Men Mean the World
When we say men, man, manly, manhood, and all the other masculine derivatives, we have in the background of our minds a huge vague crowded picture of the world and all its activities. … And when we say women, we think female—the sex.
But to these women, in the unbroken sweep of this two-thousand-year-old feminine civilization, the word woman called up all that big background, so far as they had gone in social development; and the word man meant to them only male—the sex.
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Context: The narrator reflects on why the women of Herland do not feel the lack of men that he expected.
Not in a duel yet
Source: Chapter 12, "Expelled"