kittens. But the long continuance of this indulgence among mature civilized beings is due to their masculinity. That group of associated sex instincts, which in the woman prompts to the patient service and fierce defence of the little child, in the man has its deepest root in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt is more than a means of obtaining food, in his long ancestry; it is to follow at any cost, to seek through all difficulties, to struggle for and secure the central prize of his being—a mate.

His "protective instincts" are far later and more superficial. To support and care for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, in plain sight historically; but "the pleasure of the chase" is older than that. We should remember that associate habits and impulses last for ages upon ages in living forms; as in the tree climbing instincts of our earliest years, of Simian origin; and the love of water, which dates back through unmeasured time. Where for millions of years the strongest pleasure a given organism is fitted for, is obtained by a certain group of activities, those activities will continue to give pleasure long after their earlier use is gone.

This is why men enjoy "the ardor of pursuit" far more than women. It is an essentially masculine ardor. To come easily by what he wants does not satisfy him. He wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek it, chase it, catch it. He wants it to be "game." He is by virtue of his sex a sportsman.

There is no reason why these special instincts should not be gratified so long as it does no harm to the more important social processes; but it is distinctly desirable that we should understand their nature. The reason why we have the present overwhelming mass of "sporting events," from the ball game to the prize fight, is because our civilization is so overwhelmingly masculine. We shall criticize them more justly when we see that all this mass of indulgence is in the first place a form of sex-expression, and in the second place a survival of instincts older than the oldest savagery.