And One More Thing

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One further thought about my column yesterday. A.K.'s letter accused me of not being sensitive to the concerns of women, on account of the fact that I have testicles. Although, I would think that my saggy man-boobs would give me a little double-X-chromosomal street cred, but apparently not.

Anyhow, I am not accusing A.K. of this, but it got me in the mind of self-marginalization in politics. It is obviously a Good Thing that people of all races, colors, creeds, genders, sexual orientations, and what-have-you can vote and run for office. But there is this obsession with proportional representation, and worrying about whether you need to have so-many representatives of this gender, or that race, in order to 'represent everyone's opinions.'

Of course, this mostly is with regards to members of minorities, or otherwise rights-restricted subclasses like women, accusing, well, upper-middle class white guys like me, of not understanding them and their specific needs. This is undoubtedly true-I cannot have a subjective understanding of what it is like to be Muslim, or black, or a woman. But I think that it's quite short-sighted, because it is my sincerest of sincere opinions that the things that tie us together are much deeper, broader, and more important, than those shallow things that define us separately and individually.

With that in mind, it is counterproductive to say that only people of your race, gender, etc. can represent you, because then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who aren't in that group (say, women) start thinking 'well, if women don't think I can possibly have any appreciation for what they're going through, why should I bother trying?' Whereas, if you speak to your ideas without making accusations of racism, sexism, religiousonism, or what have you, I think that you can open lines of discussion, rather than closing them off.

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