That vast background is full of marching columns of men, of changing lines of men, of long processions of men; of men steering their ships into new seas, exploring unknown mountains, breaking horses, herding cattle, ploughing and sowing and reaping, toiling at the forge and furnace, digging in the mine, building roads and bridges and high cathedrals, managing great businesses, teaching in all the colleges, preaching in all the churches; of men everywhere, doing everything--"the world." 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.
Of course we could TELL them that in our world men did everything; but that did not alter the background of their minds.

That man, "the male," did all these things was to them a statement, making no more change in the point of view than was made in ours when we first faced the astounding fact--to us--that in Herland women were "the world." We had been living there more than a year.

We had learned their limited history, with its straight, smooth, upreaching lines, reaching higher and going faster up to the smooth comfort of their present life.

We had learned a little of their psychology, a much wider field than the history, but here we could not follow so readily.

We were now well used to seeing women not as females but as people; people of all sorts, doing every kind of work.
This outbreak of Terry's, and the strong reaction against it, gave us a new light on their genuine femininity.