A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the gender double standards in society regarding behavior and mental health.
H. L. Mencken's quote underscores the societal expectations and double standards placed on men and women. It suggests that actions commonly accepted in men might be harshly judged in women, reflecting how societal norms can lead to the stigmatization of women's behavior. The use of 'lunatic asylum' illustrates the extreme consequences faced by women challenging these norms, thus calling attention to the prejudices that persist in the evaluation of gendered behavior.
In practice
In a discussion about gender roles, this quote can illustrate the inequalities in social judgment.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I'll tell you who you are.
Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.
'Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.
At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.
That a thing is peculiar; is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.