It is the same in science, in literature, in religion. All estimates are made on and for the "human race," "the people of a country," etc. The "will of the people" is spoken of; we are told all about the brain size and capacity and convolutions, etc., of the different "peoples"; we hear learned discourses about it all, and when you sift them, woman—one-half of the race talked about—is used always simply and only as ballast, as filling to make a point in man's favor. She does not figure in the benefits. He is the race—she his annex.
Not long ago an amusing illustration of this came to my knowledge. As you may perhaps know, there is more money invested in life insurance than in any other great financial enterprise in the world.
This is the way insurance experts look at the woman question. The estimates of longevity, desirability of risk, etc., are based upon male standards. This is not in itself unnatural or unreasonable, since men have been the chief insurers, but few companies, indeed, being willing to insure women at all. But not long ago a lady applied for a policy on her life in a first-class company. She had three little children for whom she wished to provide in case of her death. She believed that she could properly support them so long as she lived. To her surprise she was told that the rate at which she must pay was $5 on each $1,000 more than her brother had to pay at the same age. She asked the actuary—a very profound man—why this was so. He told her that women had been found to be not so good risks as men, since they were subject to more dangers of death than were men, and that to make the companies safe it had been found necessary to charge women a higher rate.
She had heard much and eloquently all her life long of the dangers of men's lives; of the shielded, sheltered state of feminine humanity, and she had never dreamed that it was—from a mortuary point of view—"extra hazardous" to be a woman. She assumed, however, that it must be so and paid her extra hazardous premium, just as if she belonged to the army or was a blaster or miner or "contemplated going up in a balloon." A short time afterward her mother, an elderly lady, had some money to invest. She did not wish to care for it herself, as she had never had the least business experience. She applied to the same actuary to know how much of an annual income or annuity she could buy for the sum she had. He figured on it for a while and told her. It was a good deal less than a man could get for the same amount. She had the temerity to ask why.
"Well," said the actuary, gazing benignly over his glasses at her in a congratulatory fashion, "you see women live longer than men do—"
"But you told my daughter that they did not live so long, and so she pays at a higher rate on insurance to make you safe lest she should die too young. Now you charge me more for an annuity on the theory that a woman lives longer than a man."
"Well," said he, readjusting his glasses and going carefully over the mortuary table again, "that does seem to be the fact. If a woman assures her life she beats the company by dying sooner than a man and if she takes an annuity she beats us by living longer than he would. Don't know how it happens, but we charge extra to cover the facts as we find 'em."
Such is masculine logic upon feminine perversity even in death.
Yet men say that they understand us and our needs so much better than we do ourselves that they abandon all of their reasoning, logic, enthusiasm and beliefs on the great fundamental principles of justice, equality, liberty and law the moment their own arguments are applied to women instead of to "labor," the "Irish question" or to any other phase of class legislation as applied between man and man. The fact is simply and only this, that the arrogance of sex power and perversion is now so thoroughly ingrained that man really believes himself to be—by divine right—the human race and that woman is his perquisite. He has no universal language. He thinks in the language of sex. But more than this, and worse than this, he insists upon no one else being allowed to think in the language of humanity, and to translate that thought into action.